It was a warm summer evening when I received an unexpected phone call from family friends who lived in a small town north of Shreveport, where I was living at the time. There was an unmistakable tone of urgency in their voices as they asked if I could meet them in the emergency room at the hospital. They briefly explained that their daughter had been in a highway accident and was being transported by ambulance to the hospital.

Usually, when we are informed of an unexpected incident without any details, all kinds of thoughts swirl through the brain as to the seriousness of the incident. That is the way it was with me as I quickly drove to the hospital on that dark summer night. When I arrived, they met me in the emergency waiting room where they filled me in on all of the details of the accident and the events leading up to it.

School was out for summer vacation time and the young people of the community had gotten together to decide on their activities for the evening hours. There was nothing to make them doubt that this would be another time of adding new memories to the memories of good times they had experienced in the past.

Faced with a choice of what to do with their time on that eventful summer evening, this group of young people made the wrong choices. It all started with a desire to add extra excitement to a time of innocent fun. The excitement came in the form of a challenge made by one car driver to another to see who could win in an automobile drag race.

Before it was over, five cars were involved. As they raced down the highway, one of the drivers lost control of his car and it crashed on the side of the roadway. And, as fate would have it, one of the passengers in that out-of-control car was an attractive 17-year­-old high school student named Jerri.

As her family waited for information from the hospital operating room, the word brokenhearted is the appropriate word to describe their emotional condition.

It was not a good report - the injuries were critical and life-threatening. Silent prayers became audible as the family members embraced one another and the ebb and flow of tears became common place. But it was not until later that the full extent of the injuries became known to the family. Her skull was fractured, she suffered internal injuries and had severe lacerations. Jerri was given little chance for survival and virtually no chance for a return to a normal life.

Lacerations to the left side of the brain had severely damaged the brain's speech center beyond repair and caused paralysis of the left arm. A severed tendon in one leg left the leg useless. This was not the kind of report the family wanted to hear, causing Jerri's mother to say, "We felt that we couldn't bear it - seeing Jerri like that. We could only bear it by praying and believing that Jerri would get well"

After three months in the hospital, Jerri returned home where she would continue to receive 24- hour-a-day medical supervision. It was like an extension of her hospital confinement. Nothing had changed to indicate that Jerri was making any measurable progress toward the goal of recovery from the injuries that left her in a deep coma, unable to recognize or communicate with members of her family. With a fractured skull and serious damage to the speech center of her brain, she was more likely to die then to live. Either way, family was facing a challenge of great magnitude.

A great chalIenge requires a great response. Fortunately, they had such a response in reserve, ready to be used when needed. The family was a large one -- mother and father, two girls and four boys. They were ordinary people living ordinary lives with one major distinction - they lived in a home environment filled with respect and love for each other.

So the challenge came in the form of Jerri's life-threatening injuries. She became the focal point of a love that emanated from the hearts of her family and never gave up until it reached Jerri's heart.

It was an extravagant kind of love that had the amazing power to penetrate the unconscious state in which Jerri was living her life.

It was the kind of love that motivated her younger brothers to visit Jerri's room every day, even though she could not respond to what they were saying or doing. These faithful visits at her bed side became a kind of healing therapy that resulted in some encouraging signs that she was slowly recovering from some of the serious injuries she had received.
More days, weeks and months continued to go by and then, one day, I received another phone call from Jerri's mother. In an excited voice she told me the good news that Jerri was regaining her ability to talk and she put Jerri on the phone so that I could hear her voice for myself. Jerri's words were filled with an emotion she could not contain and were delivered in a halting fashion, but, to me, they were filled with the beauty and grace of a love that never gave up.

My phone call came on a Wednesday evening. On Thursday morning I opened up my copy of the Shreveport Times and was greeted with these headlines, written in big, bold letters on the front page of the paper, "GIRL WHO COULDN'T LIVE SPEAKS AFTER THREE YEARS."

In the accompanying front page article, Shreveport journalist Dorothie Erwin wrote, "Jerri spoke and her family called it a miracle wrought by hope, patience, prayers and medical science. Jerri Keener of Rodessa, the 'girl who couldn't live' after she was critically injured in a highway accident more than three years ago, sat in a wheelchair in her home yesterday smiled with pride and delight as she haltingly spoke the words which she had been unable to say during her long struggle for recovery."

When asked for a comment on what had happened to Jerri, the Shreveport neurosurgeon who operated on her brain said, "Jerri's parents deserve a great deal of credit for her progress because they have demonstrated an unusual devotion and a patient determination to help her."

Although my encounter with the Keener family happened more than a few years ago, I will never forget the valuable lesson it taught me about the amazing power of love that will never give up. I have filed it away in my storehouse of memorable events to be taken out and shared with others when needed.