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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Plane crash survivor sets sights on independence

Associated Press

JACKSON, Wyo. – Matthew Ramige, who is recovering from injuries suffered in a Montana plane crash last September, is aiming to get back to his former self: an avid outdoorsman who skied, hiked and spent much of his time in the wild.

“I want to be as good as I was before all this happened,” Ramige, 30, said in an interview with the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

“I want to have the independent life that I had before, to be carefree once again,” he said Tuesday.

Once given up for dead, he appears to be on his way. Recently doctors removed the back brace for his fractured spine, and he’s hoping that he will not need serious back surgery in the future. He continues full-time physical therapy to heal the burns he suffered on 20 percent of his body, including his face, hands, chest and legs.

“It’s going to be a long road, but now’s the critical time,” Ramige said.

Now living with his mother in Albany, N.Y., Ramige will spend the winter and spring recuperating from his injuries. By summer, he hopes to make it back to Jackson. He spent the last three winters here as a city transit driver and is looking to go back to his job next winter. “I miss everything about Jackson,” he said.

It’s been an arduous three months for Ramige. There was the plane crash, the improbable survival, the media blitz surrounding the event, and now his slow, painful recovery.

He has less energy, wears tight-fitting material that helps minimize scarring from burns and is in constant pain. But Ramige is not one to complain.

Ramige was among five people on a small airplane en route to a grass landing strip in the Great Bear-Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Montana for a Forest Service project when it crashed Sept. 20.

Authorities initially said they believed all aboard were killed. But Ramige and Jodee Hogg, 23, of Billings, survived, hiking for two days through the wilderness to safety. Pilot Jim Long and Forest Service workers Davita Bryant and Ken Good died in the crash and resulting fire.