Andy Ellis, age 17, the year of his accident



      I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. ~ Philippians 4:13 

      Flames covering his body, 17-year-old Andy Ellis rolled on the ground, in an attempt to put out the blaze, unaware that he was rolling in gasoline where the fuel tank was leaking. 
      A man who lived near the accident scene ran to Andy, pulled off his own shirt, and threw it over him, putting out the flames. 
      An ambulance rushed him to the nearby Anderson Memorial Hospital. Two hours later, he was flown to the Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston. 
      It would be the beginning of a slow road to recovery.



 Andy's 1955 Chevy - the car of his dreams - after the accident



      June 2, 1983 had started out like an ordinary day. Just out of school on summer break and beginning a job at a welding shop, Andy was looking forward to his senior year of high school. The handsome teenager loved cars and motorcycles. He had been riding motorcycles since the age of eight, and he now had the car of his dreams—a 1955 Chevy. He had planned every detail, and it had taken nine months to complete. 
      The carefree teenager had a bright future ahead of him. 
      But one accident would change his future. 
      After stopping at a stop sign, Andy had pulled into the path of a Volkswagen coming from around the curve. The Volkswagen struck his Chevrolet, which hit a large tree, cut down the stop sign, spun around in the road, and burst into flames. 
      In the blink of an eye, his life would change forever. 


         Andy had third-degree burns over 45 percent of his body.


      When his mother first saw him at the hospital, she barely recognized him. “To walk in there and see his eyes, it took my breath away,” Mollie Ellis said. “He put up his hand and said, ‘Mama, I’m sorry for all of the worry I caused you.’” 
      When he was allowed to look at himself in a mirror, Andy said, “I’m ugly,” and he cried. 
      With third-degree burns over 45 percent of his body, he was given only a three percent chance of survival by the doctors. His heart stopped once while he was on the operating table. His lungs were burned, and he remained on a ventilator for a month.
      Blistered from the burns, Andy was lowered, each day, into a large stainless steel tub called ‘the tank’, in order to peel off the burned skin. The process was so intense that he would be under anesthesia. Nine pounds of burned flesh was eventually removed from the center of his chest, and his ears and nose were peeled off. 
      His mother stayed in Charleston the five months Andy was in the burn unit. His father, Olin, and sister, Linda, would come every weekend, leaving their home, near Level Land, each Friday afternoon and returning each Sunday afternoon. Other family members, and friends like Margaret Clinkscale, were faithful in visiting him, as well. 
      While in the hospital, Andy had become addicted to the morphine given to him for pain, he said. As he was being weaned off the drugs, he would act like a different person, yelling and cursing, from the time the medication had worn off until he could have another shot. 
      When Andy returned home that November, he was completely dependent on others. “My days and nights were all mixed up,” he said. “I was irritable. I couldn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry, anyway, from being so sick. But the drugs didn’t help at all, and I had to come down off of those. I had all types of hallucinations.” 
      He began occupational and physical therapy. His balance was off, and he needed two people to help him walk. He was limited in motion, as all of his major joints were stiff, some frozen solid, and his skin had drawn tight. 
      He was taken to the Shriners Orthopedic Hospital in Greenville for evaluation, and was referred to the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children’s Burn Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio. It would be the first of more than 100 trips he would take in eight years, for 65 operations for reconstruction on his face, including his mouth and eyes. 
      Local Shriners would drive Andy and his mother the eight hours to Cincinnati. 
      Andy praised the work of the Shriners in providing quality care for him and for his mother, who stayed in the Shriners’ ‘parent house’. His mother added that the healthcare provided at no charge to Andy by the Shriners helped the entire family, financially. “We wouldn’t even have a home if we had had to pay for everything that was done for him, because we just didn’t have it,” she said. 
      When the hospital’s Chief of Staff asked Andy what shape he wanted his right hand, which was drawn and pulled down, Andy told him he wanted it to fit a motorcycle handlebar. “He walked off, shaking his head,” said Andy. When he awoke after surgery, Andy’s hand was unwrapped. It had a steel rod through it, and it could not bend, but it was shaped perfectly to fit a motorcycle handlebar. He recalled the doctor’s words when he good-naturedly cautioned Andy: “I’m not spending my time putting you back together for you to tear yourself apart again.” 

