The Derby City Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association Network- Serving Kentuckiana.
Message From the President
Dear Members & Friends-
In lieu of September's meeting we will have our annual picnic at Camp Crooked Creek. Please see directions below. October's meeting will be held at 6:30 at Frazier Rehab, 4th floor dining hall.
- David Allgood
From the Courier-Journal, August 28, 2005 WHEELCHAIR NO HANDICAP FOR CLARKSVILLE POLICE CAPTAIN By Dale Moss
His younger brother will not ask, but most everybody else has, Barry, do you walk in your dreams?
Not any more. In his dreams, Barry Ross is in a wheelchair, just as in real life.
"I don't know what that means," Ross said. "Something silly, probably."
Ross' legs worked for 37 years. Then they worked
for years longer, in fantasies that are routine for the able-bodied. Ross finally refuses to fool himself, night or day. It has been 15 years since a skidding tractor-trailer hit Ross' stopped police vehicle on Interstate 65. A captain in Clarksville-then and now-Ross is still adapting to his unfair reality. "I don't think I've ever felt sorry for myself," he said. Not that hope hurts. Ross reads of stem cell research at the University of Louisville and may be asked to be involved. He is buoyed by a paralyzed Connecticut officer who has taken a few miraculous steps. While Ross follows the research, at 52 he doubts he will live long enough for a dramatic breakthrough. His spine is severed, partway up his back. But wouldn't it be wonderful to be wrong? "In the back of my mind," Ross said, "I always think." It was 1989 and the state had earmarked money for local police to catch drunken drivers. Ross, Clarksville's community relations and youth officer, agreed to overtime patrol. He did not have to be on the road. "I was only doing it a couple of hours that evening," he said. "I was getting ready to get off." A van had stalled—ironically, both its occupants in wheelchairs. Ross had a large vehicle and was called to give them a lift. He was in a median turn-around lane when his vehicle was hit. The collision flipped Ross' vehicle and somehow flung him 25 feet out of the rear window even though he was wearing a seatbelt. Rick Dickman, then the town council president, visited Ross the day after the wreck. It was hard not to be gloomy, pessimistic, nearly impossible to imagine Ross remaining a police officer.
