Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 4, 1994 TAG: 9501040058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLEN SWEETS DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
None of this seems particularly out of the ordinary for your standard supermom. But 38-year-old Debbie Smelko isn't ordinary: Everything she does, she does in a wheelchair.
``Yeah, well, there's no reason for me not to do what I want to do just because I'm a paraplegic,'' she says matter-of-factly. ``I refuse to be a victim or to feel sorry for myself. People look at me like I'm crazy when I say I'm one of the lucky ones. I mean, what else is there? I have a wonderful husband and three fabulous children.''
Her upbeat attitude and her personal and professional accomplishments have won her the American Paralysis Association's ``Against All Odds'' award. At the group's annual Fall Ball in New York City last month, she shared the head table with the co-winners, singer Teddy Pendergrass and cartoonist John Callahan.
It was an extra-special occasion for Smelko, who is the award's first female recipient. All three of this year's honorees were injured in automobile accidents. Smelko is paralyzed from the waist down.
She was riding home with friends after a football game in the fall of 1978. The driver had been drinking. Three miles from her home, he ran through a blinking red light and hit another car. Smelko, the only injured occupant, wasn't wearing a seat belt.
Four months earlier, she had walked across the stage at Boston College to receive her degree in computer science and accounting. In the split second it took for the cars to collide, fate determined that she would never walk again.
``When I saw the X-rays, I really cringed,'' she says. ``My backbone looked like a V. When my body was thrown forward, the backbone bent so suddenly my spinal cord snapped.''
After five months in an acute-care hospital and a monthlong stay in a rehabilitation institute, Smelko spent several more months in outpatient therapy.
``The same night I came in, an 18-year-old who had been hit by a trolley was brought in, and we ended up across from one another in the intensive care unit,'' Smelko says. ``She had major brain damage. Six months later, she had no speech and she walked out with the mentality of a 5- or 6-year-old. When I walked out, I still had my mental faculties.''
Smelko stops, chuckles at her word choice and corrects herself.
``I mean when I rolled out.''
From there, she says, she had only two options: She could wallow in self-pity or move on. She moved on. Fifteen years ago, she moved from Massachusetts to work for Texas Instruments.
``I read an ad about a job fair in downtown Boston, threw a piece of paper in my typewriter, knocked out a resume and headed out,'' Smelko says. ``When I got there, I talked to several companies, including Texas Instruments. They asked me to fly down to Dallas for an interview. My parents couldn't believe I would get on an airplane by myself.''
Not only did she make the journey solo, she accepted the offer. She is now a software engineering administrator.
Once at TI, Smelko promptly set about guiding her new company toward disability-related accommodations.
``I wasn't doing it for Debbie,'' she says. ``I was doing it for others as well. Texas Instruments was really good about responding. They were on the ball long before the ADA [Americans With Disabilities Act].''
When the law was passed in 1990, Smelko was already on TI's implementation team.
``I was the real thing,'' she says. ``They didn't have to deal with any theoretical stuff. I could tell 'em from experience. One of the first things I pointed out was that you had to take four steps up and four steps down to get to the company's softball diamond.''
Leveling access to that playing field was a priority because Smelko liked softball. In fact, she was a member of TI's team - as scorekeeper.
``That's where I met Tom,'' she says. ``Some mutual friends introduced us in the summer of '84. We'd see each other from time to time, and at one point I ended up at a party at his house,'' she says with a laugh. ``I probably crashed with someone who knew him. Who knows?''
They became friends. In May 1986, they became husband and wife.
``There were a lot of things that attracted me to Debbie,'' Tom Smelko says. ``She was so much fun to be around, I just enjoyed being with her. She has so many outstanding qualities that when I think back, there were times I didn't even think of her as being disabled. I fell in love with her because she was cute and she was fun.''
After a honeymoon in Hawaii, Debbie and Tom settled into the house Debbie had bought in North Dallas. Their plans to start a family suffered a blow when Smelko's liver ruptured during pregnancy. Their son, T.J., was born nine weeks prematurely, with cerebral palsy and a hearing impairment. Not even that brought her down.
``Once again, it was one of those things where I could look at the negatives or at the positives,'' she says. ``I was alive and T.J. was a beautiful baby. He just had some problems we had to work through.''
Rather than dwell on the downside, Smelko designed a changing table, modified a crib and learned to handle an infant's car seat. Now she's not only learning sign language through T.J., she also serves as the liaison for the parents of hearing-impaired children at his elementary school.
The physician who saw her through her pregnancy and T.J.'s birth is unequivocal in his praise for her stamina.
``She was the first paraplegic I had in private practice, and she was amazing,'' says Dr. Clark Griffith. ``When you deal with something as life-threatening as a liver rupture - where there's a 50 percent mortality rate - you really appreciate someone with Debbie's resilience.
``I have since called on her to talk to other expectant mothers who are paraplegics, to reassure them and help them with their questions. There are certain people that make you stronger for knowing them, and Debbie's one of them. I mean that.''
Smelko is also strong-willed. Against medical advice, she went on to have two more children - Peter, 6, and 2-year-old Katie - with no complications. T.J. is now 8. All three are engaging, energetic kids capable of taxing parental energies. Yet they seem to know when to back off their mom.
Several years ago, Smelko's husband was sent to Singapore on business for eight weeks. Her father came for a month to help with the children, but there were two weeks before and two weeks after his visit when she was alone with her sons.
``When I didn't have any help, they were absolutely amazing. When I asked them to do something, they did it. The moment my dad came, they were little terrors. My father left, and the terrors went away. I learned to just go with the flow.''
Susan Howley, executive vice president of the American Paralysis Association, still says, ``Wow.''
In choosing award recipients, she says, ``we look at people who work through their paralysis - surmounting spinal cord injury with grace, dignity and a sense of humor. Given what Debbie's done since her injury, it's hard not to be impressed.''
The association, which was founded in 1982, has contributed $8 million to research that will someday help people like Smelko.
For now, she only talks about what she does, not what she can't do. Smelko doesn't seem to be left out of much, be it bowling or horseback riding or camping in Montana, dancing at Gilley's in the '80s or deep-sea fishing in the Caribbean.
These days, Smelko drives a late-model burgundy Honda station wagon fitted with hand controls and a telephone. Her new wheelchair has detachable wheels, and the back and seat fold into a manageable rectangular unit. She lifts herself into and out of the car quickly and efficiently.
On a recent workday, after the 20-minute drive home, she checks the mailbox and starts dinner. She talks as she crisscrosses the kitchen, alternately stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce and slicing vegetables for a salad.
When her husband arrives with the children in tow, mild pandemonium ensues. Katie wants milk, Peter wants to talk about his day and T.J. wants a story read. And everybody, of course, talks at once.
``Our lives are just like anybody else's,'' she says. ``We have the same struggle any other family has when their son comes home at 6:30 in the evening with a science project due tomorrow that nobody knew about.''
by CNB