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THE GOLDEN RULE

PEIGHTON MCROBIE

“Kelly Brush…!”

During commencement exercises for Middlebury College’s class of 2008, the announcement of Kelly Brush’s name was received with an instantaneous standing ovation and such thunderous applause that the ceremony had to be paused at length. It was a moment that few present would ever forget—especially Kelly, her family, friends, coaches, and her fellow members of Middlebury’s ski team.

Just over two years earlier, on February 18, 2006, during Kelly’s sophomore year, a very different kind of moment took place that she would also never forget. As a fierce competitor and an elite athlete in the speed events of alpine ski racing, Kelly had always excelled in a number of sports—gymnastics, soccer, lacrosse, basketball, softball, ice skating, swimming, waterskiing, and, even surfing.

Athletic activity, said Kelly, “was something I loved to do … It was a huge part of my life.” Competitive skiing was also in her blood, a sport in which her parents and her sister had made names for themselves, too.

As a little girl of seven, Kelly had been termed a “tiger”—so called because of her confidence and hard-charging style on the ski slopes. It was that same grit that distinguished her from the moment she arrived at Middlebury; she was a key contributor her freshman year and already a standout early into her sophomore season. At the Dartmouth Winter Carnival (college ski meets are called “carnivals”), Kelly earned the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) career-best eighth place ranking in giant slalom. She went into the Williams Winter Carnival with even higher expectations.

After an impressive finish to her first day, all proceeded promisingly on the second day’s race. That is, until the critical moment when she sped over a knoll before catching one ski’s edge on a patch of ice. This precipitated a nightmare scenario in which she was catapulted off the course, striking one of the stanchions for a ski lift tower. The accident left her with a collapsed lung, four fractured ribs, and a fractured vertebra in her neck. She was paralyzed from the waist down.

Her lowest point, she recalls, was when news came that she would use a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Kelly immediately thought she would never be able to ski again, which she says “was sort of terrifying for me, when I felt like that was the case.”

When Kelly’s name was announced at graduation, the uproar and standing O was not one of pity but rather of admiration and inspiration. Somehow, in the midst of her fear, at her lowest point, she summoned the tiger within herself to make it through the horribly painful process of recovering from hours and hours of surgery, months of physical therapy, countless hospital visits, and having to miss an entire semester of school. Her grit was fueled by the love, kindness, and support of family, friends, and her college community.

Kelly applied the same discipline she’d used in training for sports to her rehabilitation process. “I wasn’t really discouraged,” she explains. Her focus was always on what was the next thing. As in: “What do I have to do next?”

While Kelly was in rehab, she was introduced to adaptive sports—competitive sports for persons with disabilities that have modified rules and equipment to meet the needs of participants. She remembers, “I was able to get my hands on a hand cycle for the first time when I was in rehab. And it was amazing, I felt so great…” Her eyes were opened to the reality that her life wasn’t over and her dreams, while maybe in need of some adapting, were still attainable.

There was a problem, however, that she was frustrated to discover: Adaptive sports equipment is extremely expensive. “After you have an injury like this, you already have a higher cost of living, and then the idea of having to spend a couple thousand dollars to get a piece of equipment you really need is so hard for so many people.”

Knowing how important adaptive sports had been in her recovery, Kelly was adamant that all injured athletes should have opportunities to compete and access to equipment while on the road to regaining an active lifestyle. Her desire to help led to the launch of the Kelly Brush Foundation (KBF), which has a mission of “empowering those with paralysis to lead engaging and fulfilling lives through sport and recreation.” The KBF provides grants to injured athletes who demonstrate financial need for the purchase of equipment for adaptive sports. The foundation also provides grants to ski clubs around the country so they can purchase the necessary safety equipment to prevent ski accidents. On top of these grant programs, the KBF partners with competitive adaptive sports programs to encourage participants to take their talents to the next level.

After rehab, when Kelly returned to Middlebury College in fall 2006, she entered her junior season as an active member of the ski team, training to compete in a monoski on the same slopes she had raced before. She finished out her senior year and raced as an adaptive sports athlete as part of the Middlebury Carnival. After graduating in spring 2008—on time, despite missing a semester due to her injury—she was honored the following year with the highly lauded, rarely bestowed NCAA Inspiration Award.

Ask Kelly Brush about her life today and she shrugs off the challenges. She doesn’t set herself apart from others who must learn to adapt in the wake of difficulties or from those who live out their dreams without challenges.

“I don’t think my life is any different … I’m married, I have a baby, I work in the field that I wanted to work in, I graduated from Middlebury.” Her field is nursing and, even between her job and juggling time as a mom and wife, she still has not lost any of her passion for the work of her foundation.

When asked to define kindness, Kelly answers that, though her definition may be cliché, to her, kindness is the time-tested principle of doing to others what you would have done unto you.

True, many of us have heard the Golden Rule since we were kids, but that doesn’t make the cliché any less true or important. Kelly embodies this definition of kindness to its fullest extent. She’s also an example of a lesser-known piece of wisdom: The only way to learn to treat others the way you want to be treated is by embracing the experiences, moments, and events that make us who we are … no matter how difficult.

We can borrow from Kelly Brush and choose to bring out the tiger in ourselves, getting back out on our own slopes after learning from our difficulties. With that empowerment, we can thereby treat others with the kindness and love we all want and deserve.

Kelly, you are so determined and courageous—a tiger, indeed! Thank you for embodying the Golden Rule and finding a way to do what you love and help so many others in the process. I am so glad that this foundation exists to help others feel the transformative power of being active and free. If you or someone you know has experienced a spinal cord injury and are looking for resources to help you lead an active lifestyle, check out the Kelly Brush Foundation.