Family feels embrace of friends away from home

Our family’s journey began Jan. 7 with a late-night phone call from our son’s squadron commander from Aviano, Italy. With composed determination, the commander relayed, our presence was required as soon as we could catch a flight because our son had been involved in a near-fatal car accident and may not make it through the night.

He and a beautiful high school senior from Aviano, Italy, had been thrown from the back seat of a car, traveling at high speeds down one of many narrow, mountainous roads framed by ivy-covered rock walls. Our child had been smashed between one such picturesque rock barrier and the mangled remains of another symbol of Italian culture, the Fiat – small and fast.

With out longtime friends bidding us Godspeed and assuring our possessions would be taken care of until our return, we hugged them goodbye and flew across the world. Our son, by the grace of God, hearing the prayers sent from Spokane, made it out of ICU and was flown to Bethesda Naval Base in Bethesda, Md. In the most reputable brain trauma hospital in the United States, our child went through critical brain surgery and spent the next week in their ICU. Even after being sent up to acute care on the fifth floor, the prognosis wasn’t encouraging. We sat vigil a day after long, cold, dreary day, our son still in a deep-coma state.

Now progressing into our second month away from friends and family, we continued to feel them through prayer, e-mails and the preparation of a fundraising benefit, to be held a Redeemer Lutheran Church. Tireless, selfless, a group of women from our great community came together and successfully accomplished the goal of coming to the aid of our family. It is now mid-April. This same boy, who not a month ago, was still struggling for recovery, is now at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., under the care of yet another group of tireless, selfless doctors and staff members.

On behalf of our son (determined to offer dedication to his beloved country) and his family (more grateful than any of the people in attendance at the benefit, held in his honor, will ever fully grasp), we thank each and every one of you. We are truly proud to be part of a compassionate, giving community as is Spokane and Spokane Valley. God bless you all.

The Gonder Family

Spokane Valley