Miracle Woman Has Miracle Baby
Published: September 27, 2006
Donna Burt was an Idaho State University senior majoring in elementary education 16 years ago when her life, as she knew, changed forever.
Burt, then 25, was a passenger in a Greyhound bus and was heading home to Amberson, Pa., for the holidays when tragedy struck on Interstate 80 in Emery, Utah, on Dec. 18, 1990.
According a Dec. 19, 1990, Caledonian-Record article, the bus Burt was riding on was struck by a tractor-trailer carrying frozen hams during a blizzard. The tractor-trailer slid across the divided highway and plowed into the bus and another truck loaded with sand. Of the 43 passengers on the bus, which was headed to Chicago from Salt Lake City, seven were killed.
Burt was listed as one of the dead. She was put in a body bag and her right hand and left foot were tagged when she was found with no pulse. Later, when rescuers discovered she was still alive, she was transported from the scene to Evanston, Wyo., with severe head injuries. Burt said she later was airlifted to the University of Utah Medical Center.
For seven years, she spent time in hospitals and rehabilitation centers trying to put her life back together. She had to learn how to speak and walk again.
Gone were her dreams of marriage and having a family - or so she thought.
Burt went through long days of therapy, including speech, physical, cognitive and occupational.
She learned to walk again by riding horses. The horse’s movement mimics a person walking, Burt said.
One day, while in a rehabilitation center van, she and the others in the vehicle came upon a crash scene.
“We drove around for hours until we were OK,” Burt said. “You have blocks. You don’t know how to get by them, but as you are exposed to things, you get by the blocks.”
She said her parents were very involved in her therapy. They would have her do puzzles as a way to help her recover.
After the first seven years of rehab, Burt began to put her life back together again. But she did not believe she was going to be able to have what she always wanted, a husband and family - until she met Paul Corbeil in August 2004.
Burt was visiting her grandmother, Margaret Burt in Dalton, N.H. She met Corbeil at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Lyndon, where he was teaching a class.
“It was sort of like a Cinderella story,” she said Sunday sitting on a couch in her St. Johnsbury home. “He had not been dating for seven years. We met each other and things started happening. I thought time had run out. I thought by the time I found someone, I would be past the child-bearing age.”
What really affected Burt was when she was listening to Corbeil talking about his daughter from a previous marriage and how he had put his own needs aside to take her and a friend of hers on a trip.
“He wanted to make her happy,” she said. “I thought for someone to think of his child so much he would literally put everything he wanted on hold, was touching.”
Corbeil said that after class, she came up to him and asked him if she could write to him after she went back to New Jersey. At that point, he knew they would be dating.
“I almost did not go out with him,” she said. “When he wanted to go out with me, I said, ÔNow what will I do? Maybe he will take advantage of me. Maybe he is not as nice as he seems.’”
After all, she had not been on a date from before the crash in 1990 and the day she met him in 2004.
“That was a really scary experience,” she said. “Come to find out, there was nothing to be afraid of. I almost threw the opportunity away.”
Burt and Corbeil married in December 2004 and baby Richard was born Sept. 14 after 31 hours of labor, less than two weeks ago. He weighed in at 7 pounds, 91/2 ounces.
Paul Corbeil said it is kind of neat holding a little one again, even at the age of 51.
“That was something she definitely wanted, and I agreed,” he said. “I am happy to see Donna happy. He definitely is a miracle.”
If someone had told Donna Corbeil during the years of rehabilitation when she was learning how to talk and walk again she would be married and have what she calls their miracle baby, she may not have believed it.
Donna said a lot of people don’t think they have a chance to have a family when they are in their 40s. They think it is too late or they cannot afford it.
“Happiness is not something based on money,” as she gazed down lovingly at Richard in her arms. “Happiness comes from being satisfied with being where you are. Happiness is not based on things. Happiness is in love. One of the reasons I wanted to have a child was because a child is the expression of love between a husband and a wife.”
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