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Winning Spirit
When Sara Beth St. Peter emerged from the ring at the All Breed Carriage Driving Competition in Tunbridge, Sunday, you didn’t have to wait for the judge’s results to know that she was a winner. For Sara, simply competing and having a clean finish was a huge victory: She is a quadriplegic. “I’ve loved horses as long as I can remember,” she said, at her home on Davis Road in Randolph Monday. “We didn’t have much money when I was young; Jenny Bryan gave me a big break, providing riding lessons in exchange for chores. I got one hour on a Fjord pony with instruction for every four hours of work. I was just eight.” “Jenny took the time, and put out the effort,” Sara reflects, continuing, “and she’s still a big part of my life today. She rides my horse ‘Trotter’ up at Charlie Ballou’s Maranatha Stables.” Came to Driving Late Born in 1980, Sara St. Peter graduated from RUHS in the class of 1998. After high school she stayed in the area doing a variety of jobs: She worked at convenience stores, the assembly line at Vt. Castings in Bethel, cleaned at Gifford, and rode horses and cleaned stables at Hitching Post Farm in Royalton. In July, 2000, she took a job at Chesapeake Hardwood in Hancock. The company specialized in gluing up plywood panels for construction. On October 12 of that year, Sara was washing down the upper inside of a huge glue tank. The auger was spinning, mixing hundreds of pounds of glue down below. “I had my hair up, and my head was inside, when I was startled by a loud noise. Maybe it was a rat; we’d had huge rats over there. Anyway, my head jerked up and my hair suck to the glue on the turning auger shaft. I couldn’t reach the emergency button. My arms weren’t long enough; it seemed like I had time, but everything probably happened really quickly and I started to get pulled into the tank. I’d have been chopped right up; that mixer handles 1500 pounds of glue. My head was going down and in and I had to pull back.” “At first, standing outside,” Sara related, “I didn’t know how bad it was. I was moving, and I remember thinking, boss is going to be angry with me for making a mess. I was just wondering how I could get to the restroom to see what had happened without anyone noticing.” “My scalp and a piece of my right ear had been ripped right off my head, but I didn’t know it,” she related. “After a few seconds the blood came down, and I started yelling. The crew came running.” Sara never lost consciousness at the plant that evening, and remembers everything vividly. “I gave phone numbers; for mom, for the hospital. I told them to get ice; to keep the scalp and the ear cold.” Expected To Die “At one point I was pretty sure I was going to die, but Ron, a co-worker, kept reassuring me, saying I’d make it; that it wasn’t all that bad. The ambulance arrived and I heard David Palmer’s voice. I was so glad, because I knew he was a paramedic and could give me morphine. I got up and climbed on the gurney. DHART came—it was the only time they’ve ever landed the helicopter in Hancock. “The pilot came to visit me later in the hospital and told me I joked when they loaded me in, saying, you, know that for such an expensive ride, you could at least offer me a cigarette!” St. Peter was in Dartmouth for about two months. During initial surgery, which lasted fifteen hours, her scalp and ear were reattached. When she woke up, she could squeeze her hands and wiggle her toes. “But I was too agitated, “ Sara related, adding, “I needed to heal. They put me into a medically induced coma for three weeks.” When she awoke, Sara could no longer move. “They think that maybe the trauma to my neck, when the machine yanked me, caused a delayed injury to my vertebrae and spine, but it’s unusual to have movement for so long after an accident and then lose it.” Sara remembers lying inert in that Dartmouth bed. “I couldn’t move, but I knew right there in that bed that I had a future. I thought, OK. This sucks; but I am alive. “The biggest loss with being a quad is that you have no control, no privacy, no way to shape your future. That’s why the horse driving is so amazing and great. I have power and control back. I’m competing on a level playing field; my disability doesn’t figure into it.” The stay at Dartmouth was complicated and lengthened by infection, the loss of her scalp, and many more surgeries. Two months of rehabilitation at Mount Ascutney followed, and then it was time to go home. By this point Sara had gradually regained some arm and head movement. Her hands and everything below her waist remain inert, however. “Coming home was the hardest step,” she confesses. “The rooms were small. There were so many people, no one could even move around.” Quadriplegic Driving It was a therapist at Fanny Allen Hospital who, in February 2004 gave Sara the idea that horses, which had meant so much to her earlier, could still be a part of her life. In November that year she was loaded aboard a minivan. Along with her mom, Sue St. Peter, Mary Lou Brooks, and her close friend Stephanie Bly, she headed out to Georgetown, Ky., to Gayla Driving Center at U.S. Driving for Disabled. The five days in Kentucky changed Sara’s life. “The people at Gayla were so great, so positive. I began to see that I really could drive, if I had the right carriage, and the right horse,” she added with a smile. Sara’s horse is a Dale named Red Prairie Trotter. “I didn’t pick him out,” she laughs, “he picked me! I had gone up to Marcy Baer’s Briar Hill Stables in East Montpelier to look at horses. There was a big crowd all around. “Trotter just walked right through everyone, dropped his head in my lap and never left. When they started moving me away, he followed along.” Sara has been driving with Trotter since 2005. Together they are trained twice a week by Charlie Ballou at Maranatha Stables in Brookfield. Sara’s limitations require that Ballou sit beside her with a whip and brake at ready, but when she and Trotter head into the ring, she is holding the reins; she is the driver. “I’m just along for the ride,” Ballou smiles. “In Tunbridge, out there in competition, Sara was nervous, but she did really well,” Ballou observed, adding, “She turned some excellent circles, better than others I watched.” “Sara is an inspiration to all of us who work with her,” he reflects. “Her determination is remarkable. When she’s scheduled for training, she shows.” Helped by caretakers in her new home in South Randolph, Sara is positive about the future. Her face shines as she reflects upon Sunday. “It wasn’t just exhilarating; it meant everything to me. I don’t feel disabled out there. I’m not only alive; I get to be with the best horse on the planet.” Charlie Ballou observes that Sara and Trotter have ambitious plans. “Her goal, is to compete in combined driving at an advanced level for the US in the Paralympics.” For this, there will be much more training, and a new, lighter carriage, which Fred Merriam, master carriage-builder, is crafting from ultra light materials at Acme Carriage in Braintree. Last Laugh Reflecting upon events since October 2000, Sara chuckled on the phone Tuesday. “Mom always said that when I was young, she was fearful that I’d get hurt by a horse. Who’d have thought that a horse would become my salvation?” |
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