Paraplegic Tells Kids How Bad Choices Changed His Life Brian Lemons Has Spent The Last Six Years Speaking To Schoolchildren About His Life-Altering Accident.

Brian Lemons scooped, threw and hit baseballs so well that Texas Tech University offered him a full-ride baseball scholarship in the mid-1980s.

But Lemons may now be making the best moves of his life in his wheelchair.

Lemons spoke to more than 200 kids last Friday at Brentwood Elementary about the importance of making good decisions in life. His message is simple.

“This is what can happen to you if you don’t,” he said.

Lemons is a 29-year-old paraplegic. He tells a story that has become all too familiar.

Heading into his senior year of high school in Carlsbad, N.M., already with a full-ride college scholarship in his pocket, he and two friends went out, smoked marijuana, drank beer and rolled a car.

One friend died. It was the same friend Lemons spent almost an hour trying to convince that beer, dope and cars could somehow mix.

The second friend, the driver, was eventually found guilty of vehicular homicide. Lemons told the fifth and sixth graders at Brentwood that, the last he heard, the driver of the car is now a reclusive drug addict.

Lemons said he thought he was invincible. But then reality grabbed him.

“I tried so hard to be cool,” he told the kids as they clung to his every word.

“Cool is not good.”

Lemons last stood on his feet 12 years ago. It was a crisp, clear, starry night in the Southwest desert. Under the light of a full moon he stepped outside the car to relieve himself.

Today, Lemons’ upper-body is partially paralyzed, so he seldom has control of his bladder and bowels.

“I’ve had so many accidents in my pants that I’ve lost count,” he told the kids.

On the night of July 28, 1985, with his head spinning from alcohol and humming from pot, Lemons said the next thing he remembers is lying face flat in the sand.

“I felt like I was outside my body, hovering over it,” Lemons told the kids. “But I couldn’t move. My friend died 12 days after being in a coma.”

Lemons said paramedics had to remove his house keys from that boy’s chest where they were embedded from the impact of the accident.

The accident hurt other people, too. Lemons’ mother lost her home and everything in it to pay his medical bills.

“My mom went broke,” Lemons said. “It cost her a little more than half-a-million bucks.”

At that point a student raised his hand.

“Didn’t insurance pay for it?” the child asked

“Insurance only paid for about $25,000,” Lemons said. “I made a bad decision that night.”

But you can’t take back the past. What’s done is done. You can only move on. Lemons is doing that.

“After the accident, I prayed to God to take my life,” he told the kids.

God had other plans.

Two years after the accident, Lemons got in his van, drove up the coast of California, made his way across the Cascades and fell in love with Spokane. His mother and two brothers have moved here as well.

For the last six years, Lemons has spoken to probably more than 40,000 school kids about his story, he estimates. This is his mission.

“I love to talk about this,” Lemons said. “When they see this chair, they listen.”

He currently is applying for grants so that he can speak to kids fulltime.

The professional baseball playoffs are in full swing and Lemons still wonders what his life would have been like if he made the right decision 12 years ago.

“Oh, I still get down,” Lemons told the kids. “I’ll be in this chair for the rest of my life.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: Anyone interested in contacting Lemons about his program can reach him at 624-7539.