Mission Moment: So Much to Cheer About

When Jordan McClinton, a first-year cheerleader at Georgia Tech, got dressed to leave Shepherd Center in September 2020, he put on a Louisiana State University T-shirt. Fortunately, Jordan’s father was able to save him from committing that unforgivable sartorial sin. “My dad told me to put on a Georgia Tech shirt,” Jordan says. “He wouldn’t let me leave until I changed.” 

Jordan’s dad was in on a top-secret mission. Just outside the front door of the hospital, a crowd of staff members had gathered for a surprise orchestrated by Jordan’s wily therapy team: The Ramblin’ Reck of Georgia Tech, the school’s mascot vehicle, was waiting to take the young man for a once-in-a-lifetime spin around Midtown Atlanta. Cue the fight song and the happy tears.

“Everybody I had worked with—nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, techs—was waiting there, just cheering me on,” Jordan says. “As soon as I stepped outside, I started crying.” 

Tech tradition forbids first-year students from touching the gold-and-white Model A until after their final exams, lest the football team be cursed to lose to in-state rival the University of Georgia Bulldogs. But two catastrophes had intervened that wrecked Jordan’s chances to take part in the car-touching ritual. First, COVID-19 shut down in-person classes, and students were sent home before finals. Then, while practicing his cheerleading stunts in the yard of his family’s home in Brunswick, Georgia, Jordan slipped on wet grass and sustained a severe spinal cord injury. 

He spent more than four months at Shepherd, first as an inpatient in the Adolescent Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program and then as an outpatient in the Day Program. “There were a lot of tears cried at Shepherd,” Jordan says. “One day, I was with my mom in the Secret Garden, and we were talking about the accident. She said, ‘This is the last time we’re crying about this. It happened. We’re going to move forward and you’re going to get better.’ And that’s what I did.” 

By the time he left Shepherd and tooled around town in the Ramblin’ Reck, Jordan was walking on his own, with the aid of two canes. He returned to Georgia Tech and picked up where he left off, earning a degree in engineering and, in May 2024, walking across the stage to pick up his diploma. Now 24, Jordan is working toward a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering with a focus in bioengineering and nanotechnology, which he plans to finish this fall. He still has some lingering effects of his injury, such as stiffness in his hands and legs, and a few spots where he can’t feel anything because of permanent nerve damage. “For the most part, I can work through it,” he says. “It’s a minor inconvenience.” 

Only a week after he graduated from Georgia Tech, Jordan returned to Shepherd Center to address the joint meeting of its Board of Directors and the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. “In a way, I’m glad that I got hurt,” he told the rapt audience. “It was rough for a while, but I recovered. I would never have gotten to meet the people who work in this building and the other patients. And I wouldn’t be the man you see standing in front of you today. 

“Shepherd Center will always be a part of me.”

Written by Teresa Weaver

This story is an excerpt from “Mission Moments: 50 Years of Rebuilding Lives One Moment at a Time,” a book celebrating Shepherd’s 50th anniversary in 2025.