ALUMNA TAKES RECOVERY ONE STEP AT A TIME

On a warm evening in early spring, a crowd is gathering for Sunday night services at Spring Valley Baptist Church in Raytown, Mo. In a small room off the chapel lobby, Pam and Phil Morgan clasp hands and form a tight prayer circle with Pastor Larry Heenan.

“Lord, we ask that you look past us and use us in your great plan,” Phil prays. “Tonight is your night.” The circle dissolves, and Pam Morgan turns and does something that doctors three years ago told her she would never do again: She walks with a slight hesitation into a chapel filled with believers who are waiting anxiously to hear her story of trial and triumph.The 35-year-old mother of two from the William Jewell class of 1990 looks fit and trim in a tailored gray jacket and slacks. She greets well-wishers with hugs and smiles, then firmly clasps her husband’s hand to ascend the three steps to the altar. Prerecorded music tracks supply the accompaniment as Pam and Phil’s voices fill the chapel:

By the power of God I stand;
I know how it feels to be helpless and scared;
I stand by the strength of Jesus;
I walk holding His hand.

The words have a special meaning for Pam Morgan. Three years ago, she laid motionless in a hospital bed, unable to move from the waist down after sustaining massive injuries in a car accident on the way home from a concert appearance in Stockton, Mo. Road-weary following a full weekend of performances, Phil was behind the wheel of the couple’s 1996 Ford conversion van. Pam had climbed into the back seat briefly to comfort daughters Kayla and Alisha. Phil’s eyes closed for a moment. When they reopened, the van was headed straight for a concrete bridge abutment.

The vehicle flipped on its side, and Pam was thrown out a side window. A trailer loaded with musical equipment detached from the van. Its roof was shorn off, hurtling hundreds of pounds of oversized amps and speakers onto the road. Pam’s body slipped around the massive projectiles and came to rest on the other side of the bridge.

“Miracle number one was that I was not pinned under the van or crushed by the equipment,” Pam remembers as she recounts the events of that June afternoon. “God Himself or one of his angels must have caught me and laid me down.”

Phil escaped with a broken collarbone, and the girls, strapped in their car seats, suffered only scratches. But Pam’s injuries were devastating. Doctors at Kansas City’s Research Medical Center called it the most severe case of spinal dislocation they had ever seen. Pam’s vertebrae were completely separated, and her spine had been wrenched into a sharp ‘S’ curve. At the hospital, friends and family members gathered in a prayerful vigil at Pam’s bedside. The first three days were critical: Most patients with spinal cord injuries like Pam’s will begin to show some signs of movement within 72 hours if there is any chance for even a partial recovery. Pam remained motionless, but kept repeating these words to visitors: “Keep the faith, and pray.”

“Giving up was just not an option,” Pam says of those first painful days. “I was a wife and mother with two small children who needed me.”

Phil and Pam met while both were members of a metro-wide Kansas City high school choir. They married in 1990, with Dr. Arnold Epley and members of the William Jewell College choir providing vocal selections to accompany the ceremony. They began their music ministry by recording “Faith, Hope, and Love,” a collection of Phil’s original compositions, in 1996. They were on the road about one weekend a month, a schedule that gradually accelerated as their music was played on Christian radio stations throughout the region. Following the 1999 Nashville recording of the album “What Matters Most,” the couple’s musical message of focusing on a spiritual path garnered increased attention. In March of 2000, Pam quit her job as an insurance underwriter and joined her husband to launch a full-time career in contemporary Christian music.

The first weekend in June that year was a typically busy one. The couple had performed multiple concerts, rising at dawn Sunday morning for a performance at the Stockton Assembly of God Church. When Phil climbed behind the wheel for the return trip to their Lee’s Summit home on Sunday afternoon, he was overcome with fatigue. The accident that resulted left Pam physically shattered and Phil emotionally devastated.

Phil recalls that Pam’s doctors were forthright from the very beginning about her condition. “They said she had a complete spinal cord injury, and that she would never walk again,” Phil remembers. The prayer circle begun by family and friends was extended when Phil posted a message about Pam’s injuries on the couple’s web site. Calls and emails began pouring in by the hundreds, from throughout the United States and from as far away as Guam and Poland.

“I am not much of a praying man, but since your accident I can’t help but to pray,” one man wrote. “I was fortunate enough to see you guys in Austin, Texas, at the Church of the Nazarene. I was really blessed by your music. I believe God is using your situation in my life. He works in ways we cannot understand.” Another e-mail message said: “I believe the Master Physician has many miracles in store for Pam.” And another wellwisher wrote: “I don’t understand why things happen. I am very human, and I question God. Why he allowed this to happen I don’t know. But I do know he has something special planned for you.” The words of encouragement buoyed the family’s spirits. But a long and painful road lay ahead. Surgeons fused four of Pam’s vertebrae, and nine additional surgeries were required, including skin grafts, multiple face-lifts and a reconstructive procedure to repair the skin around Pam’s left eye.

Three weeks after the accident, a visiting friend noticed a slight movement in Pam’s big toe. But she wasn’t able to repeat the motion, and doctors attributed it to an involuntary reflex.

A day later, she was able to move her toe again. Gradually, small sensations began to return. After four weeks in the hospital, Pam moved to a rehabilitation center, where she began grueling daily physical therapy sessions. She was allowed to return home in mid-August, but continued her therapy, eventually moving up to the parallel bars when she regained the use of her arms in the fall. On Christmas Eve, with the aid of a walker, she haltingly maneuvered her way around the family room. In January, she stunned the doctors at Research Medical Center when she returned for a visit and greeted them with an ear-to-ear smile as she walked down the hall.

“It’s an extraordinary medical story that continues to inspire me,” says Dr. Frank Coufal, the neurosurgeon who was part of Pam’s medical team at Research. Coufal has discussed the case with experts on spinal surgery and spinal cord regeneration. He researched the medical literature dating back more than 50 years. All of the sources agreed that the chances for Pam to enjoy even a minimal recovery were virtually non-existent.

“To have clinical evidence of a complete spinal cord injury beyond three days of the time of injury and then to walk again is essentially unprecedented,” Dr. Coufal says. “One of the doctors with whom I consulted said that it was impossible to classify this as anything short of miraculous.”

Pam and Phil believe their story is a direct testament to the power of prayer. “I credit all of the prayers and the e-mails,” Pam says. “There is no other way to explain it. God is using us in an incredible, unique way. I can now reach out to people who are suffering from injuries and disabilities in a way that I never could before. He has chosen to put us right where we are for a reason.”

The Morgans’ renewed ministry is a busy one. Their web site (PhilandPamMorgan.com) lists concert bookings throughout the Midwest and beyond for much of the rest of the year. A new CD, “Living Proof,” documents in Phil’s words and music the couple’s belief in the healing power of prayer.

They continue to share that message, both from the pulpit and through the media. Pam’s story was featured in a recent Discovery Channel program on medical miracles, and this winter the couple traveled to Chicago for an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey program that aired nationwide in February.

On this edge-of-spring evening when the forsythia bordering the red-brick chapel are glowing with the seasonal promise of rebirth, Pam Morgan stands straight and tall as her testimony rings out from the Spring Valley pulpit:

“The race we’re running is not an easy one, and sometimes it seems like it’s all uphill. Sometimes He will allow us to fall. But when it gets hardest, He picks us up. He chooses to use us, and to use us in His own way.”