Domestic Abuse

I've really been digging these Sunday stories we (at the newspaper) have been doing. The first one ran last Sunday about the Parson family trying to figure out a family budget. This Sunday will be a story of Donna Meister-Smith, a woman who was left paralyzed in 1987 after an ex-boyfriend assaulted her at a bar and followed her home to, as she put it, finish her off. Her five year-old daughter at the time found her lying in the yard unable to move, she said.

I'll post more photos once the story runs.

Donna Meister-Smith is helped to her wheelchair by her husband, Dennis Smith, after she took a ride on her four-wheeler with granddaughter Meya Luft, 4. Despite an assault in 1987 by an ex-boyfriend that left her paralyzed, she remains active and says she tries to keep a positive attitude. "If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be like this," she said of her husband's constant support. Donna, who still rides a motorcycle, hunts and has hand controls installed on all the cars so she can drive, says the worst part of being paralyzed from the waist down is having to be lifted into their truck and helped into her wheelchair from time to time. "The only disability people can have is having a bad attitude," she said. "I'm in good health even though I can't walk." Donna and Dennis have been married for 17 years. "Life doesn't end in a wheelchair. It's all with what you want to do with life."