Each month, we want to highlight a member of our board of directors. This month we are highlighting Gene Heppard, the Secretary of the Board of Directors. Read about who Gene is and why he volunteers his time to serve on AZSCIA's board of directors.
MEET THE BOARD
I grew up in a typical Midwestern city in central Illinois. Peoria was a place where I learned many life lessons that shaped and molded me into the person I am today. My family emigrated west to Arizona in 1991 after my twin brother and I finished high school. We settled in a suburb east of Phoenix.
Mesa, Arizona was radically different from the small town I grew up in. I quickly fell in love with the clear blue skies and tropical palm trees that seemed to be everywhere. The weather was also a welcomed change, especially during the winter months. It wasn’t long before I settled into the “Valley of the Sun” lifestyle and became another satisfied transplant from somewhere else who now called Arizona home.
After a few years of sweating outside under the intense summer sun, I opted to move to the Rocky Mountains and live life in Colorado. I drove myself to the small town of Silverthorne, Colorado where I lived in a condominium with my father. We had vacationed here since I was a young teenager and it was where I learned to hike up mountains during summer and snow ski down them in winter. John Denver knew a thing or two, indeed.
It was in the winter of 1993 that my life would take a sudden and drastic detour. It was on November 23, Thanksgiving Day, when I sustained a spinal cord injury while snow skiing at Keystone resort. I awoke three days later in a Denver hospital unable to move or speak. I had broken my neck at the fifth cervical vertebrae when I fell, head first, into a pine tree.
My family became the support system and lifeline that allowed me to pick up the pieces of my life and start anew. Some of my old friends that new me prior to becoming disabled visited during the months I spent in rehab that followed. I also found myself making new friends with the other newly disabled people who also shared my experience.
After six months of healing, re-training, and coming to terms with life as a 21-year-old quadriplegic, I moved back to Mesa, Arizona. This time I would stay and, once again, relish in the beauty and culture that makes the southwest what it is. I began attending a local community college not far from where I lived. Initially, I enrolled in order to give me something to do and be around others my age.
26