ON SUPINSKI and his younger sister Mary Bryant stopped midway through the New York City Marathon one cloudy morning in November 1997. It was time for his pills - nine in all. Supinski, 42, obediently swallowed them one at a time, and with the last gulp of water, turned to his sister and said: "We better get going."

Supinski thrust his neck forward to depress a headrest on his battery-powered wheelchair, activating the chair's motor. A few seconds later, Supinski, Bryant and a Coast Guard lieutenant who had volunteered to run with them, hit the road again. They started their way up the Pulaski Bridge between Brooklyn and Queens, the marathon's halfway mark.

Before the day was over, Supinski would become the first quadriplegic to finish the New York City Marathon.

With his feat, Supinski, who has had 80-plus surgeries since he was paralyzed at age 16 in 1971, inspired several other wheelchair-bound athletes to run the 26.2-mile race.

"He didn't like that people were passing him up," Bryant, a fashion model who's been based in New York for 15 years, recalls. "He didn't even take the full break."

Achilles Track Club members train every Tuesday night and Saturday morning at Central Park. PHOTO Noel Pangilinan

Since he was paralyzed, Supinski pretty much spent his life being fed, bathed and bound to a chair in his parents' home in Olmsted Falls in Ohio. He had never driven a car and never had a date, never had a job, but that day, he was out on a race. He was in New York City, running in the New York City Marathon. He was enjoying every moment of it, right from the start, right off the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

"Oh my God, he was flyin' higher. He was having an absolute life," Bryant says, recalling their run.

upinski didn't say much during the race. He had to use his mouth and chin to press down the headrest to keep the wheelchair's motor moving. If he does not push, the chair won't move. His neck is the only muscle in his body he can control. But from time to time, Bryant would hear Supinski blurting out with wisecracks and triumphant yells of "Yeah!"

"We're going through red lights and everything and we're not getting a ticket," Supinski said in one of those moments, his eyes wide as they crossed another intersection in Brooklyn early in the run.

Bryant, however, got worried two-thirds of the way, when it started raining. "It was thunderstormin'," she recalls. They were already on the Willis Avenue Bridge, just before reaching First Avenue in Manhattan. Right from the start, Supinski had been wearing a royal blue poncho with his name, "DON," written in bright neon yellow. His sister had anticipated that they might end up running in the rain that day.

s Bryant put her rain poncho on, she asked Supinski: "What do you want to do?"

"Let's just keep going," he answered quite curtly. Several times earlier in the race, Bryant had asked her brother about whether to continue or to quit. And every time, the reply was "Let's just keep going."

Supinski, Bryant and the Coast Guard officer crossed the finish line six hours and 41 minutes after the race began, more than four hours behind the winner. Supinski was tired, and glad it was over. The first thought that crossed his sister's mind was to get him out of his wet clothes. "He was wet and cold. Mom was so afraid that he might catch pneumonia or something," she said.

Back at the hotel, Supinski was beaming. Everyone in the hotel came up to see him, and congratulated him. He didn't have a fever as his mom had feared. The run was so invigorating for him that it had pumped up enough adrenalin to raise his normally low immune system.

The following year, Supinski did not feel well enough to run for a second time. But in his place, Bryant ran beside "Don's Team," a group of seven disabled athletes inspired by Supinski's run. There had been wheelchair runners before Supinski at the New York City Marathon, but none was a high quadriplegic like him.

Don Supinski died of respiratory failure in November 2001, five New York City Marathons after his trailblazing run.