As a marathon runner in college, Kim White could appreciate the many short steps it takes to reach a distant goal.
When training over the several months before a race, daily runs gradually would build up until the 26.2-mile crucible. But until a 1992 car accident, White couldn’t know that this patient regimen would help her learn to walk again.
Seventeen years ago next week, White was struck by a car that left her body in ruins. Doctors told her that unassisted walking, not to mention distance running, would not be in her future.
She didn’t listen.
With incremental goals White learned to walk, and through her recovery she honed a philosophy that today she brings to her job at a senior center in Lombard.
“The small steps is all it takes,” said White, a Wheaton resident. “It’s just getting on your feet.”
On Aug. 9, 1992, White was a college student working at a video store in her native Cleveland.
While walking home on her lunch break, she was struck by a car that ran a red light, she said.
It shattered the right side of her 21-year-old body, breaking bones from her jaw down to her knees.
“(It) basically broke every bone in the right side of the body,” White said. “Jaw. Hip. Pelvis. Both knees.”
At the hospital, she was told the accident would leave her permanently incapacitated. “I’d be able to walk, but not long distances and not without assistance,” she said.
For dedicated runners, being sidelined with an injury for even a week can feel like an eternity. For White, the news that it would actually be forever was devastating.
“When you’re 21 years old and you’re told that — it was like, ‘No,’” she said.
She initially felt sorry for herself, she admitted, but soon after she set about her rehabilitation. It was a slow process, at times frustratingly so.
“It was like two steps a day. You couldn’t do it anymore. It hurt,” she said. “The next day you’d do three steps. The next day four.
“You set simple goals for yourself.”
Four months later, she was able to take a shower without using a chair for assistance. Six months later she walked out of the hospital.
Five years later, she ran another marathon.
“My philosophy is we are determined to overcome any boundaries big or small,” she said.
“Sometimes it just takes your own initiative.”
To this day she suffers from the accident. At 38, she is dealing with arthritis, and a hip replacement is in her near future.
And while she has had to stop running, she isn’t slowing down.
“I still walk five miles a day. I still teach fitness classes,” she said. “So I’m not limiting myself.”
She puts her outlook to use as director of community life at Sunrise of Fountain Square, an independent and assisted living senior center in Lombard.
White leads daily exercises and organizes trips throughout the week, both to keep the residents optimistic and to help them achieve their goals — even if that goal is as simple as leading independent life.
“’Cause who’s to say, ‘Because you’re 85 years old or 75 or 70, you can’t do something, you can’t improve your health,” White said.
June Dubishar, 74, moved into the recently opened Sunrise about a month ago. Originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she relocated to be closer to her children and grandchildren in Glen Ellyn.
The exercises and field trips have kept her busy since she arrived.
“We do aerobics. We do machines,” Dubishar said. “She works us very well, and I am getting stronger.”
They key is setting small, realistic goals, White said, and working toward them diligently.
“It’s them setting their own goals,” she said. “But me helping them achieve it.”
While she was recovering 17 years ago, White had the support of family, friends and hospital staff, but she had to muster perseverance herself.
“We all need our own cheering squad,” White said, “but initiative comes from within.”