     
         Andy began riding motorcycles at the age of eight.

  
   Andy's enthusiasm for motorcycles continued throughout his
   teen years. After his car accident, doctors shaped his hand to
   fit a motorcycle handlebar.
 


      Another doctor, who performed surgery on Andy’s elbow, which had frozen solid due to calcium deposits, was the chief orthopedic surgeon for the Cincinnati Bengals who donated his time at the Shriners Hospital. 
      Over the years, Andy would have surgeries to help him function better and plastic surgeries to smooth the scars and give him back basic features – such as eyelids and lips. Doctors created a nose by taking skin from his hand that was not burned as badly. For seven weeks, he lived with his hand attached to the nose, so that the nose would have circulation after the procedure. 
      “After my wreck, the doctors and nurses told my family to put away the pictures they had of me, because I would never look like that again,” he said. “They were not going to try to make me look like I did, because, the way my face was burned so severely, they would just have to work with what they had. 

     
                 Andy as a young boy


      “I’ll always be scarred in some way. It’s not as noticeable now, and I’m getting accustomed to it. Besides, the people who matter to me have accepted me. The way I look doesn’t stop me, if I want to do something. 
      “They were always on the cutting edge of developing new things,” Andy said of the Shriners Hospital. “Nobody wants to be sick or in pain, but, if you have to be, Shriners is one of the best places to go. 
      “I had numerous therapists, nurses, and doctors, and each one was special to me,” he said. “I got aggravated with some of the therapists at the time, but they were just doing what was best for me. I had to wear a lot of splints and braces, and most of those were uncomfortable. I didn’t understand they were trying to help me. I thought the therapists were doing it for meanness, and I just wanted to be left alone. I see how much they did help me.” 
      One nurse, in particular, he said, would not let him feel sorry for himself. “She ‘chewed me out’ and made me so mad I couldn’t see straight,” he said. That nurse became a good friend. When she went on vacation with her family, she called Andy to see how he was after a surgery, and he would always remember her thoughtfulness. Each time Andy would go to the hospital, she would make sure he had everything he needed. 
      “I could tell if a nurse genuinely cared, by her touch,” he said. “Some nurses would sit and hold my hand. It was nice, especially on the night shift, when nurses would come in my room when they were on break and would sit and watch television, or talk about their kids or what they had done the day before or what we had in common. “The housecleaning, the janitors and the ladies who would clean the rooms, would also come in and talk. 
      “At Shriners, it was a warm, loving atmosphere. I believe that, when you’re dealing with something where you have to keep going back, and it’s going to be a big part of your life, it’s not good to keep it professional. Every few weeks, I was up there, in Cincinnati, and I got close to everybody. Everybody knew me, and they would ask me what it was like at home. Knowing that people like that were there for me made it easier to have to go back.” 
      Andy got close to other patients at Shriners, as well. “I was in a hospital room with a baby, less than two years old, who had drunk Drano,” he said. “That will burn, but it was internal. The baby could not make a sound, but you could see tears coming out of his eyes. He did not come from a good home. His mother never did come to see him. The nurses had him in a walker around their desk while they did their paperwork. They took him in, like one of their own. They gave above and beyond, I believe. 
      “There was a family who had lost their home in a fire. They had lost one child, and the other child was there in the hospital. That would be devastating, to have to bury one child and then go to see another child who was severely burned.” 
      During one of his trips to Shriners in Cincinnati, Andy roomed with someone near his own age, who had been burned a few years before Andy’s accident. “Joe was burned from the waist down, so severely that one foot had been burned off and the other foot had no toes,” he said. “Joe was good for me. I didn’t think I would have a life, but Joe told me about riding go-carts and playing his guitar with fewer fingers than I have. That was a real encouragement to me.” 
      A turning point in Andy’s recovery process was when he was able to get back his driver’s license. He had initially not been able to renew the license after it expired, due to his being legally blind right after the accident. At that time, his eyes had been sewn together almost completely, giving him just enough vision to be able to walk. 
      “Getting my license back opened up a whole new world, giving me back freedom to come and go,” he said. 
      Being able to drive again gave him the opportunity to work again. After having his right hand operated on, Andy decided he would like to try something he enjoyed. 
      “I wanted to work with my hands,” he said. “For awhile, the doctors and therapists were telling me I would have to work in climate-controlled conditions and just use my mind more than my body. I never had been that type of a person.” 
      He asked the owner of Campbell’s Machine Works if he could hang around the shop, to see if he would be capable of handling the equipment. Ronnie Campbell told him he wasn’t going to stand around, but that he would put him to work. “I said, ‘That’s no problem. That suits me fine,’” Andy recalled. The job helped him physically by keeping him in shape, but it also helped him mentally, he said, by giving him peace of mind knowing that he could make a living at a job that he loved. Campbell took a chance on him, he said, and gave him an opportunity when most employers would probably have considered him a liability, afraid that he would get hurt or afraid that he could not do the job. Andy has worked with Service Laundry and Machinery in Belton for the past 16 years, but he values the experience he received from Campbell, who today is still a good friend. 
      Andy also values the time he has spent woodworking with his father, a skilled carpenter. “I was raised learning to work with wood, and some of my earliest and fondest memories are of me and my Daddy out in our garage in the winter time, with a fire in the stove, building wooden toys,” said Andy. After his accident, Andy returned to woodworking and made gifts for his therapists and nurses. “It helped me to get back my fine motor control skills, plus it let them know that I appreciated them,” he said. 


