The Marblehead Family Wishes Paul Jerde a Speedy Recovery

Sat­ur­day, June 14th, at approx­i­mately 12:00 noon Paul Jerde was riding his bike home going east along Mock­ing­bird Lane in the right-​hand toward Buck­ner when he was hit from behind by a light-​weight pick-​up truck. He was taken by ambu­lance to Baylor Med­ical Center in down­town Dallas. He suf­fered a severe head injury, three frac­tured ribs and a punc­tured right lung. He has been in the ICU and has not yet regained consciousness.

For those of you who don’t know Paul; he is one of the best cre­ative minds in our city. For the past 15 years, he has helped two Dallas cre­ative offices main­tain a level of design excellence that has yielded tons of local, regional, and national atten­tion. He has also been a strong leader in our local design club, DSVC. That’s the pro­fes­sional stuff, but on a per­sonal level, he’s one of the nicest, most ener­getic people I’ve ever met. He’s also been one of the biggest influences on my pro­fes­sional career. He offered me my first summer intern­ship in Dallas after look­ing over my work at a port­fo­lio review. Paul has con­tin­ued to give me guid­ance, sup­port, and critique throughout my 6 years in the busi­ness. The last time I ran into him was at the DSVC Pro­fes­sional Show. He con­grat­u­lated me on get­ting work in know­ing it had been a big goal of mine for years. What a nice guy to be such a big timer and still remember me.

About a month ago we were trad­ing emails so I could fill him in on my progress at Mar­ble­head. This is the last thing he wrote to me:

I invite you to con­sider that you are not your work. In the end, some folks may com­ment on your abil­ity to kern type or arrange photos a cer­tain way, but what I believe most people will see is the power you exhibit every day by step­ping into the fire and let­ting the chips land where they may. —Paul

We join the rest of the Dallas design com­mu­nity and Paul’s many friends and family hoping he will wake up soon and make a full recov­ery. His cur­rent firm set up a blog where we can check on his progress and give encour­age­ment. Paul has a wife, little boy, siblings, and in-​laws who could all use a little writ­ten sup­port right now.

There is also a link to a peti­tion that will spread aware­ness of bike safety issues to local government. Unfortunately, Paul’s acci­dent was one of many in the past month.