Making The Most A Hit-And-Run Drived Robbed Billy Rae Of His Great Potential, But He Inspires Others By Doing The Best He Can With What He Has Thirty Years After Tragedy

It happened in a split-second.

On an icy January morning, 12-year-old Billy Rae was walking along his usual route to Shaw Junior High School.

On North Market Street, the boy in blue corduroy pants, his brown hair neatly combed, paused to wait for traffic.

His mind was swirling with plans for the day, but he remembered to look both ways before crossing, just as his mom always told him.

“I took one, two steps and then yeow!” he recalls.

The seventh grader slipped on a patch of ice, slamming against the pavement. He was on his hands and knees, about to stand when he heard the car.

He saw a white station wagon. The woman driving was distracted. She was struggling with a brown dog in the back seat.

She didn’t see the boy in the street, scurrying to his feet.

The car hit him and kept on going.

“At that moment I lost everything,” Bill Rae recently told a class at Sacajawea Middle School, exactly 30 years after the accident.

His left side is partially paralyzed. His left hand is permanently clenched. He limps. His speech is slow and difficult.

But his mind is clear, his smile bright. His eyes sparkle.

For 20 years, Rae has volunteered as a teacher’s assistant in Jim Parry’s seventh-grade social studies classes at Sacajawea. Few of the students know what happened to him.

But the name stirs memories among longtime Spokane residents who remember reading in the newspaper of his accident, praying for his recovery, raising money for his family and cheering the courageous young man determined to make the most of his life.

Each year, on the anniversary of the accident, Parry asks Rae to talk to the class about that day in 1968 that changed his life and stole his dreams.

“He’s an inspiration for the students,” says Parry, who grew up next door to the Raes on Frederick Street, near Minnehaha Park.

“Mr. Rae has a damaged brain, but he uses it to his full potential,” Parry tells the class. “You have a healthy brain. Use it.”

Parry, 10 years older than Rae, was in college when he heard that the next-door neighbor boy had been hit by a car and was not expected to live.

“It was really sad,” says Parry.”He was a cute little guy. I’ve known him since he was born.”

Two boys raced to the Raes’ house that gray morning, pounding on the door.

The words echo in Joyce Rae’s memory as clearly as the day she first heard them: Your son just got hit by a truck on Market Street.

Billy was taken by ambulance to Holy Family Hospital in critical condition, unconscious.

His mother stayed by his bedside, praying and talking to her comatose child for weeks.

His brother Jim, 3, and sister Bonnie, 9, were sent to stay with friends and family.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Bonnie Wood, now married and the mother of two children. “I guess it’s stayed fresh in my mind because it was such a sad thing.”

Soon after the accident, Don Hughes, Rae’s teacher at Shaw, went to Holy Family Hospital to visit Billy.

“I held his hand, I talked to him while he was in the coma, thinking he could hear or would feel something,” Hughes said.

“He was a good student, very likable. There was just something about Billy, his personality, that appealed to me. I couldn’t believe it when he started pulling out of that coma,” said Hughes.

They’ve remained fast friends.

When Hughes retired and Bill Rae’s parents divorced, the two started going out for tacos on Wednesdays. They’ve held to the routine for 20 years.

“He’s a great, great person,” Hughes said. “His courage really got to me. I respect that a lot.

“You have to have a lot of courage to pull out of something like that.”

The accident also touched the hearts of Spokane residents. The Raes were showered with sympathy and support.

Elementary schools, teenagers, police officers, Boy Scouts and dozens of groups set out cans, took up collections and held car washes to help the family as it faced mounting medical bills.

In a matter of months $13,000 was raised - the equivalent of almost $60,000 today.

Rae remained in a coma for almost two months, then floated in and out of consciousness for another month.

Doctors told his mother that, because of the brain damage, he would never walk or talk again.

“They told me to put him in a nursing home; don’t take him home,” said Joyce Rae, still burning at the suggestion that she would give up on her child.

Better than anyone, she understood her son’s spirit, determination and energy.

“He always had his own mind. He was very independent and mature for his age,” said his mom.

