Courage on Wheels

Image Gallery CYNTHIA GOSCH

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After a farm accident put this Iowa youth in a wheelchair, he had to rebuild his life.

MY NAME IS DAVID GOSCH. I AM 17 years old, and I live with my parents, Marc and Sharon; my brothers, Matthew, Christopher and Nathan; and my sister, Jamie. I had two brothers stillborn: Timothy in June 1982 and Jacob in May 1988.

When I was two and a half years old, my parents found out I was deaf. They drove me to a class for the hearing impaired in a school in Sioux City, 74 miles away, every school day for six years. I did not mind as long as I got back to our farm and my family at night. I started going to regular school in Scheswig in the third grade. The kids at school accepted me very well and even learned a little sign language at first.

I love to help my dad with chores around our farm, so I am outside all the time. On June 14, 1986, I was helping my dad with tagging calves and hauling new cows to pasture after we bought them. After he let them out to the pasture with the other cows, I walked into the horse trailer to clean out some sloppy cow manure, and Dad shut the trailer's door to leave the pasture to get home. He drove out the gate with my Uncle Dennis. Dad wanted to get off' the highway fast because there was a carnival in Manilla and lots of traffic. The highway was bumpy, so the trailer came off the hook-that must have caused it. Dad felt a bump on the back of the pickup, looked in the mirror, and the trailer was beside the truck. He told Dennis; next, they watched the trailer go past the truck, downhill, at 55 mph. Then it crashed on a bank of the golf course.

The accident hasn't kept David from hunting, fishing and ATV riding, or altered his plans to fake up farming.

"I was semiconscious. was moving my arms but didn't know what was going on."

Dennis remembered about me in the trailer and told Dad about me. Dad stopped the pickup and drove back to the trailer, then looked in to see how I was. I was semiconscious. I was moving my arms but did not know what was going on.

Dad started to move me but then didn't because he thought it might hurt me more. A doctor came down from the golf course and told them how to carry me out of the trailer. The police and the ambulance came to take me to the hospital.

The police investigated the accident while a friend went to tell Mom about it. She drove to the hospital. Dr. Soll was the doctor in the emergency room, and he cut my pants off instead of pulling them off: Then he suggested we go to Clarkson Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. I was flown to Clarkson in half an hour. The doctors were ready for me, and they worked on me for about five hours. They said I had a slim chance to survive.

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