Man With Terminal Illness Gets a Joy Ride From the MTA

John Marisi, a 21-year-old man with a terminal disease, loves public transportation so much that he collects bus and train schedules.

At Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, he is known for interrogating anyone he meets about whether they use the bus system.

So a casual bus ride took on special meaning Wednesday--both for him and staff members at the hospital where he has been going for operations for nearly 12 years to remove tumors in his skull.

Marisi played a joke on his medical social worker at the hospital to get that special ride.

He asked Barbara Fallick if there was any way she could track down a driver named Marvin T. Ashman, who Marisi said had been very nice to him on one of his rides several years ago.

Fallick contacted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which could not locate the driver. That’s when Marisi revealed to Fallick that he had made up the name, Marvin T. Ashman, based on the letters MTA.

“Haven’t you heard of acronyms?” Marisi laughed.

But after MTA officials saw how much the young man with neurofribromatosis--the same condition that afflicted the character in the movie “The Elephant Man”--adored buses, they arranged a VIP tour for him.

Marisi, of Downey, who is deaf, nearly blind and paralyzed on the left side of his face, spent four hours on Wednesday touring Los Angeles on MTA buses and trains.

His wheelchair was rolled onto a bus that picked him up at Childrens Hospital at 9:30 a.m.

The bus took him and an entourage of friends, family and media to the MTA Central Control Facility in Watts. From there, they boarded a train, then a subway, and finally were back on the bus to the hospital.