Monday, February 9, 2009

Once chaired through the market place, she fights on

The first thing Morgantown native Janet Oberholtzer wants to do when she gets home is hug her sons.
Then she wants to hug everyone else in town.
For six months Janet and Jerry Oberholtzer and their three sons, Joshua, 15, Joseph, 14, and Jonathan, 11, have been seeing the country in their RV.
The former owners of Meadow Gardens, a garden center, they ac-cepted a developer’s generous offer to buy their prime real estate on Main Street in the village.
“It’s not something we could plan for, but we’re fortunate that it hap-pened,” Janet said.
Jerry, a Myerstown native, said having run their own business since 1992, they hadn’t had a lot of time to spend together as a family.
“We decided to take a couple months off and see the country and be a family again,” he said.
They bought a motor home and took off for points unknown, with Janet continuing to home school the boys as she has for the past four years.
“We both love the sun and warm weather and the water so being from Pennsylvania that means heading south,” Janet said. “We figured we’d go someplace, stay a week and then move on.
That plan went out the window after their first stop.
“We stayed in Key West for 10 days,” Janet said. “We fell in love with the islands driving out. The boys went snorkeling. It was fantastic.”
Then, after other stops in Florida and Louisiana, the Oberholtzers spent a month in Texas.
They saw the Alamo in San Antonio and visited Austin, Corpus Christi and Padre Island on the Gulf of Mexico.
Then, at the request of Jonathan, the family spent a week on a dude ranch. They were brown as berries from riding the prairie and still singin’ the cattle call when they headed still farther west.
After taking in the scenery for a couple of months, the Oberholtzers decided it was time to give back.
They met up with other volunteers from the Salvation Army and Mennonite Disaster Services who were cleaning up after the wildfire that struck southern California last summer.
Jerry and the boys helped with the cleanup, and Janet cooked for the volunteers for three weeks.
Aglow with the good feeling of doing hard work for a good cause, the Oberholtzers bundled themselves into the RV and headed north.
  
Jerry swerved sharply left and then it was lights out for Janet.
Local newspaper reports say six semis were involved in a chain-reaction collision just ahead of them. The RV didn’t clear the left back end of the last trailer.
Everything in the 39-foot RV was thrown forward, including the Oberholtzers.
There is a stairwell just in front of the passenger’s seat. Janet was thrown down in the stairwell and pinned between the back of the trac-tor-trailer and the twisted wreckage of the RV.
“Jerry says I asked if the boys were OK and then I kind of drifted off,” Janet said from her hospital bed in the John Mayo Newhall Trauma and Rehabilitation Center in Santa Clara, Calif.
Jerry and the boys were uninjured, and after 10 days in a hotel, the boys flew home with their grandparents while Janet recuperated. Jerry has been staying in the home of a hospital volunteer.
Janet has been operated on several times over the past six weeks and still can’t put weight on her legs.
But she’s had enough of the road and six weeks of hospital food and she’s coming home tonight.
“I came close to losing my life and I didn’t, and I came close to losing my leg and didn’t and I’m still here to see my boys grow up,” Janet said. “I just want to get back home and reconnect.”
And tonight, around 8, Janet will get her chance.
Keep it under your hat, but as the wheelchair van carrying Janet ar-rives in town around 8, her friends plan to line Main Street with as many Morgantowners as they can muster.
Meet me at the red light.

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