Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 17, 1993 TAG: 9306170058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Dyke, "Sugar Ray" to his friends, had reason to laugh. He was alive.
Three other people - Geoffrey Pelton, Dyke's close friend and one of the first people he met when he moved to Roanoke three years ago; Stanley W. Brooks, the drunken habitual offender who was driving the car that killed Pelton; and Gregory S. Kinzie, Brooks' passenger and the owner of the car, - died May 16 in an early morning crash on the Roy L. Webber Highway.
"Sugar Ray" came close to joining them. He was riding with Pelton when the car driven by Brooks hurtled across the median and crashed into Pelton's.
Dyke had no pulse when he arrived at Roanoke Memorial Hospital, a nurse later told his father, Raymond E. Dyke Sr. His son told him he seems to remember being separated from his body, watching paramedics pull it from the car.
As if reading an Evel Knievel injury history, his father recounted the injuries Ray Jr. suffered: His left thigh bone broken, his kneecap shattered; his elbow, chin and two ribs broken; his jaw broken on both sides and wired shut for a month; his liver dislodged, pushed up against a lung; swelling of the spinal column.
Ray Jr. is paralyzed from the waist down now. He was transferred to Blue Ridge Rehabilitation Center on June 9. His father said doctors are 90 percent sure he will never walk again, that the swelling may have killed the nerves that control his legs.
"Sugar Ray" is determined to prove them wrong.
"At first I was just hoping to live," he said Tuesday. "Trying to deal with not being able to feel my legs is a big adjustment. Mentally, that's the challenging part.
"It's real hard."
But Sunday, he said he felt a tingling sensation in his legs. He swears he almost moved his right one, that it almost shook.
"I'm setting a goal - I'm going to walk about this hospital."
It will be a long way back.
Dyke, 21, and Pelton had been fast friends since 1990, when Dyke moved to Roanoke to live with his father and stepmother shortly after graduating from Heritage High School in Lynchburg. They played basketball, saw movies, hung out together.
Pelton, 20, was attending Virginia Western Community College, was a member of the Christian youth group Young Life, and had served as a peer counselor with the Gary Clark Just-Say-No-To-Drugs Camp.
The night of the accident, Pelton was giving Dyke a ride home. The two had cooked out that evening, and several friends had shown up to turn it into a small party, Dyke said. He had to leave early because he had to be at his job at Pizza Hut at 6 a.m.
Both were wearing their seat belts.
The accident happened just past midnight.
The two men in the other car - Brooks and Kinzie - died at the scene. Pelton died a short time later at the hospital. A third driver, whose car was struck by Pelton's, suffered minor injuries.
"Sugar Ray" didn't find out about his friend until the day after the accident. When he did, he had to write down his feelings because he wasn't able to talk.
"It didn't really hit me until a week later that my friend was gone, dead," he said.
Tests later revealed that Brooks had a blood-alcohol content 2 1/2 times the legal limit. His license had been suspended at least six times.
Dyke said he has no sympathy for the two who died in the other car.
"They killed my friend, almost killed me, too," he said.
His father says there's a lot of bitterness toward Brooks and toward a legal system that couldn't keep him off the road. He feels Brooks should have spent mandatory time in jail.
"He demonstrated an unrepentant attitude," the elder Dyke said. "My opinion is that if the legal system had done its job, he would not have been on the road, period."
Now, "Sugar Ray" - who not long ago was trying to choose between going to college or joining the military - spends the days learning how to get in and out of a wheelchair, going through physical and occupational therapy, "taking it as it comes," he said.
"I have up and down days."
A lawsuit is pending. Jeffrey H. Krasnow, a Roanoke lawyer, said he hopes to file a multimillion-dollar personal-injury suit within 30 to 45 days against the estates of Brooks and Kinzie.
Hospital expenses are piling up. The elder Dyke said that already a bill for $40,000 - for the first two days of treatment - has arrived. Insurance is expected to pay for 60 days of rehabilitation, but six months may be needed.
For now, "Sugar Ray's" dad is trying to curtail his bitterness and concentrate on his son.
"We're able to face reality now," he said. "In a case such as this, life goes on. . . . Through no fault of his own, his life has been dramatically altered, probably permanently."
by CNB