by Kyle Peveto
The Daily Sentinel

January 7, 2007

Closing her eyes, Monica Smith tapped her right foot while listening to her husband, Whitt, play guitar and sing.

Whitt, thin with salt-and-pepper hair and a moustache, smiled and strummed the acoustic guitar that rested on his lap while he sang a self-penned song with an upbeat melody.

A year and a half ago, while Monica lay in a Shreveport, La., hospital bed, that same song, "The Missing You State of Mind," lingered in her head.

In May 2005, Monica was involved in a horrific car accident in Broaddus. More than 80 percent of her body was burned. Doctors operated on her more than 20 times, amputating her legs below both knees and then taking the fingers from her left hand. Her mother, Tonya Tillery Albright, died in the head-on collision, and when Monica regained consciousness, she learned of her death.

Whitt's song, though upbeat, was about missing a loved one and feeling alone. Monica had heard the song countless times when Whitt's southern rock bands played around East Texas.

"The lyrics just fit my situation at the time," 22-year-old Monica said.

After leaving the hospital, Whitt's band played at a benefit for Monica, and the two have been together ever since.

Married on Sept. 16, Monica and Whitt joke and talk like old friends. Monica, who has short, dark hair and a constant look of determination, hopes to start college soon, and is studying martial arts to help her regain her sense of balance on prosthetic legs. Marked by the accident, she wears her wedding band and engagement ring on her right ring finger, and she often wears sleeveless shirts to keep cool, her arms are covered with skin grafts that have no pores and do not breathe.

Whitt likes her willpower, and she likes the way he doesn't baby her or treat her like she's disabled. The couple said they don't see anything in their lives as a challenge, even their 14-year age difference. A broad smile growing across his face, Whitt said Monica is mature beyond her years.

"All the women I've been around, none of them have it together like her," Whitt said. "She's got the focus, she's got the good attitude."

On May 7, 2005, Monica and her mother were driving through the intersection of FM 2258 and FM 83 in Broaddus, when their truck collided with another and exploded. San Augustine County Justice of the Peace Randy Williams heard the crash, parked his truck and went to help. Williams saw Monica reaching for him and screaming, he said in an interview with The Sentinel after the accident, and he pulled her out of the burning wreckage. He took off his shirt to extinguish the flames.

Monica was conscious the entire time, Williams said, and he saw her eyes lock on his, begging for help. When he first visited her in the hospital, though no one had told her, she knew Williams had saved her by his eyes.

"The only thing I can remember about him saving my life is his eyes," she said.

During her two months in the intensive care unit at Louisiana State University Hospital, Shreveport, she got to know the nurses and therapists who helped her recover. She spoke often of Whitt, and her nurses joked with her about "hunting down" the man who wrote the song, but Monica said she would probably never see him again.

A day after leaving the hospital, at a benefit in her honor, Monica saw Whitt with his band. They spoke every day on the phone, and he began taking her to dinner "just to get her out of the house," he said.

"After that, I began to see how wonderful she was, and her spirit, and then I started falling for her," Whitt said.

They dated while she learned to walk on hydraulic prosthetics. Therapists projected she would walk again in three years, but she began to walk again seven months after the accident.

They began dating in October 2005, and after a few months, the couple began to hold hands in public. On Father's Day, June 18, 2006, Whitt proposed.

Since the accident, Monica had kept up with Judge Williams, who pulled her from the burning truck. After Whitt proposed, she called Williams to tell him the news, and Williams asked if he could perform the ceremony. So, Sept. 16, amid a crowd of motorcyclists at East Texas Motorcycle Enthusiast Acres, a festival ground near Chireno often used for fundraisers, Williams married the couple.

Whitt works as a lineman repairing electrical lines across East Texas. Monica wakes him at 4:30 a.m. each morning so she can make him breakfast and spend time with him before he leaves for the day. Monica never had a driver's license before her accident, and driving is awkward for her now. Eventually she plans to drive, and maybe even drag race muscle cars, but for now, she spends time at home, making crafts and keeping her dog, Beethoven, company.

Two nights a week, they leave their apartment on the north side of Nacogdoches for a martial arts dojo run by Joe Lansdale, a Nacogdoches author and the founder of Shen Chuan, a combination of several fighting styles. For about five years before her accident, she studied with Professor Lansdale, as she calls him, and she earned her brown belt. Though she can never lose her belt, Lansdale said, she has started at the bottom to relearn every technique with different tools, prosthetic legs and a fingerless left hand.

"I think that is what she has to do is get used to her artificial legs and learn to stand longer,"

Lansdale said. "Every time she comes in, she gets better and better at it."

He said her kicking is limited, and her fighting style now focuses solely on self-defense.

Developing her own style, she uses her left hand to jab at the body's pressure points and uses her body to pin and suppress opposing blows.

"She's bad to the bone. I've seen her throw big 'ol guys down to the ground," Whitt said.

Eventually, after earning her black belt, she said she hopes to open her own dojo to teach amputees and people who use wheelchairs and canes to protect and empower themselves.

For now, though, Shen Chuan helps her learn to use her new legs and protect her body from falls.

"That's one of the main reasons I was so persistent about continuing my martial arts as soon as possible," she said. "Because I can fall down walking out the door just like you can. But if I don't know how to fall, I can screw my knees up, and that's the only thing I can rely on."

Most Sundays, Whitt and Monica attend San Augustine Church of Christ, where Monica was baptized a few months ago. She responded to an invitational hymn after a few months of Bible studies and said she "floated" down the aisle to the baptistery.

She often quotes her favorite Bible verse, Jeremiah 29:11, which says "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.'"

She talks about the future often, about plans to attend college and study communication or photography. And she wants to encourage other burn victims and amputees, something she began doing soon after leaving the hospital.

"Mom was always very supportive of everything I always did," Monica said. "She was very supportive, very caring. And I want to be that for everyone else — for anybody that will let me. If I can do anything to support you, or give you the inspiration or desire to do whatever you want to do with your life, then that's the only thing I want out of my life."

She and Whitt do not know what the future holds, but they look forward to finding out.

"I'm not going to just roll over and disappear," Monica said. "I was left here for a reason, and I'm excited to find out what that reason is."

For those of you who may not know Monica's story, see the previous newletter article here.