It was a year ago today that Brenda McManus felt the presence of God like never before as she lay pinned underneath the wheels of a car that had just crashed through the glass wall of Bunyan's Bar-B-Q in west Florence.

"I was not scared, and at that moment I didn't feel one bit of pain, but I cried out to God, oh my, how I cried out to God." The Florence resident vividly recalled the accident that doctors said could have easily claimed her life.

McManus, 61, described a complete calm while she was pinned under the wheels of the car. She acknowledges today that there was likely a "shock" factor that caused her mind and body to work in unison to block the pain. But the calmness she describes "was a feeling of being literally wrapped in the arms of God, and you don't hurt in God's arms."

The driver of the vehicle, Charlotte McPeters, McManus later learned, had recently had surgery and was wearing a medical brace on her foot. Her car abruptly catapulted through the glass, coming to rest in the center of the customer area atop McManus.

Police and the Lauderdale County District Attorney's office officials said the accident remains under investigation.


A celebration of life
As McManus celebrates Easter today, she will attend services at her church, reflecting on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But never has Easter, or the ability to celebrate it, meant more to McManus.

The date March 23, 2007, brought a much different set of circumstances for McManus, who continues to recover from her injuries.

She recalls the accident with perfect clarity, including the tiniest details, such as the fact that she was second in line to get her order when the car crashed through the building.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and McManus was taking full advantage of the earned off-day for her March 3 birthday. She was employed at the time with Riverbend Center for Mental Health.

She could never have known what was about to transpire, as she rested her gardening tools, taking a break from working in her flower beds at home.

She hopped in her car and drove the short distance to Bunyan's to get her usual - a hotdog with mild slaw and a chocolate chip ice cream cone.

She entered the restaurant just as she had countless times before. One of the employees, recognizing her friend and weekly patron, called out, "The usual Brenda?"

Brenda gave a light-hearted, "yes ma'am" as the line continued to move Brenda toward the cash register and ever closer to the glass wall.

Idle chatter filled the small building as Brenda's thoughts bounced between her lunch and her need to get back to her gardening where she had a list of goals to accomplish that day.

"Suddenly a car was right there in my face and I just went down," she said. "I heard lots of screaming that seemed to just continue. I never lost consciousness. I realized there were wheels on my body and I thought, 'how am I going to get these wheels off of me?' About that time she backed the car off of me. I lay there, flat on my back and raised to my elbows and saw blood. My arms were weak and suddenly I couldn't breathe well."

In the meantime, workers made their way to Brenda and the three other injured people, Sandra White, Bridget Sims and Derrick Parson. Sims and Parson were treated and released from Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital that day while White sustained more serious injuries along with McManus.


'It was total chaos'
Longtime Bunyan's employee Vivian Anderson said she knew McManus and White were badly injured. The impact knocked McManus' shoes off her feet.

"It was total chaos, and in that moment of still not knowing what had just happened, I did have the presence of mind not to let anyone touch her," Anderson said. "It was truly horrifying, something you replay hundreds of times in your mind."

As the paramedics arrived, Brenda heard their low-spoken words to each other clearly: "She needs to be transported, but she's turning gray. She can't make a 30-minute flight."

Once she arrived at ECM, her sister, Jeanette Custer, was inquiring about transporting her to UAB Hospital. Custer said the family still didn't know the full extent of McManus' injuries but later learned there was good news and bad news. The good news was that, miraculously, there were no internal injuries. The bad news was the multiple injuries she sustained would require a lengthy recovery and rehabilitation process. Her family learned she had three fractured vertebrae, a broken left clavicle, a number of broken ribs and a punctured lung. Both sides of her pelvis had multiple fractures, her left hip socket was fractured, her right leg was broken in two places and so was her right ankle.

Custer recalls hearing that report and thinking, "still, there are no internal injuries and that has got to be good."

The pain was so intense that it subdued even the strongest of painkillers.

With the instability of her condition, she wasn't transported to UAB for four days, but she well remembers that flight. She was jetted out of the Muscle Shoals Regional Airport by what she can only describe as six, "Power Ranger-looking medical people who were very serious about what they were doing."

McManus spent two weeks in the critical care unit at UAB before she was moved to Spain Rehabilitation Center for two weeks. After a month, she was released to come home with Custer, where she continued rehabilitation for three months. In August, she moved back into her home, but continued water and weight therapy.

"Brenda was my priority," Custer said. "Everything else was put on hold. She was my sole focus and her recovery."

The process of learning to walk again was, literally, the most painstaking, McManus said.

"Just raising up from a flat position was difficult," she said. "Walking was, well, indescribable."

She spent two months in a wheelchair, then walked just a few steps with assistance. Eventually she graduated to walking with a walker. All the while, she was confined to a body brace to hold the still-mending bones in her back in place.


No room for anger
As difficult as the recovery process has been, she says she has never been angry with McPeters. In fact, she said, "my heart hurt for her."

"She sent me the sweetest card in the hospital and told me how sorry she was and that she was praying for me and her church was praying for my recovery," McManus said. "I could tell from her words that she was heartbroken over what had happened. I could only imagine what she was going through. She just wanted the same thing I did that day - to get some lunch."

One of Anderson's co-workers at Bunyan's, Katie Rowell, said she still has flashbacks to that day when the car came through the building. The building has long since been repaired and the glass wall is once again intact.

"When I think about how people could have died that day, it scares me to death all over again," Rowell said.

Anderson and Rowell agreed that they still shudder when people pull into parking spaces while traveling a bit too fast. One day recently a car was outside revving its engine, and with each roar, Rowell said she grew more uncomfortable until the point of being unable to count change for a customer. Another customer, realizing the problem, went out to check on the car and came back inside to tell Rowell it was all right.

Anderson said seeing her friend so critically injured that day made her view life with a new perspective.

"You've got a split second, literally, and everything can change."

It has for the employees of Bunyan's, who say they still have customers asking about the victims of the crash,


Loss turned to blessing
During the time she was hospitalized and the following months, McManus said she'd never felt so loved as she received hundreds of cards from her friends around the Shoals and around the country.

But McManus was dealt another blow during her recovery process. She lost her job with Riverbend, the result of downsizing.

"Even that was a blessing from God, though, because they kept my insurance through this month and I just started a new job at Potts and Young law firm on March 3, my birthday," she said. "God has been faithful is all I can say."

McManus continues in the healing process. She tires by the end of the day but insists "anyone who works full-time does."

She's pleased with her mobility today. And, she's thrilled she's able to wear high heels again. A trendy dresser, she recalls the milestone of returning to her Sunday school class for the first time in heels.

As for those Bunyan's hotdogs with slaw and chocolate chip ice cream, McManus still gets a twinkle in her eye at the mention, but she says she won't go back in the restaurant.

"The window was replaced and there is still no barrier and this could happen again," she said. "I no longer patronize any business with that physical setup, with only a glass wall between customers and cars."

Through it all, McManus has learned a lot about herself including her own strength and resilience. And she's grown closer to God, she said.

"I'd always wondered if people in horrible accidents have a lot of pain, and now I know," she said. "To have such calmness in those circumstances can only come from God. I no longer fear the unknown, and relationships in my life have been strengthened. I'll never be 100 percent again, but 99 percent isn't too bad."

Lisa Singleton-Rickman can be reached at 740-5735 or lisa.singleton-rickman@timesdaily.com.