If you want to break the ice between a shy 7-year-old Oklahoma girl in a brand new pink wheelchair and the dozens of Maine cheerleaders who helped raise $2,200 to give it to her, suggest they all sing a Taylor Swift song.
That did the trick Saturday at Marshwood High School in South Berwick, Maine, when Dru Baker and her sister, Ivee, 9, of Colbert, Okla., led the Wells High School and Maine Stars cheerleaders in Swift's "Our Song."
It was just one sweet moment during the reception where Renegade wheelchair makers John Rackley and Marc Fournier and the WHS Cheers from the Heart organizers presented Dru with a hot pink camouflage chair. Several news crews filmed and about 100 people cheered from the bleachers as Dru got a quick lesson from Rackley, the chair inventor from Eliot, Maine.
"I love it," Dru said, noting it even had her name on it. "It's easier than my other one."
"Do you have anything you want to say to people?" her mother, Rebecca, prompted.
"Thank you!" Dru shouted.
On Oct. 7, 2006, Rebecca, Ivee and Dru were in a head-on collision near the Texas border. All three women were injured, but little Dru's back was broken. She was in the hospital for four months, one month on a ventilator.
At first she couldn't move, but she would wink at her mother, crying at her bedside, to let her know everything would be all right. Eventually, when she could move her arms, she grabbed the corner of her mother's mouth to make her smile.
"I never knew Dru until the wreck," Rebecca said, tearing up again. "I never knew what kind of person she is."
When Dru finally left the hospital, it was in a wheelchair, having lost the use of her legs.
A devastating situation was made worse by having an ill-suited chair. "My brake fell off and my seat fell off," Dru explained. Plus, there's gravel in her schoolyard that her chair couldn't traverse.
It was on YouTube that they discovered Rackley's Renegade chairs, which have a 9-speed geared advantage over traditional chairs, and can maneuver through rocks, mud, sand and snow.
"You guys don't know," Rebecca told the group on Saturday, "the first time she saw that on YouTube she said 'I have to have one of those chairs.' "
In January, Rebecca made contact with Rackley, who became paralyzed himself after a trampoline accident 12 years ago. He's been making Renegade chairs for six years, but only selling them on the market for about 10 or 11 months. And only for adults. He had never made a child's chair.
Still, Rackley sent Rebecca an e-mail. "He told me 'I'm such a softie, I couldn't call,'"‰" Rebecca said. He and the folks at Alpha One in Portland, Maine, agreed to custom design their first child-size off-road wheelchair. The cost: around $4,000.
To defray the family's expenses, Sybil Coombs, coach of the Wells High School cheerleaders, passed the hat around during the team's annual Cheers from the Heart competition. Every year money is raised for various charities, and in January, $2,200 was raised for Dru.
Rackley was planning to fly out to Oklahoma to give Dru her chair, but the Baker women, including Dru's grandmother, wanted to come out here to personally thank everyone for what they did.
So they got up at 3:30 a.m. Saturday in Oklahoma and that afternoon they were watching Dru fly across a Maine gymnasium in her new chair.
"This is just like a dream," said Rebecca. She hugged Coombs and thanked her for the Cheers from the Heart support. "There are some wonderful people in this community."
Meanwhile, Dru kept testing out her new wheels with a big smile and another push forward.
"That's just how she rolls," Rebecca said. "It never surprises me when things like this happen to her. She's got this aura, there's something special about her. People love her. I love her!"
Great story!
Posted by: Stef | 03/22/2009 at 01:52 PM