LAKE SUCCESS, NY – In 1970, 20-year-old college student Ken Kunken suffered a spinal cord injury and a broken neck in a college football game, leaving him paralyzed from the shoulders down. In 2003, Mr. Kunken got married and the couple decided to do everything in their power to start a family. An organization in Florida dedicated to helping paralyzed males with fertility issues sent Mr. Kunken and his wife Anna to Bruce Gilbert, MD, PhD, a male fertility specialist and urologist at the North Shore-LIJ Health System’s Smith Institute for Urology.

Dr. Gilbert performed outpatient surgery on Mr. Kunken that involved removing and freezing his sperm. In 2004, Mrs. Kunken underwent in-vitro fertilization. One year later, on January 24, 2005, the Rockville Centre, NY, couple welcomed their three sons into the world: Joseph Benjamin, the oldest brother (by one minute) weighing in at 3 lbs., 14 ounces; middle brother James Lawrence, weighing 3 lbs., 8 ¾ ounces; and the “baby,” Timothy Francis, born one minute after James Lawrence, weighing in at 3 lbs, 2 ½ ounces.

At a recent Father’s Day news conference at the Smith Institute, Mr. and Mrs. Kunken introduced their three healthy, active sons and two special guests -- Mr. Kunken’s father, Leonard, who had just turned 88 the day before and flew in from Orlando, FL, for Father’s Day weekend, and Mrs. Kunken’s father, Kazik Blazejczyk, who travelled from Poland to spend Father’s Day with the grandsons he had only seen in pictures.

“Being here to thank Dr. Gilbert for giving me these beautiful grandchildren, and being able to see what a wonderful father my own son has become, is nothing short of a miracle for me,” said Leonard Kunken. “This is a wonderful day.”

To learn more about the Smith Institute’s Men’s Reproductive and Sexual Medicine Program, call 516-734-8500 or go to www.smithinstituteforurology.com.

To see video of this event, please watch here.

Contact: Michelle Pinto
516-465-2649
mpinto@nshs.edu