Gladys man has overcome big challenges since accident

By Cynthia Pegram

Published: March 29, 2008

GLADYS — Buford Nash was in his mid-30s in October 1969, loading railroad cross ties for the family pulpwood business.

At about 9 a.m. the hook he was using slipped. He tumbled backwards, falling about 5 feet. When he hit the ground, neck first, he felt “like my body was melting away.”

He’d broken his neck.

No one then would have believed, with all the risks of infection and kidney failure, that the new quadriplegic patient would be alive 39 years later.

“If it hadn’t been for family and the timber company,” said Nash, now approaching age 75, “I don’t know how I would have made it.”

He and his twin brother, Binford, worked for their dad, Hunter, in his pulpwood business in Gladys. By 1950, Buford was living in the small community.

On weekends, he would drive to the Fairview area of Lynchburg and go to the skating rink, where Janet Clement caught his eye. On Sundays after church, young people gathered at Pickeral’s Café. Groups of guys and gals, Janet among them, would drive around Lynchburg.

He had a ’51 Oldsmobile 88, with a big motor and lots of flash. “It had some speed to it,” Nash admitted with a twinkle.

Janet, the daughter of a Fairview businessman, and Buford had their first real date in April 1952. They married on Aug. 23 and settled in Gladys, a small town about 25 miles south of Lynchburg.

By 1969, they were the parents of three children — Dennis, Cindy and Tim — and Janet Nash was pregnant with Beverly, their fourth child.

Buford was community-minded. A founding member of Gladys Fire and Rescue, he’d been helping fill sandbags used to stabilize spine injuries just a week before his accident.

The morning he fell, a friend saw him lying on the ground, still conscious, and called the rescue squad. They put him on the backboard, used the sandbags and headed to Lynchburg General.

A friend called Janet Nash, said only that there’d been an accident, and drove her to the hospital.

With X-rays to guide him, the late Dr. Joseph L. Platt, orthopedic surgeon, straightened the broken neck. He wired a bone graft in place using a bone from Nash’s hip.

The family got the bad news through Nash’s dad, who was told that with such a severe injury and paralysis, most patients usually live two years, five at the most.

Janet Nash, nine months pregnant, said she felt like she was in shock.

On Oct. 31, one week to the day of the accident, she gave birth at Lynchburg General. Nurses wheeled the newborn into intensive care so Buford could see his infant daughter.

But he could only look. He had no ability to touch.

At first, he was totally paralyzed. Family and friends from Gladys and Appomattox set up a round of care so that he was never alone at night.

Within a week, his lungs began filling with fluid, and he was in intensive care.

Platt put him in a circular electric bed that changed his position every two hours.

Nash lay there trying to move and one day noticed slight motion in his arm. He kept repeating the effort until he could bend his arm to his chest. He got some movement in his index fingers.

The husband of the nurse working with Nash made a metal band to fit a fork.

“I could feed myself before I left the hospital.”

He was in Lynchburg General from October to February, and he’s never forgotten the nursing care. His family provided an electric bed at home, and he stayed for about 10 days, and then went to Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville.

His eldest son, Dennis Nash, and other family members speak with admiration of how Janet Nash took care of the family while Buford Nash was hospitalized most of that year. And when he came home from rehab, she accepted the role as primary caregiver to her
husband.

“I go back and wonder how she did it,” said Dennis Nash. “She was raising a brand new baby and the three of us teenagers, almost.”

“I couldn’t do it now,” said Janet Nash, petite, white-haired and still pretty. She is now battling cancer, and the oxygen canister at her side is part of her lifestyle.

“My wife is a good nurse, taking good care of me,” said Nash.

“I didn’t think I could do it,” she said.

In 1969, she did not drive. Dennis, a young teen and newly licensed, became her driver. Those were the days before home electric lifts, so Buford’s brothers, Binford, Paul and David, set up a system to lift him from the bed in the morning and put him to bed at night.

His family also made sure he remained part of H.S. Nash Timber Corporation, and later Nash Lumber.Buford Nash was determined to walk by the time his infant daughter took her first steps.

In rehab, he had hoped there would be braces for his legs.

“I couldn’t control anything. Even with hand braces, I would fall.”

He has no feeling below his index fingers. His twin brother said those early days were hard for Buford — that he struggled with sadness — but he came through it to be “like he is now.”

Now, says Buford, “I trust God to take care of me.”

In rehab, Buford gained powerful shoulder muscles and learned to push a wheelchair. It was an electric wheelchair, though, that gave him some independence.

“An electric wheelchair was worth the world.”

In 1972, he bought a van with adapted controls. Family members lifted him into the driver’s seat, and the wheelchair was put in the back.

His youngest son, Tim, 8 at the time, was riding home with him when the hand controls hung up, and the van ran off the road on the right, came back and hit a bank and rolled, coming to a rest on its wheels, with something hurtling through the windshield.

Buford thought it was his son. “I thought it had (thrown) him out and killed him.”

“I hollered, he finally answered, and then I knew he was all right.

“When he answered me I wouldn’t have taken a million dollars for that.”

It was the book bag that went through the windshield. And the rollover launched the wheelchair, which hit Nash, bruising his neck at the site of the surgery.

“Somebody’s looking out for him,” Dennis Nash said.

It was about five years before Buford Nash tried driving again. This time, it was a van with a lowered floor, a ramp and excellent controls. He could guide his electric wheelchair onto the ramp, and right to the steering wheel and lock it in place.

He never had another accident but he has gone through about six vans and hundreds of thousands of miles. He’s driven on errands for the business, watched from his van as his son played high school football. He’s become a granddad five times. And he and Janet have taken their former motor home cross country, visiting all but two states, usually with friends or family along for the ride.
Janet has never driven the motor home, though.

In 1979, they began building a new home on property from his father. All on one level, it has wide doors and 4-foot hallways so he can move with ease.

Growing up around a dad in an electric wheelchair, Dennis said, “You had to watch your toes.”

The couple will be married 56 years in August. The words “for better or for worse and in sickness and in health” were in their wedding vows, said Janet Nash, who has lived them.

They’ve been through a lot together. In 2003, Buford’s wheelchair missed the edge of the ramp one Saturday, and he tumbled out.

Everything seemed OK until son Dennis noticed a lump on his dad’s thigh as he was putting him to bed. The femur was broken.

Setting it didn’t stop problems. Buford told the surgeon, “If you need to take it off, do it.”

The amputation has changed his balance and the speed of his life. He’s slowed down.

But the couple still laughs a lot together. And like many, they also have differences. “He loves politics and I don’t,” said Janet Nash.
“They take care of each other,” said Dennis Nash.

Buford Nash is still part of life. And he shares some advice with others who find themselves dealing with overwhelming injury:

“The main thing is never give up. Always have a positive outlook on life. Never say you can’t do it. You can always try.”

Buford Nash has gone through six vans and has driven hundreds of thousands of miles despite his injury. His van allows him to drive without assistance from family. KIM RAFF/THE NEWS & ADVANCE

Justin Nash helps his grandfather, Buford Nash, into his motorized wheelchair. Buford must rely on his family to operate the lift that puts him in his wheelchair. KIM RAFF/THE NEWS & ADVANCE

Buford Nash stops at the family’s lumberyard, Nash Timber Corp., to make a few phone calls Wednesday. Buford credits his family and the timber company for helping him make it through his injury. KIM RAFF/THE NEWS & ADVANCE