After 12 weeks in the hospital, he went him home in a wheelchair.

It was two more months before Rae began recognizing his pals and talking slowly with them.

There was daily physical therapy and speech therapy. Progress was slow.

Some days, the boy who once thrived on biking, hockey and ice skating, sat in his wheelchair, tears streaming down his cheeks.

When his mom asked why he was crying, he answered, “Because I can’t walk.”

The woman driving the car that day never came forward.

Soon after the accident, police scoured the neighborhood in their search for clues and witnesses. There was little to go on.

Initially it was thought a truck struck the boy. Police spent hundreds of hours investigating.

Six months after the accident, Rae suddenly began talking about the car that hit him, remembering specific details of the older woman behind the wheel and the brown dog.

Still police weren’t able to solve the case.

“It frustrated me for a long time,” said Joyce Rae.

“It doesn’t now. I don’t know what good it would do now if I knew who hit him.”

Today Bill Rae shrugs and says matter-of-factly, “What’s done is done.”

But sister Bonnie Wood still wonders if the driver thinks about the accident and the shattered life.

“She must have seen the stories in the paper. There must be some guilt,” said Wood.

“You would think she might have told someone about it after all these years.

“Mom forgave her a long time ago, but I think a small part of me still hasn’t,” she said.

Two years after the accident, Bill Rae returned to seventh grade at Shaw Middle School to pick up where he left off.

Before the accident, Rae was a top student with a passion for math. Afterward, his memory betrayed him.

Reading was painstakingly slow, handwriting impossible.

High school was even harder.

“Mom practically went through high school with him,” said Wood.

Aware that there was much he couldn’t do - but willing to try anything - the teen who was still in speech therapy signed up and sang with the high school choir.

After graduation came the gnawing question of what Bill Rae would do with the rest of his life.

He was smart, determined and loaded with personality. A sheltered workshop didn’t seem the right choice for Rae.

Before the accident the boy had talked about becoming a teacher. It was one more dream he’d given up.

Jim Parry hadn’t given up on Rae, however.

The former neighbor was now a teacher at Garry Junior High School. He asked the district to hire Rae as a teacher’s aide.

Rae’s salary was paid through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act program of the 1970s. In 1990 he was named District 81 Disabled Employee of the year.

When the CETA money ran out, the district picked up his pay, and Parry and Rae stayed together. When Parry moved to Sacajawea, his assistant went with him.

Rae is paid for only an hour each day, but he stays in the classroom until the last student leaves.

“He’s my instructional assistant,” said Parry. “He helps students. He corrects a lot of papers for me.

“He is very conscientious. He is a little like ‘Rainman’; he can do percentages in his head.”

Students filtering into the classroom greet him with, “What’s up, Mr. Rae?” and “Hey, Mr. Rae.”

Those tempted to tease him for his slow speech or lopsided stroll quickly learn respect, especially after hearing his story.

“The kids at school think he’s cool,” said Nathaniel Bell, 13.

“It’s pretty impressive - what he was able to overcome,” said Kolbie Pearsall, also 13. “He didn’t just mope around.”

“Yeah, he carried on. He’s very strong,” said Christina Allen, 12.

The theme of the week is posted in the corner of the classroom: “Life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be.”

“Yes, I believe that,” Rae said softly.

Bill lives with his mother. He’ll never be able to live on his own.

His left hand is useless. His right hand trembles, so he can’t hold a glass of water or a fork.

Shaving himself is out of the question. Rae rolls his eyes at the very thought.

He takes vacations with his mom. Newport Beach on the Oregon coast is a favorite destination.

At home, he’s an avid Jeopardy fan and taps tunes on the piano one-handed. He swims and rides his three-wheel bike in the summer, “I’ve put 3,377.6 miles on it in about four years,” he says.

Joyce Rae is still pained by the cruel twist that took from her oldest child the life experiences most take for granted: learning to drive, earning a living, marrying and having children.

But she concentrates on his accomplishments instead of the lost opportunities.

“He’s done so much they said he would never do,” she said. “It’s been like a miracle.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (1 color)