Coach Makes Comeback After Car Crash : Recovery: Canyon High teacher says faith and determination propelled him back into the classroom.

Chuck Wade was having a rough day.

The Canyon High School teacher’s students were loud and squirmy. Fatigue etched his face. But there was satisfaction there too, in having wrapped up Day 25 of the school year.

The close of a school day may seem a modest accomplishment for a former college football player who’s been a teacher for almost three decades and a respected high school football coach. But this is Wade’s first semester back after a two-year absence following a car accident that left him partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair.

Because of the extent of his injuries, many of Wade’s friends doubted that he would ever be able to sit up alone, much less return to teaching.

But Chuck Wade had no such doubts.

“The doctors never come right out and say you’ll never walk again, but I knew I was going to walk, or work my butt off, or die trying,” Wade said Thursday.

Now that he can at least return to work part time in a wheelchair, he said, “I think I’ve been given a second chance to deal with a second lifestyle.”

The former coach’s return to class has many of his co-workers, competitors and students marveling.

Even the football team of cross-town rival William S. Hart High School plans to honor Wade in a short ceremony before the football teams of the two schools square off against each other tonight.

“We love to beat Canyon on the football field, but this is much more important,” said Dale Basey, activities director at Hart. “We have a lot of respect for what Coach Wade has accomplished.”

“Other people would have given up,” Canyon economics teacher Michael Kill said. “But he didn’t.”

“For him to face the crowd again is an unbelievable accomplishment,” said senior Mike Bernards, who played football for Wade as a sophomore. “That’s a very big inspiration to all of us.”

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Wade, now 56, was the junior varsity football coach at Canyon when the accident occurred Oct. 22, 1993. Wade was driving along Soledad Canyon Road after a game when the driver of a car full of frolicking students accidentally hit the rear bumper of Wade’s utility vehicle. The impact knocked Wade’s vehicle out of control, flipping it three times. Wade suffered a broken spine, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.

Wade said he knew the students involved in the accident; he had coached one of them. But he took no action against them.

“Why be bitter?” he asked. “Then you’ll get depressed and then you can’t do much to get better.”

Wade’s team showed up at the hospital the day after the accident. So did his students. Holy Cross Medical Center workers had to politely urge crowd control.

Over the months, Kill came by to shave Wade and take his clothes to the laundry. Harry Welch, then coach of the varsity football squad, kept Wade up to date on the teams’ progress.

Then came prayers and moments of silence. His team vowed to win for him.

There was a fund-raiser, “One buck for Chuck.” Other staff members donated a day or two of their sick leave to him so that his time in recovery wouldn’t be spent in poverty.

That support may have helped Wade’s progress, said Sam Britten, who directs The Center of Achievement for the Physically Disabled at Cal State Northridge and knew Wade in the 1960s when Wade played defensive end for CSUN.

“If people don’t have support around them [following accidents] . . . some of them fold,” Britten said. “They resign themselves to a very limited life. They drop all possibilities and dreams. They give up.”

The Canyon High community cheered him on, and Wade worked.

“I realized there was a God out there and he was being good to me by letting me live,” he said.

Wade partially regained the use of his hands. He threw out the power pack on his wheelchair, but still cringes at hills. Losing some use of his right hand, he learned to write with his left.

“My therapists have always been women,” Wade said. “They have always said, ‘You will.’ They were tough. They just kicked my butt.”

If a physical therapist couldn’t attend a session, he put himself through the paces alone. He applied what he learned from athletics, breaking his goals down into smaller tasks, attacking them one at a time.

He applied the principle to returning to work. He is beginning by teaching algebra, but what he really wants is to get back to teaching geometry--a subject that sets his eyes alight. He can talk for 20 minutes about how much fun it is.

Before the accident, Wade tried to infuse enthusiasm in students for geometry by asking them to measure buildings and their shadows. He insists on assigning lots of projects to create something tangible to show parents when they attend open house.

So, even though algebra may be less enticing, teaching that first seemed physically simpler, given Wade’s interest in actively demonstrating geometric applications.

He doesn’t move around the room to talk to students now. They have to come to him. Other than that, teaching is not much different now than before, he said.

Students say they’ve just accepted him back without fanfare, a low-key approach somehow suited to Wade’s personality.

Getting to the classroom takes longer now. So Wade skips the hullabaloo of the first bell by starting work during the second period, driving his specially equipped van to Canyon’s entrance and unloading at the front door. He ducks out around lunch usually, and misses late afternoon traffic. Though he teaches two periods, both classes are the same, cutting back on preparation time.

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Principal Mike Allmandinger said he worried at first because of the stress of teaching, the pressure that comes with entertaining three dozen teen-agers each hour. Even so, he’s joined in the collective admiration.

“I don’t know if it’s the athlete in the individual that says, ‘I’m going to be a winner,’ or if as a result of being an athlete and coach and teacher he developed this undefeatability,” Allmandinger said.

Meanwhile, Wade is moving doggedly forward. He plans this spring to help out in the strength and conditioning program for athletes. He says he’s learned a lot about weight training while being “cooped up.”

He’s asked Britten if he can come to therapy three days a week instead of two. He has plans.

“I’ve always thought, one day I’m going to get out of this wheelchair,” he said.