Andy with his sister, Linda, and brother, Rickey


      Andy has always been close to his family. His sister, Linda White, is a year older than Andy, and his brother, Rickey Ellis, was seven years older. “My sister and I are really close,” he said. “My brother and I were not unclose, but, when I was nine, he left to go to Anderson College and never lived back at home. He went to work in New York and did well for himself. There was an age difference between us, and we were quite different. He was more of a scholar, and I was more hands-on. I came to appreciate him in our later years. I lost my brother to cancer in May of 2000.” 
      “I told many people that I had planned Andy’s funeral a lot of times, because the doctors would tell me that he would not make it,” said his mother. “Never, for a minute, did I give a thought of burying the other son, and he’s the one who’s buried.” 
      In addition to his parents and siblings, the major influence in his life has been his wife, Mickie, whom he met at a revival service at his church, Little River Baptist Church in Iva, in 1987. “She came with a college friend whose uncle was the preacher at that time,” said Andy. 
      “I went through a time when I drank, which was not characteristic of my family at all,” he said. “I went through a time when I was mad at God. I felt I was getting even with Him. When I was too hung over to go to work one day, I realized that something was wrong. It was about that time that Mickie and I started seeing each other. She has always been on the straight and narrow, and she would have nothing to do with drinking and the lifestyle I was leading. She has always been a good influence. I had my rebellious time. Everybody goes up fool’s hill. Some stay longer. Some never come down. But most of them do. I had my time on fool’s hill. I went through a time that I denied God. Watching her, and being in her presence, woke up all of those things I had learned earlier in life, and I came full circle.” 


      
                                    Andy and Mickie on their wedding day


      Andy and Mickie were married in May, 1994 at Little River Baptist Church, by Rev. Charles Fuller, with the reception held at her alma mater, Erskine College. They make their home in Donalds, near Honea Path, with their daughter, Anna, who was born in October, 2000, and their son, Jesse, who was born in May, 2003. Having children has been a different, yet wonderful, experience for both of them. “We’re doing things we’ve already done and traveling to places we’ve been, but seeing things through them, and now it’s a whole other world,” said Andy. “And Christmas is altogether new again, with the kids around,” he added. He had an eye removed in 2003. “For about six days, I was blind,” he said, “and Anna took care of me, leading me around so I wouldn’t bump into anything.” 
      Andy and his family are still part of the Little River Baptist Church family, where Rev. Jason Morrison now pastors. “I was raised in that church,” said Andy. “That’s where we met. She fell in love with the church and the people of the church. My family is all there.” Andy said that he feels he may have left church, had it not been for his accident. “I feel that I’m a lot better person from my accident,” he said. “More and more, I believe that. Not that I was a bad person, but I was going in the direction of ‘you do your own thing and I’ll do my thing’, not worrying about anybody around me, but wanting to be left alone. I was raised in church. My parents didn’t send me to church. They took me to church. I was brought up in a Christian home, but you grow up and make your own choices, at a certain point in life. I believe now, looking back, that I would have made the choice to have left church. So, the wreck did make a difference in my life. 
      “There were many times in the first year that, it seemed to me everybody would have been better off if I had died,” Andy said. “My family told me that I was not a burden, that they wanted to take care of me, but my feelings were that I was a burden on them. I didn’t understand why I had to work so hard for everything. A five-year-old kid could tie his shoelaces with no problem, but I had to fight so hard just to tie my shoelaces. I couldn’t feed myself, and then, when I started feeding myself, I made such a mess. There were a lot of times I wish I hadn’t made it. Not any more, though. 
      “When I first had my accident and realized what condition I was in, I wondered why it had to happen to me. I wasn’t a saint, by any means, but there were people who stole and took drugs and committed murder and did all sorts of things, and they didn’t have any type of physical problem. I wondered why it couldn’t have struck them down. Nobody would have missed them. I still don’t understand, but I don’t ask why anymore, because that wouldn’t do any good. 
      “I feel sure that some of it comes with growing up and maturing, but I feel the wreck changed my outlook on things. Plus, I do anything I want to, now. Before I had my wreck, I thought I was limited in what I could do. But now, even with all of my physical handicaps, I believe that I can do anything I want to. 


