A Life Changing Road trip

(My wife in 2005)
I wrote the account of the accident for my fb page in 2014 
by Chuck Ness

27 years ago, almost to the exact second, on October 26, 1987, mine and my wife's life changed forever. Well considering how so many have have either unfriended me, or ignore the things I post, I thought I would still offer the following, which is an account I wrote about that, "Life Changing Road Trip".

Many have asked about the circumstances that led to my wife becoming a T-6 paraplegic. The short version we usually give is that we were passengers in the back seat of a car that plunged 30 to 50 ft down an embankment of a small country road in Montana. That is the short to the point answer we usually give to anyone we don't know all that well. A few years ago I decided to write a more in depth account of the accident, so what follows is the account of the day our lives changed forever.

To begin with, this was long before either my future wife or I had become Christians. Oh we had both said the words needed to fool ourselves that we were Christians, but like many we never had a conversion in our hearts or minds. So don't be shocked that we acted so stupid, or ended up paying the price for it.

Sharee and I had known each other for about 6 Months, but it was just recently that we started dating about Month earlier. The night before the accident we both spent the evening at a local bar watching my Minnesota Twins clinch their first ever World Series championship by defeating the St Louis cardinals in game 7. I don't remember much about the rest of the evening, accept to say I'm sure we partied until the bar closed.

It was around 10:00 am the next morning when Sharee called to see if I was interested in meeting her at a friends house to play some hacky-sack and drink some beer. By the time I got the place we were to meet, it was already noon, and there were 4 people including Sharee already drinking.

At the home I met her at, there was an open bar with an abundance of beer and hard liqueur. It was a small party with only me, my then wife's best friend, Lori, her friend Lenna, and Lenna's new boyfriend whose name I cannot recall. Lenna's little brother was there also, although he wasn't drinking because he was only about 9 or ten. He spent most the afternoon in another room watching television.

I really didn't know Lenna that much and that day was the only time I ever met her boyfriend. Other than drinking with us that afternoon at Lenna's apartment, her boyfriend did not accompany us on the life changing road trip.

As I said, I began drinking around noon, so by 6:30 that evening we were all pretty looped, and that's when Lenna informed us that she needed to get her little brother home. She asked if we were all interested in taking a trip to take him to her mom's house. Sharee and I thought a road trip would be great, besides, they were the ones supplying the booze.

Only a bunch of drunks would think that was a great idea, so the five of us piled into Lori’s car. Lenna rode shotgun, while Sharee and I crammed into the back seat with Lenna’s little brother. We grabbed a case of Budweiser for the trip and put it into the hatch back area of the Pontiac Sunbird. Little did Lenna’s boyfriend realize at the time how lucky he was when he had to leave early to catch a flight to California.

Our destination was a small town just West of Virginia City called, Harrison. Sharee and I were totally engrossed with each other, which made the 30 mile trip to Harrison seem quick and uneventful. We dropped off Lenna's little brother and spent about an hour talking to her mother before we said our goodbye's. We all piled back into Lori's car for the trip back to Bozeman.

I'm sure that the only reason Lenna's mother never asked about our drinking, was because she was an alcoholic. So we took what was supposed to be a 45 minute drive back to Bozeman. In truth, we were only 15 minutes away from a moment that would change all our lives forever.

While Lori and Lenna chatted about God knows what up front, Sharee and I took advantage of being alone in the back seat and began making out. It was while we were wrapped in each others arms that the world went crazy.

To this day we have no idea what happened. Maybe Lori was so drunk and distracted by her discussion with Lenna that she failed to properly maneuver the turn in the road. Maybe Sharee or I kicked the back of her seat which caused her arm to jerk the steering wheel at the wrong time. Maybe Lenna grabbed the steering wheel, because she and Lori were arguing about one of them leaving the other in Butte a week earlier without a ride home to Bozeman.

Only God will ever know what caused the car to veer off the road and plunge down a 30-foot embankment. All I remember is a sudden bump, and then a feeling like I was in a dryer being tumbled and rolled around like a pair of socks.

I later learned from the police report that their investigation speculated that the car plunged down the hill, hitting the bottom so hard the car bounced into the air about 100ft, causing the vehicle to do a 360-degree flip and eventually landing on all four wheels by the time it was over. I got that information from the police report, not my own guess.

When the car stopped, I started to ask Sharee if she was OK. I barely got the word, “OK”, out when I realized that she was not even in the car. About the same time I began looking around and all I could see was a bunch of weeds, bushes and clutter.

My mind was racing, it was like I couldn’t register what was happening yet. My ears were ringing and my head was dizzy from all the alcohol I consumed and a bad case of vertigo. Out of the haze and shock, I heard a whimpering crying voice. I remember realizing then that Lenna was the only other person still in the car. She was still in the front passenger seat and her whimpers slowly grew to a crescendo of a loud scream.

