Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2008
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The Comeback Kit
A serious accident didn’t stop casino entertainer Kit Summers, who went from world-class juggler to motivational speaker—and salsa king
The San Diego native and former Bally’s Park Place juggler made the mother of all comebacks, turning life-altering trauma into a motivational speaking, book-writing, salsa-producing existence.
“This is definitely a time to enjoy life,” says Summers. “I was given a second chance and I’m happy to make the most of it. Life is more important to me now.”
Summers was hit by a truck in Atlantic City in the early 1980s. Before that random, tragic, rainy night, he was in the prime of his life, and at the top of his career. He already owned a juggling world record. He’d won a competition on the Gong Show. Bally’s, which initially hired him for a short stretch, extended him to two shows a night, six nights a week. Then came the truck.
Summers was crossing a busy street in a blinding rainstorm when he was struck, then thrown onto the hood of the vehicle. His face broke the windshield. His body tore the side mirror off. He was thrown 30 feet.
He endured two brain operations and 37 days in a coma, and his mother flew in from San Diego for the wretched vigil. He spent more than four months in the hospital.
But Summers fought back. He taught himself to speak and walk again, and wrote four books, including Juggling with Finesse, about his therapy and comeback. He has talked to audiences around the world about the human capacity for recovery. He gets their attention with juggling tricks, then tells them about his own resurgence.
“You never know what the challenge might come from—an accident, a divorce, a loss or whatever,” he says. “But people come back. I’ve gone to a lot of rehab centers and helped people to get through. They have to keep driving. It is so easy to give up. It’s depressing to know that all you could do before, you can’t do right now, but don’t quit. Learn and move on.”
Summers endured great frustration as he relearned to walk and talk. “It’s something we all take for granted,” he says. “You think about how we step, what muscles we use when we speak. You have to make new connections. At times, I was angry. At other times, I realized it was a major life change and the question was how I was going to deal with it.”
In fact, he’s dealt with it splendidly. Summers left Atlantic City in an ambulance, and returned several months later on a unicycle. On the one-year anniversary of his accident, he performed at San Diego’s fabled Balboa Park.
On a recent visit here, he even sought out the driver who hit him.
“I had to console him,” Summers says. “I told him it was nobody’s fault. I didn’t see him, he didn’t see me.”
He never recaptured the physical skills to retain his world-class juggling ability, so Summers branched out. Now based in Pennsylvania, he makes and sells preservative-free, fat-free, all-natural Summers Salsa. But he looks back fondly on his casino career.
“Bally’s provided an excellent part of my life,” he says. “I enjoyed the practice in the ballroom, every day for four to six hours, not because I had to, but because I loved juggling. I made a lot of friends at the show. We would hang out, goof off. I liked the free meal in the cafeteria too,” he adds, laughing. “I come back to Atlantic City often.”
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