    
      Andy with his wife, Mickie, daughter and son, Anna and Jesse, parents, 
      Mollie and Olin, sister, Linda, and niece, Jessica.


      “I notice things around me a lot more,” he continued. “Like the change in seasons. On clear days, the sky is so blue. I love to walk in the rain. And I appreciate things a lot more. I’ve learned to accept people and things the way they come. I don’t try to change them or make fun of them. I used to think that, if someone didn’t think like me, they were wrong, and I found out that’s not true at all. Variety is the spice of life. If everybody was the same, it would be a real boring place. 
      “Before I had my wreck, I would not have looked twice at a girl who was overweight or unattractive or had some kind of physical problem. If anything, I might have made fun. But now, it’s me in the other place, and it has hit close to home. My opinion now of a beautiful person is someone who can accept anyone as what they are. They don’t try to change them or make them to fit their mold. I think everybody is supposed to be different. It makes life more exciting. And, from experience, I found out that, just because someone is attractive, that doesn’t mean they’re interesting. They can be dull and boring. I have found out that there is a lot more than what is on the outside.” 
      Andy has tried talking with others who have been involved in accidents, and, although they may not be responsive initially, he is usually able to help their family. “A few years after my accident, a boy I had grown up with had a motorcycle accident and was paralyzed from the waist down,” he said. “He was not very receptive. When I was in Charleston, they had people come to talk to me, and I didn’t want to hear them or talk to them, because they didn’t know what I was going through. But I think people coming to see me in Charleston helped my Mom and my family, and I can help a family more than the person.” In 2004, Andy talked with the grandmother of a little boy who had undergone a heart transplant. “She knew when I had my accident that I wasn’t expected to live,” he said. “When she saw me with my wife and two kids, she knew that life can go on. 
      “I hate to see some people with disabilities give up,” he said. “One of the most important things, I believe, in life is to always do your best. It may not be good enough, but, as long as you’ve done your best, you can have peace of mind. I believe that peace of mind is half the battle in life. Also, if you want something from somebody, all you have to do is ask. The worst they can say is no. Don’t be afraid to try something different. You never know what is going to come out of something new. It may not work out like you thought it would, but, more than likely, it will open another door that you never realized was there. It may not have anything whatsoever to do with what you started out doing, but it may be even better. 
      “I’ve sat around and talked to my friends about things we used to do, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re making new ‘glory days’, something to talk about tomorrow. You have to make your glory days, whatever it may take to do that. You have to make it happen.” 
      A few years after his accident, Andy took part in a documentary, ‘Beyond Recognition’, produced by Self Memorial Hospital, about his life after his accident. The video received a John Muir Film Festival award, which he accepted in San Francisco. 
      In 1991, he was presented a plaque from Shriners from the Hejaz Temple, for ‘exceptional courage, fortitude, and valor in time of great pain and distress.’ 
      His own courage is found in himself, through his family, and through the Lord, which is exemplified in his favorite verse from Scripture, Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. “It’s so true,” he said. “The family was there, but the family was driven by Christ Himself.”