Unbroken Spirit

By Charleston Southern on August 15, 2011 - 11:05 am in CSU News / no comments

Madaline Bowman was lying along the Interstate, her eyes fixed on the sky. She tried to move, but couldn’t.

“I knew right there that something was wrong,” she said.

Strange, yet helpful, faces began appearing over Bowman.

“I was in Richland Memorial Hospital, (Columbia) and my doctor thought I had broke my neck and that I was paralyzed really from the neck down,” remembers Bowman.

It all happened so fast on that June day in 1985.

Bowman accompanied a friend to Tennessee to tow a car back to Ridgeville. On the return trip, the pickup truck being used to tow the vehicle blew a tire. The car swerved off the highway and down the grass embankment. The force snapped Bowman’s seatbelt, and she went through the front windshield of the truck.

Bowman fractured C6 and C7 of her spine. She was in a circular bed and was being spoon-fed by nurses and family members. Her doctors said she would wear a halo on her neck for six months.

She replied, “I’ll give it six weeks.”

Bowman is a quadriplegic, but don’t feel sorry for her – she doesn’t. “There was never one time that I ever became bitter,” she said, explaining her disability. “It motivated me.”

In 1991, before the Internet and online classes were available, Bowman enrolled at Charleston Southern. Daily, she traveled to and from Ridgeville, wheeling across campus, taking a full class load. Professors and students supported and encouraged her along the way.

In 1995, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business.

2 Corinthians 4:8 reads, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

That Bible verse is Madaline Bowman. She is stronger now than she was before her accident; wiser because of her condition; closer to God with every prayer. Bowman’s faith defines her past, present and future.

“ I always believed that if God allowed me to live I would fight and do whatever it takes in His will for me to lead a normal, productive life,” she said. “How many people break their neck and don’t survive? There’s a reason He allowed me to survive. I have never questioned the Lord about ‘why?’ I am a firm believer that He is too wise to make a mistake and He is too just to do anything wrong. God has something bigger and better for me, and I just need to go through the process to receive it. I know if I just hold on to His hand, I don’t have to worry about waking up in someone else’s hands.”

Bowman returned to Charleston Southern in January 2008, this time enrolling in the master of business administration program online. On May 7 she made her second trip across the stage at the North Charleston Coliseum, this time to accept her master’s degree.

Tags: Commencement Graduation Madaline Bowman