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The nut-shell version:
Disabled; 68 (2019); 5 children; 9 grandchildren; 4 great-grandchildren; like suspense or action movies or DVD's; author of several books; Christian; organization freak; computer geek; unused college; 2nd marriage of 32 (2019) years; Minnesota to South Carolina to California to Minnesota.
Some have asked for greater details. Allow me to catch you up.
Through sheer persistence, I made it through school. We lived about a block from Washington elementary school until we moved to a farm and I was relocated to Roosevelt.
I went to Washington, then Lincoln in my middle teens where I met John Krause, who would become a life-long friend. We investigated our common interest in science together all the way through high school. He was the one to continue on with these pursuits.
I remember that seventh grade was when I began looking at girls differently. Dawn, you were my secret interest! During those junior high school days, I experienced the typical woes of being a pre-adolescent: hating my looks, bodily exploration, self-reinvention, authority disapproval, nicknames, and obsession with the opposite sex.
It wasn’t until my high school days that I made a few decisions that I believed would mold my future. God had in mind something much better than what I could have imagined at that moment, however.
When I graduated from high school, I went to a private, Christian college in South Carolina. At Bob Jones University I met Margaret Packer whom I later wed and brought four children into the world.
I taught high school students for a time immediately after marriage. I was actively involved with my local church and unwittingly depended upon my heritage for my spiritual needs. I seemingly had all the right words and actions to pass for a “Christian” but inwardly there was a void. Not until a preacher’s message sunk in through to my spirit did I actually depend on a finished work of redemption by Christ.
Our family moved to southern California where I started my printing career. This lasted about 20 years until God wanted my full attention.
A decision that evolved many years later into near calamity was made to purchase a motorcycle. I drove the “wheels” every day 30 miles to work and back home for nearly 17 years. From most everyone’s viewpoint, I was pressing my luck.
I had four children from my first marriage. My oldest, born in 1972, Margaret Lynnise, was named after her mom and two aunts. She has five children. Our second child, born in 1974, was named after me in case we didn’t have any boys: Kendra Leigh. She has one daughter. We did have the boy in 1975 so we named him after the two grandpas: Kenneth Carl. He has a boy and a girl. My last child born to Margaret and me was Evelyne Dawn, named after my mom. She was born in 1977. She has one son.
I remarried and had a daughter named Sharee Irene born in 1988 and became the step-dad to two sons Chad Michel Suchy and Wayne Robert Suchy.
Now, I'll tell what happened 7/17/97: I don’t remember much about the accident, but one of the last things that I do remember that I did before the accident was read my Father’s Day cards. Apparently, according to what I could glean from police reports, I worked one of my three jobs the night before July 17, 1997, from midnight to 5:00 AM and then went off to my second job from 7 AM until 2 PM (about 30 miles away from my home town.) On the trip back home that Thursday morning I plowed into a pick-up truck on the Ventura Freeway in Southern California. I did have some mobile DJ jobs lined up for the weekend, plus several more lined up through December (my third job).
I determined that I crashed into a quickly slowing Ford Pickup headed for LA, south-bound on the US 101 Freeway in Thousand Oaks in Southern California. I was driving an ’83 750cc Yamaha motorcycle. I was found on my back in the center divider. I had careened out of control into the center-divide retaining wall. Injuries reported at the scene included “basil skull fracture, fractured ribs and clavicle, and a collapsed lung.” I was transported to the nearby Los Robles ICU hospital where I remained in a coma for three days with a twisted brain stem and blood drainage from my left ear. My survival was unlikely, medically speaking.
I made very slow but steady progress in my recovery, sleeping most of the time but I did respond to commands ten days later. My lungs began clearing and the blood in the brain fluid began to dissipate although I continued to run a low-grade fever and I was taking antibiotics. The doctors were encouraged at this point. Patti was too! She had been told that I might not make it but if I survived through the weekend, I had a good chance. By July 29th, I was off the ventilator and was making efforts to speak.
On August 4, I was moved from the critical-care unit and on August 11 I was transferred for rehabilitation therapy to St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, California where I did a major portion of my physical rehabilitation from mid-August until mid-September. I remember I got used to using a walker but I had to spend about three hours a day navigating a wheelchair. Swallowing tests revealed problems and to this day I choke on tepid liquids or flaky foods. I saw the outdoors for the first time on the last day of August before I was transferred to a “rehab home” for a couple of months where my “cognitive” thinking and speech were ‘fine-tuned.’ I was allowed to stay with my family a few weekends during October the, finally, in early November, I got to go home.