Miss Wheelchair America Has a Mission : Injury Makes Her Tackle Life Head-On

When doctors were fighting to save the life of Donna Cline after a traffic crash that killed her girlfriend, they advised her parents that she was not likely to survive until she could reach a hospital.

They misjudged the tenacity of the spunky young woman with the infectious smile who, as the new Miss Wheelchair America, wants to replace the word handicapped with one that she feels is more appropriate-- handicapable.

“I guess I’m a survivor at heart,” said Cline, a popular Las Vegas television personality, recalling the crash on a lonely stretch of a Nevada highway seven years ago.

Trades Her Dreams

She suffered a broken back and bruised spinal cord, paralyzing her from the waist down. A 19-year-old freshman at Mesa (Ariz.) Community College who had aspired to be an actress, she wasted little time in trading one set of dreams for another.

“I knew very quickly the extent of my injuries,” she said. “And I realized that if I wanted to do anything with my life, I was going to have to go beyond the wheelchair, not let that stand in my way.”

She still dreams of walking again, but is determined to use her disability to send a message to--and for--the 36 million Americans who suffer from some type of disability.

Cline achieved a new level of visibility recently when she was named Miss Wheelchair America from a field of 14 state winners in competition at Roosevelt Institute for Rehabilitation in Warms Springs, Ga.

She hopes to educate the public on the abilities of the handicapped.

‘Focus on Abilities’

“I like to focus on their abilities rather than disabilities,” she said in an interview. “I don’t like the word handicapped, I prefer handicapable. I like to stress what we’re capable of doing. I want to change the attitude of people and work to change laws so we can be an equal part of society. And I want to get states to change some architectural barriers to make buildings more accessible to us.”

She admits that she was somewhat insensitive to the needs of the disabled when, as a Phoenix teen-ager, she immersed herself in community theater, television sitcoms and low budget movies--dreaming of an acting career.

She and a girlfriend were making a 700-mile trip from Phoenix to Carson City, Nev., when the friend fell asleep at the wheel in the pre-dawn hours near Hawthorne, about 100 miles from their destination.

Doctors at a Reno hospital told Cline’s parents: “You can come up here, but we don’t think she will live.”

“As terrible as the accident was, it has had a positive effect on my life,” Cline said. “It made me grow up fast. I felt I got a second lease on life. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I am now.”

Studied Communications

Following the accident, she began courses in telecommunications at Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, where she worked as a news program anchor at KNAZ-TV.

“I have never had a story that I couldn’t cover in a wheelchair,” she said. “I got through snow and ice and everything else when I worked in Flagstaff. There are no barriers that you can’t get around.”

She moved to KVBC-TV in Las Vegas three years ago and rapidly became one of the city’s most popular news personalities, covering fires, murders, breaking stories and human interest features as quickly and professionally as her peers.

Since winning the Miss Wheelchair America title last month, she has kept busy attending programs in other states and is scheduled to meet with President Reagan on Monday.

She has gone hiking and camping in her wheelchair, plays racquetball, drives a van equipped with a special hydraulic lift and swims by pushing herself out of her wheelchair into a pool.

Learning All Over Again

“Getting back out of the pool is just a matter of using your upper body strength,” she said. “The toughest part initially was learning to do everything I’ve done before all over again, like swimming and driving.”

She is working with doctors in the hope that medical technology can someday correct the damage to her spinal cord.

Does she have hopes of walking again?

“Oh yes, most definitely,” she said.

What would she tell those facing the fate she was dealt seven years ago?

“I’d tell them not to give up hope,” she said. “I’ve proven if there’s a will, there’s a way. I hope to be an example of what can be done. I don’t think there’s anything we can’t do if we set our minds to it.”