HITTING THE ROAD FOR ROY; BASEBALL STAR'S WIDOW CARRIES ON WITH CAUSE.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

``I asked the doctor how long he thought Roy would live. He said, 10 or 11 years at most. I said: Doctor, you don't know Roy. He'll outlive you. And he did. Roy lived another 35 years.''

- Roxie Campanella

Her bags are packed and the taxi's waiting outside her Woodland Hills home. Roxie Campanella's leaving on another road trip for Roy.

Leaving to crisscross this country again to raise funds for more student scholarships that the Roy and Roxie Campanella Foundation will disburse soon to another group of young college students embarking on a career in physical therapy.

Leaving to visit hospitals and care facilities to give Roy's old pep talks to young men and women who may be thinking their lives are basically over now that their bodies don't work anymore.

Stopping in small towns and big cities - anywhere the famous Campanella name gains her entry - to educate people and ask them to please open their hearts and wallets for the victims of spinal-cord injuries so they can have a second life. A life out of bed and outside the four walls of a home that can quickly turn into a prison if you lack the help or means to escape it.

They don't come cheap, these scholarships, and these second lives for people with spinal-cord injuries. So the widow of one of baseball's most enduring heroes - on and off the diamond - packs her bags and leaves on another road trip this weekend.

Just like the ones she went on with Roy before he died in 1993 - 35 years after a 1958 car accident left the Brooklyn Dodgers' All-Star catcher the country's most famous quadriplegic.

She and Roy talked about these years a lot, Roxie says. The years after he would be gone. Talked about how she would carry on the work and dreams they had shared for so many years.

Roy's Hall of Fame baseball legacy already was assured, but it was the legacy of his life after his career abruptly ended - his life in a wheelchair - that played most on her husband's mind, she says.

``Roy always felt that if there had been some good physical therapy available after he had his accident, it would have been different for him,'' Roxie says.

``It became a great motivation in his life, wanting to help train young people so they could help others who were paralyzed, or had had a stroke. He knew that they would just dissolve if they couldn't get out of the house and be active in some way.''

Roy had seen it himself after his accident, stopping by New York University Hospital in his own wheelchair to visit some of the paralyzed patients in the same ward where he had been treated. Stopping by for a pep talk, and recognizing many of the same faces.

``He had been in the hospital with some of these same people, and they were still there while Roy was already back out in the world,'' Roxie says. ``That affected him deeply. He could see they had lost hope and were giving up. He wanted to do something for them.''

That something was to become their advocate and spokesman, their voice on the outside for more and better physical therapy care.

Roy also became counselor and confidant, a shoulder for paralyzed young men and women to lean on when they began to think their lives were over now that they could no longer move their bodies.

No, their lives weren't over, Roy Campanella would tell them. Mine isn't. Not by a long shot. How can your life be over when you still have a mind?

``Roy was a strong believer in willpower, and the mind being a very powerful thing, more powerful than the body,'' Roxie says.

Through all those years, she was there - standing off to the side in hospital rooms and auditoriums, watching her husband save lives with his pep talks and positive thinking.

Roxie stored it all away - all the pep talks and knowledge Roy handed out for free on those road trips they took together. Stored it away for days like this, when she'd be alone packing her bags and catching a cab to the airport.

Ready to take another road trip for Roy.

For more information on the Roy and Roxie Campanella Foundation, which has provided 109 scholarships for physical therapy majors in the last five years, and information on the coming Campy's Second Life Dinner and Campanella Golf Classic, call the foundation at [phone].

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PHOTO Roxie Campanella stands near a portrait of her late husband, Brooklyn Dodgers All-Star catcher Roy Campanella, at her Woodland Hills home.

Tina Gerson/Daily News