The recent traffic crash in St. Louis that has cost a 17-year old volleyball player her legs has triggered outrage focused on St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner—who has been something of a political lightning rod throughout her career.
The Missouri Senate is considering a remonstrance—a word describing a severe grievance or protest against a person or institution, usually demanding corrective action—against Gardner, who is accused of letting the driver of the car remain on the streets despite having a revoked driver’s license and having violated his bond in a robbery case at least fifty times.
The remonstrance is signed by every Republican in the Senate. Gardner is a black Democrat and her defenders say the remonstrance and the Attorney General’s ouster petition filed against her are politically partisan and racist.
We will leave that fight to be waged in the political arena. We hope, however, that those who are and who will be focused on Gardner do no harm to Jenae Edmondson, the young volleyball player from Tennessee, for it can be too easy for them to use her as an instrument of their political rage at a time when she might desperately need support and hope.
What will they say to her? What should they say to her? What should you and I, most of us along in years with legs that carry us in the halls of power, on the playing fields and hiking and biking trails, and even on walks with our grandchildren?
Legs are part of our identity, particularly when we’re young. They’re part of running through life, part of our future, part of our social involvement—we dance with them; we jump to our feet when our team scores in a close game; we begin to drive a car with them.
If you and I—and the senators and the Attorney General—were to send her a letter, what would we tell a 17-year old girl who is dealing with the terrible question double-amputee Drake McHugh asks in King’s Row, “Where’s the rest of me?”
She is not the first person to suffer such a tragedy. But she’s the first person in her own body and in her own mind to go through it. And those who become immersed in the political fallout of this disaster should remember that and not victimize her additionally.
There are others, too, who intimately share her tragedy. Her parents are doubly affected because they must deal with her injuries and with sustaining her character while they deal with suddenly becoming parents of a disabled teenager and the costs of her care now and in the future.
They are getting help from the Middle Tennessee Volleyball Club that has set up a GoFundMe account that is about halfway to meeting its one-million dollar goal to help pay medical and other bills.
There are many who can give her hope, who can inspire her at the right time to live through this, who can teach by their examples that there will be bikes to ride, trails to hike, games to be played, life to be lived. Thousands of those who returned alive but damaged from Afghanistan are the ones we hope she will focus on. At some point, Paralympians can provide inspiration. At some point, the remarkable U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois can become an inspiration—a woman who lost her legs in a military helicopter crash and who told Vogue magazine that when he sees her artificial legs, painted to match her skin tones, she sees “loss.” But when she sees her steel and titanium prosthesis, “I see strength.”
But that is in the future. Jenae and her family are living very much in the present with its present challenges. We hope she does not become a pawn in a developing political battle.
She and her family have more important things to do.