TRENTON -- This is 2-year-old Whitney's triumph: A year after lying in a Children's Hospital room while her mother's July 4 wedding was performed at bedside, Whitney will walk as flower girl today in a repeat ceremony.
The blue-eyed child lived a year a baby shouldn't have to know. It began with a June 22, 1997, car accident followed by spinal surgery, four months wearing a metal halo screwed into her skull and five weeks in a cast covering her head and upper body.
Today, Whitney Reed's mother, Shawnda, 22, and her husband, Brian Quillen, 24, will renew their vows at the Full Gospel Temple in Eaton, Ohio -- finally having the church ceremony they skipped last year.
Whitney will wear her flower-girl dress this time, sharing the spotlight with her 1-year-old sister, Kortney.
"We're doing everything like it never happened last year," Mrs. Quillen said. "My napkins still say "1997,' but we're going to use them. Whitney's so excited."
Whitney's wispy blond curls hide the 4-inch scar at the base of her neck, where surgeons fused her skull bone to her third vertebra. She turns her body, not her head alone, to look to the side.
But that's about the only visible sign of injury in the active, diminutive girl who rides her bike and climbs up and down off the couch in seconds.
The accident -- the vehicle she was riding in smashed into a telephone pole -- crushed Whitney in her car seat, breaking a thigh bone and compressing her spinal cord. It happened two weeks before Shawnda and Brian planned to wed. With Whitney too injured to be moved, the couple brought the wedding to Whitney.
Shawnda wore her white gown and veil, and Brian put on his rented black tuxedo. The minister came. Nurses made programs and a cake with a toy couple stuck in the frosting, the girl figure wearing a tissue-paper veil.
But Whitney couldn't wear her fussy flower-girl dress; it was draped across her chest and stomach as she lay flat on her back in bed in her metal head brace.
"It's been a rough year, but we're starting to come back around," Mr. Quillen said.
Whitney's recovery was helped by her youth, said Dr. Alvin Crawford, director of orthopedics at Children's Hospital Medical Center. Children with spinal cord and head injuries often heal better than adults or adolescents, he said.
"God's good to little children," Dr. Crawford said. "She was very near paralysis when they came in. She is doing fantastically."
