The colorful pop-up tent and banners that John and Dolly Throckmorton set up on High Street for this story are an eye-catching reminder that Missions for Miracles – The Spinal Cord and Brain Health Project co-founded by John in 2014 – is alive and still growing. Its mission: to show the way to healing and recovery for families dealing with neurological trauma and to advocate for the institutions that serve these families in their times of greatest need. Missions for Miracles is the happy ending to a story that is any parent’s worst nightmare.
For the Throckmortons, their lives were forever changed on April 13, 2012. That sunny spring morning daughter Meg, 16, was at Dolly’s In Motion + Fitness at 48 W. High Street, Waynesburg, practicing for a competition. Round off back tucks were part of the routine. But with her last tuck, something went awry and she landed on the back of her neck.
The fall injured her C1 and C2 vertebra, leaving Meg instantly paralyzed, unable to move or breathe on her own.
Miracle number one: Meg’s friend Abby Walters and her mom Dana, a nurse at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, were there at the studio. Dana began CPR immediately. Meg was air lifted to WVU Medicine Children’s and the battle against the clock began. “Speed is everything,” John Throckmorton said. “The injury has to be stabilized before the body begins isolating the injury to protect the rest of the body.” The diagnosis was grim. Doctors gave minimal hope that Meg would ever move a muscle below her skull.
A diaphragmatic pacemaker was implanted along with a feeding tube and ventilator; days later she was transferred to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Ga. Harold and Alana Shepherd founded this state of the art research and rehabilitation hospital in 1975 after they were unable to find appropriate rehabilitation for their son James who was paralyzed from the neck down from a body surfing accident.
It was there that the Throckmortons began receiving training for operating the ventilator, learning to do the round the clock care that is the new reality for families whose kids have neurological damage and might be paralyzed for life.
Miraculously, Meg would beat the odds.
The next two months were an all-hands-on-deck time of wait, see and pray as Meg began her amazing journey of healing. The first sign came two days after arriving at the center, when movement returned to her right pinky toe, John remembers.
And then there was that smile.
“Meg never stopped smiling. The therapists were amazed; they said they never saw anything like it. She was always the kid who figured out how to make things happen. She couldn’t talk but she used her communicator to write, “I don’t know how I am going to walk but I will walk.”
Meg took her first steps with the aid of a physical therapist and overhead suspension lifts in June, and by the end of the month, was weaned from the ventilator. When discharged from Shepherd Center on August 8, she went home in a wheel chair with her family the next day, ready for her junior year.
Those long months of healing became the inspiration for Mission for Miracles, John admits. “I looked at the Shepherds and what a difference one family can make and thought why not do it here? Why not pay it forward?”
Mission for Miracles builds partnerships in three categories of care that are available for rehabilitation. “Hope and Healing” includes WVU Medicine Children’s and the Cure Cancer Initiative and the HOSS foundation, founded by famed WVU quarterback Jeff Hostetler, whose youngest son was paralyzed in an ATV accident in 1999. “Brain Health” is the focus of the Ryan Blaney Family Foundation, WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and UPMC Sports Medicine. “Spinal Cord Research and Recovery” includes Shepherd Center and New Perspectives, a foundation for assistance with travel costs for individuals with spinal cord injuries. Other foundations the Throckmortons have met on Meg’s journey of recovery include Nick Buoniconti’s Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and the Ryan Shazier Fund for Spinal Rehabilitation.
Mission for Miracles main fundraiser is the yearly All American Grand Bash, formerly known as the West Virginia Grand Bash. This philanthropic extravaganza offers up “$650,000 worth of goods and 100 raffles” John tells me, “…cash, cars, trucks and ATVs, trips, jewelry, firearms, hunting gear. We give away a couple of motorcycles and RVs too. It’s prizes that everybody in this area would love to win.”
The Bash is held at Ruby Community Center in Mylan Park, W.V. and to date has raised 2.4 million dollars for the partnership, which includes other nonprofits that volunteer to help with the bash, John added. “For every hour worked, their agency will benefit from this fundraiser.”
The mission continues to grow, John noted. “This year I sat down with Pam Marisa (owner of Direct Results & GreeneScene Community magazine) and we quickly realized how many ties we share with the community and how we can help grow this event throughout the tri-state area.” “Direct Results is proud to partner with Mission for Miracles,” Pam told me when I called. “Working together is a win-win for the community.”