Bouncing Back to Win in a Walk

--”It was incredible: It was exactly what I wanted,” said Jennifer Smith after completing only one-fourth of the 26.2-mile Honolulu Marathon course. This time, she walked. Smith said it fulfilled a dream that started more than five years ago when the 30-year-old athlete from Dayton, Ohio, was paralyzed while training for the 1980 Honolulu Marathon. Smith walked 6.8 miles of this year’s marathon with the assistance of a computerized electronic muscle stimulation system. “We all have physical challenges, and, no matter what happens, we must never give up on our dreams,” she said. Smith’s spinal cord was severed when she was shot while a student in Houston in October, 1980. She was on a training run when a sniper fired four bullets into her back. Two years later, she volunteered for a research program at the National Center for Rehabilitation Engineering at Wright State University in Dayton. The research focuses on electronically stimulating the muscles of people with spinal cord injuries to help them walk. She set a world’s record in the wheelchair division of the 1983 Honolulu race, and, after last year’s wheelchair race, “I told everybody that I’d be back in a year on my feet.” Smith said she did the walk to raise public awareness and funds for the National Spinal Cord Injury Assn.

Finding the right Christmas gift for an entire city is no easy task, but Monroe, La., Mayor Bob Powell and Police Chief Willie Buffington have one that requires no size guessing and little wrapping. Starting today, parking meters will spend the holiday season covered with bags and wrapped in bows, rather than proclaiming “Time expired.” And meter maids will only patrol to make sure no one parks in fire zones, said police Capt. L. Parker.

--With the help of John Denver, Robert Duvall and West Virginia’s two Democratic senators-- John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV and Senate Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd, among other personalities, the state’s flood-relief telethon collected more than $800,000 for flood victims. Calls jammed phones from 8 p.m. Saturday, when the 5 1/2-hour telethon went on the air, until 2 a.m. It aired on all 14 commercial and public television stations in the state and many radio stations. “We are quite confident we will reach the $1-million goal by the time the checks come in from people who couldn’t get through on the phones,” said Marilyn Fletcher, one of the event’s organizers. Floodwaters swept through a 29-county region Nov. 4, killing at least 38 people and destroying or heavily damaging 4,000 homes. Ten people remain missing.