This accident did not take "Kim", she continued to be active using her
mind, eyes and ears. She used a voice that could not speak aloud
(Kim could only whisper) by writing her words and expressing herself
using the computer. She got her first computer in 1984, long before
internet and web sites existed. It became her way to correspond with her
college friends and family living away. She did many things with her
Apple computer using a special program designed just for her. She
typed letters to them, printing them out for mailing.

Many years later, another program was purchased for her so that she
could convert to an IBM computer and Windows. She still was not
on the internet at that time, it was a very new thing and the program
she had would not allow her to upgrade to windows-95 which was needed
in order to communicate on the internet, something she was eager to do.

Thanks to a computer technician who is brilliant and able to write programs
in machine language, her windows 32 pointer system was upgraded so that
it would work with the windows 95 edition. This opened up the whole world
to Kim and she loved it. She chatted, exchanged email and created
her own personal web site. She had friends all over the world she wrote
personally, many met in chat rooms both on AOL and on MIRC. This kept
her vibrant and happy as well as occupying her time. She became so competent
with html she became the web master for our home town's web site.

In partnership with a dear friend and sorority sister from college days, Kim helped
organize and was the Executive Director of an organization, non-profit, which was
used to help locate families in this area of the state and give them the help and
guidance needed for their family's needs for handicapped or as Kim and her friend
and partner called them, "handicapable" children and adults. They offered respite to
caregivers and many other programs were offered. They received several grants, some
in the hundreds of thousands, to finance these programs and were very successful.
These grants were run from our home for several years. Kim had an assistant, a student
from Troy State University, hired to help with the clerical work such as filing, stamping,
mailing, etc. Her partner, Cheryl, who came up with the idea originally and was Program
Director, did the "foot" work and was active in attending meetings needed to keep
everything rolling. Kim kept the financial records using the Quicken program on her
computer. I am very proud of her accomplishments during that time. The grants were
used to hire professionals in many cases to do the work in the counties involved. Her
partner became employed, as a result of their great accomplishments in this area, which
included several counties, by a state agency which eventually led to the dissolvement
of "The Handicapable Challenge" which was the name of their non-profit organization.
Their work was recognized nationally as being one that accomplished much in this area.
Kim received "Outstanding Person of the Year" award at the Pike County Chamber of
Commerce banquet during that time period.

Since Kim's death, an annual award and scholarship has been established by the Pike
County Commission for hiring the handicapped in her honor. The first one was given
during the autumn of 2001. We thank these people for honoring her in this way.

After that time, Kim went back to the fun part of her computer, playing games
that allowed her to use her mind and keep it sharp. She also owned the Adobe
Photo program and loved to do graphics using that program. She worked with
Paint Shop Pro also, doing tutorials and just generally enjoying her computer. She
also continued as web master for our city's web site.

Kim was never depressed until the last couple of years prior to her death. She had
lost the vision in one eye due to a syndrome associated with the quadriplegia. Kim's
spinal cord was severed above the first vertebrae. The fact that she lived at all,
even with life support, was a miracle. Even after the loss of vision in one eye, she
was rarely depressed surprising those who did not know her. I've heard people
say "she laughed" or "she smiled" as if that were not possible. Kim laughed often,
she made jokes, she was mischievous just as she was before the accident. We watched
many, movies, she had a VCR from the earliest days they existed and enjoyed movies
just as soon as they came out on VHS tapes. She loved music and had a great
sound system in her room for listening to CD's and she owned hundreds. For
Christmas in 2000, she bought herself a DVD player and her Dad and I gave her
a surround sound system to go with it. We really enjoyed the new sound system
as we watched movies those last months we had her with us. It was like having our
own private movie theatre with the new sound system.

Kim began in 1999, researching our family tree, all sides of the families, mine and her
Dad's. She did an excellent job, we now have both my family and my husband's family
trees traced as far back as 6 generations. That is as far as anyone has been able to trace
these families and some have tried for 30 years.

She also brought the very large family on my husband's side (I was an only child)
together by opening a site at My Family.com where we could all leave memories,
chat and share pictures. We were successful in gathering many old family photos
and have them at this site. It is something we all enjoyed immensely. It allowed
Kim and her cousins spread all over the country to resume their old teasing at
each other as they remembered growing up and sharing holidays at their grandparents.
She really enjoyed that and I believe they did too.

I could go on forever about Kim. As we reach this point, if Kim were living she would
be blinking her eyelids coquettishly and saying, "I'm just so wonderful, just an angel"......*S*
She was an angel, "my angel", my daughter and I miss her more than I can express.
I always will.

The link to the next page is the article from the front page of our home
town newspaper the day after she died.