I looked into the front to see her, but was still unsure what was wrong and why she was so panicked. The ringing sound would not leave my head, which made it difficult to even understand what she was trying to say. I couldn't see very good so I rubbed my eyes. and that when I realized that blood was dripping down my from my head into them. I realized I had a cut on my forehead but pretty much ignored it. My back and my knee were killing me as I began to slowly move around to get out of the back seat.

By now my adrenalin began kicking in as my drunken haze dissipated. I was now moving on sheer desire to get out of the restricting situation I was in. My mind began to get a thought of what had happened, and I knew I had to react, and I had to do it quickly.

The back hatch window of the car was gone, so I climbed out and jumped down onto the ground which was packed with bushes well over my head, but I trudged through them as I worked my way to the front of the car. I saw that the windshield was pretty much smashed, and Lenna was still screaming historically for help. So I climbed on top of the mangled hood, pulled the remainder of the windshield off the frame and reached into the front seat to help Lenna out of the crumbled mess that was once a fairly nice vehicle.

It was when I pulled her out that I realized her right arm was sliced from her elbow to her wrist as she continued crying about the pain. After getting her out, I helped her to the hill and then up to the road. Just as we reached the top a car happened by. The people in the car offered help, that's when I noticed a building that looked like a bar about 200 yards down the road.

Later I learned that the building was the Norris Hot Springs. I asked the people in the car to take Lenna and get some help from what I thought at the time was bar. They tried to get me to get in the car also, but I refused the ride. I told them I had to go back down the hill to see if I could find Sharee and Lori.

When I got back to the car, I jumped up on the hood and started calling out their names. After a while it dawned on me that I couldn’t hear anything but my own panicky voice screaming their names. Finally I just stopped yelling and listened. Soon I heard some moaning that seemed to be about 20 to 25 feet from the car towards a small steam of water. I jumped down and worked my way through the bushes while stumbling on rocks along the way towards the sound of one of them. Finally I found my love, Sharee. She was laying on her back with her upper torso on the ground, while her lower body and legs were in the stream of water.

She was moaning and barely able to speak, telling me that her back hurt. I jumped into the water that was probably 4 1/2 to 5 feet deep, and grabbed a hold of the bottom half of her body. I was afraid she might slip into the water that was almost up to my neck. I stood there holding her up out of the water while telling her help was on the way. It seemed like I held her forever, not knowing what was wrong, but knowing she was in real bad shape. Then I saw flashing lights and voices up on the road.

When I realized that the lights belonged to an ambulance and firetruck, I began yelling so they could lock on our location. I knew there was no way they could see us, because they asked me to keep talking so they could find us. After a few minutes a couple of paramedics and a fireman came towards me and asked if I was OK. I told them I was fine but my girlfriend was hurting real badly. One of the paramedics jumped into the water while the other started to assist Sharee. A third paramedic helped me out of the water and forced me to follow him up the embankment into an awaiting ambulance.

I wanted to stay with Sharee and help, but as you can imagine, I was overruled and soon I was sitting in the ambulance, on my way to Bozeman, and very tired. For the first time since I realized we went off the road, I found myself unable to think, unable to talk, and unable to help the girl I spent a Summer trying to win over. Then I broke down and just gave into my emotional feelings as I began crying for the first time. I did what I could, but I felt like it wasn't enough.

Later at the hospital I learned that Sharee had broken her back, and severed her spinal cord in two places. She would be a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Lori was found by the paramedics about 15 feet beyond where I found Sharee on the other side of the creek. They said that she had broken her neck and probably died the moment she hit the ground. From what I learned of other injuries she had, I am glad I did not find her, nor that I ever went to her wake. Sometimes the last vision you want of someone is when they were alive.

The tendons and nerves in Lena's arm were torn up so bad that to this day I am sure she has very little use of her hand. With Lori's death, we lost track of her, and other than the day we were all dragged into court for a formal hearing on the accident 6 Months later, we have never seen her again.

The police report said that Lori and Sharee probably tumbled around the inside of the car until the doors, windshield, and hatch back lid all came off and got ejected. Lena was wearing a seat belt, which kept her from being ejected, while it was the centrifugal force that kept me pinned against the wall in the back seat that kept me from being ejected.

I now know that God had other plans for me.

I have back pains and joint troubles that seem to get worse the older I get. I also had neck surgery a few years back because of a disc problem that has lingered since the accident, but it never really fixed the problem. I have been since diagnosed with degenerative spinal disease, which only exasperates my problems. So now I must live with my fingers going numb and my neck feeling as if someone tried to brake it, while my legs both have dull aching feelings when I'm tired which keeps me from sleeping more than a few hours at a time.

As I said, my knees and back were already in bad best shape because of that wreck, but considering the fact that Lori's dead, Lena has limited no use of her hand, and Sharee needs a wheelchair to get around in, I'm in excellent shape, and have no reason to complain.

The images below are of what was left of the Pontiac Sunbird we were in. I took the pictures a few weeks later while the car was in a lot for insurance purposes. Well, as usual I can really get lost in the details...LOL So what is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?