NEW IPSWICH — A local family renowned for its generosity is benefiting from some karmic payback — and just in the knick of time.

After more than six weeks in the hospital, Tom Gallagher, who runs the popular Nennie’s 5 Star Café with his wife Annette and has organized countless charity events over the years, is set to return to his home in Greenville today. And this time, he’ll be the beneficiary.

Last month, Gallagher suffered major spinal trauma that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Upon hearing the news, scores of New Ipswich and Greenville residents rallied to support the Gallaghers, organizing silent auctions, raffles, spaghetti dinners, T-shirt and bracelet sales, and even charitable scrap metal runs. Today, Gallagher will return to a newly remodeled home, made wheelchair accessible by friends and volunteers with mostly donated materials.

“The support just makes you feel so good, you almost forget that you have any pain whatsoever,” Gallagher said from the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston on Monday.

Gallagher, who until early December balanced Nennie’s duties with teaching math and coaching lacrosse at McCarthy Middle School in Chelmsford, Mass., was preparing for a catering event when he had, as he puts it, a “freak accident.”

“I picked up a tray of glasses that weighed two and a half pounds,” Gallagher recalls, “Within three minutes, I couldn’t feel my legs.”

Gallagher was rushed to the Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, and then to the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass. “That’s when they gave me a CAT scan and an MRI, and they found the problem,” Gallagher said.

The problem — a ruptured herniated disk in his spine — required seven and a half hours of surgery, and led to severe spinal trauma that left Gallagher without the use of his legs.

After the surgery, doctors monitoring Gallagher’s breathing noticed an aberration, and sent him to Massachusetts General Hospital for another CAT scan — this time, the problem was a blood clot in Gallagher’s lungs. “They immediately put me on a blood thinner drip,” Gallagher said. “They said that if I had gone to sleep that night I probably wouldn’t have lasted the night.”

Despite his body’s near-breakdown, Gallagher’s recovery exceeded doctor’s expectations, and he makes his return to Greenfield more than two weeks earlier than they expected.

Annette Gallagher sprung her husband from the hospital on Monday evening for a visit to a spaghetti dinner benefit at Nennie’s, held in his honor.

Dozens of families turned out for spaghetti and roast chicken, and when the Gallaghers arrived, the crowd in the restaurant broke into applause.

Tom Gallagher, for his part, navigated the event with ease — both literally and metaphorically. Dressed in athletic garb, he wheeled himself from table to table, greeting friends and well-wishers and joking about his disability with a dry wit.

“I guess this is what you have to do to get out of the kitchen,” Gallagher quipped.

Annette Gallagher speaks about the upheaval in her husband’s life — and its implications for her, her family, and their restaurant — with a can-do attitude. “We still have each other, and we’ll get by,” she said on Monday.

Even amidst her family’s crisis, she’s thinking about others. “You see people [in the hospital] a lot worse off than we are. A lot of people don’t have the support that we’re getting,” Annette Gallagher said. “I wish we could help them.”

New Ipswich resident Shannon Michaud has channeled the outpouring of community support through a Facebook page, “I Want to Help Tom Gallagher,” (2,300 invites and counting), a Tom Gallagher Fund at TD Bank (make a donation at any branch), “Team Gallagher” t-shirts that feature an illustration of a spine on the back (for sale at Nennie’s), and a handful of benefits and auctions.

She said on Monday that the Gallagher family has set an example for altruism. “They’re the first ones to reach out and help somebody else,” Michaud said. “Tom and Annette, especially through the restaurant, have been incredible at reaching out to the community when [somebody] needs help.”

Michaud says the contagious goodwill spreading through New Ipwsich and Greenville can’t be traced to any one source. “It’s not me. It’s not any one person,” Michaud says. “It’s the community.”

Community, indeed. Roger Skinner has volunteered to pick up scrap metal from Monadnock residents free of charge and donate the proceeds to the Gallaghers. “Me and my wife are good friends of Tom and Nennie, and wanted to do something,” Skinner said on Monday. “And I said hell, how about a scrap metal run?”

Skinner said he’s brought five or six loads of old snow blowers, bicycles, swing sets, and snowmobiles to Money for Metals in Greenville. Mike Pelletier, Money for Metals owner and Skinner’s uncle-in-law, has offered to match Skinner’s donations up to $500.

Mike Martel, a pastor at the Community Christian Church in New Ipswich with experience organizing construction-oriented missionary trips, stepped up to lead a volunteer construction crew on renovations to the Gallagher home. Martel says more than a dozen people, many of them professional builders, have donated their time over the past three weeks.

“We had to build a wheelchair ramp,” Martel said, “And we had to build a handicap bathroom, which involves building some new walls and new plumbing. And we did all new flooring.”

“I walked up the other day and there were 16 guys just ripping things down and putting up walls, and nobody asked for anything,” said Cassandra Gallagher, 23, between tasks at Nennie’s on Monday. The eldest daughter has been running the restaurant with the help of her sister, Michelle, 17, while Annette makes trips to Boston for Tom’s physical therapy sessions.

Cassandra Gallagher says friends and customers are helping her family in every way possible. “We’re surviving because of people just coming in and checking on us, and buying the littlest things,” Cassandra said.

None of the Gallaghers can estimate how much money has been raised for them, nor can Shannon Michaud. Annette Gallagher thinks the pro bono home renovations alone have saved her family around $30,000. But it doesn’t seem like anybody’s counting the zeroes. If anything, the Gallaghers are a different kind of rich.

“The support that I’m getting from New Ipswich and Greenville and surrounding towns...they’re just amazing people,” says Tom Gallagher. “The support they’re giving my family and my kids — it’s just so touching it’s unbelievable.”

How you can help:

The next benefit for Tom Gallagher is this Saturday at the American Legion in Greenville beginning at 7 p.m., featuring music, a cash bar and a raffle. Advance tickets are $15 per person and $25 per couple; tickets at the door are $15 each. Event and raffle tickets are available at Nennie's 5 Star Café.

There is an email address for more information, benefitfortom@gmail.com, a fund set up at TD Bank (Tom Gallagher Fund) and a Facebook page (I Want to Help Tom Gallagher). "Team Gallagher" paraphernalia, such as T-shirts at $12 and wristbands at $3, is for sale at Nennie's.

Nennie's will remain open, with abbreviated hours, for the foreseeable future. The café will operate from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., seven days a week.

This article appears in the Jan. 19, 2012, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.