NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Though only 5 feet, 8 inches in height, Ray “Speedy” Walker stood tall for the George Washington Carver High School basketball team last year.
A senior, Walker wore uniform No. 1 for the varsity squad and calmly ran its offense as point guard and served as team captain for four years running. Using the quickness that earned him his nickname, he forced turnovers and turned fast breaks into scores. “He was the heart and soul of our team,” said his coach, Nate Roche.
Last year, Walker, 18, led the Rams to a winning 26-9 season that ended at the state semifinals in March. “This was our year,” he said.
Then in late April, tragedy struck, as Walker lost the use of his legs in an early-morning accident in Tangipahoa Parish, where his family had traveled to lay flowers at his grandmother’s grave.
Doctors have said the accident left his spinal cord partially severed. They give him a 30% chance to walk within a year’s time.
Now up to nearly four hours of physical therapy a day, Walker hopes to get back on his feet again, through hard work and faith. He has some feeling in his toes and in his hamstrings, sensations that he hopes will improve and expand in coming months. “I have confidence,” Walker said. “I pray every day.”
No one really knows why the two cars - his mom’s Honda Civic and a GMC Sierra - collided on Interstate 55 near Tickfaw before they both veered off the roadway, hitting trees. Walker was the only survivor from his car.
He was airlifted along with his 45-year-old mother, Eunique Ebbs, and his 23-year-old aunt, Shaique Andrews, though they died shortly after reaching the hospital in Hammond. As he was wheeled into the operating room, nurses told him something about a spinal injury and asked him to sign a paper before he could go into surgery. “That was frightening,” he said.
About a week later, after multiple surgeries, he was taken by ambulance to Children’s Hospital New Orleans. Since then, he hasn’t spent a night alone. His evening companions are a rotating cast of two aunts, his older sister, and his closest friends - his teammates from Carver. All of them gathered on the lawn of Children’s Hospital for an official graduation ceremony a few weeks ago.
He sat in his wheelchair and joked and laughed, a vast improvement from last month, when he could barely move because his spine was immobilized by a bulky back brace. He was in horrible pain from his right arm, which was broken in several places.
To get Walker to the double funeral held for his aunt and his mother, hospital staff carried him in on a stretcher.
At the time, John Allenbach, his senior advisor and most frequent guest, would often sit with him and feed him, a task he can now accomplish on his own.
In most ways, he’s also back to his sunny, intellectually curious self, said Allenbach, describing how Walker was also a standout in the classroom, ranking sixth in his class of 184, and has hopes of becoming an engineer.
Through sheer charm, Walker also somehow made sure his teammates attended class and were on top of their homework. “Everybody wants to be around Speedy. His smile can light up a room; his presence can change an environment,” said Dwana Caliste, his health teacher.
He is still thinking of others’ well-being, even from his hospital bed, as he fields a steady stream of FaceTime calls. “He’ll ask, ‘Are you doing this workout or that workout? Is the competition up to your level?’” Allenbach said, noting that Walker also frequently cautions his teammates that scrimmages at parks may not keep them safe from COVID-19.
He never was a daredevil, said his aunt Monique Andrews. “He either was playing basketball or at home on the video game,” she said. All of his caregivers - Andrews, another aunt, and an older sister - are in their 20s, so they have been working closely with Carver teachers and the hospital’s medical team to coordinate his care and work toward his release in roughly two weeks.
It is an enormous task.
Walker also has to deal with the trauma he’s suffered, said his coach.
“Here’s a kid coming off an amazing basketball season, an historical season for Carver, and his whole world was flipped upside-down,” said Roche, who called Walker “the heart and soul of our team.”
Fortunately, a growing group of Carver alumni are pushing a GoFundMe campaign and helping to figure out the best ways to get Walker settled at home and possibly find a vehicle that can carry his wheelchair, Allenbach said.
Carver alumni feel almost a duty to help each other, said Caliste, herself a Carver grad. “If you say orange and green, there’s always somebody who will walk with you, to tell you, ‘Pull yourself up, you got it.’ You always know that a Ram will be by your side. Because that’s what we do. That’s who we are.”
Walker, who is still down 30 pounds since the accident, is grateful for the big things. But he’s also yearning for very simple, normal things, like a plate of homemade red beans or maybe some rice and gravy. “And I just want to go places. To see people,” he said. “To sleep in my bed without nurses waking me up.”
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