She doesn’t know whether the impairment comes from being born RH-negative, from a bout with spinal meningitis at the age of three, or both. 

The experts predicted that the meningitis would keep Buckley short and slow, but her intelligence and height developed early, and she did some teenage modeling.

She studied fashion design, graduated from high school in 1972, and hung out on the shores of Lake Erie trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

After high school, she says,  "I went through one hell after another."  In a car accident, she suffered internal injuries and needed 32 stitches in her face.  At 20, she was run over by a Jeep and was laid up for five years, a paraplegic for two.  A year later, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and went through two more years of hospital visits.

Buckley’s nightmare began in June 1974 when she was run over by a 3,500-pound lifeguard jeep while lying on her back on the beach at Mentor Headlands State Park.  The jeep crushed her chest and shoulder. 

"I was going through a very difficult time...I was in and out of a wheelchair for two or three years because of the accident," she said.   "One day I just packed up my car, and I just drove out West, and I didn’t even know where I was going.  I parked my car along the ocean and I lived in my car for two months.   I was just looking for who I was the whole time."

For her first 33 years, except for a few years when she used an uncomfortable hearing aid, she couldn’t hear a thing.  She got by on reading lips, a skill self-taught at a young age.  She didn’t learn sign language until she was well into her 20’s, and she didn’t learn to accept her disability until much later.

Kathy's Scrapbook Timeline - Click any Number to Go:

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