“What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” — Helen Keller

Life, as they say, can change in an instant.

For Kelly Brush, that moment came on Feb. 18, 2006, as the then-Middlebury College standout skier was hurling herself — the picture of controlled ferocity — down a frozen piste during the Williams College Carnival.

As Brush zipped over a knoll, as she would later recount, her ski edge hit an icy patch. She fought to stay on the course, but her edge grabbed and her momentum catapulted her off the trail, into a lift-tower stanchion.

She severely damaged her spinal cord at the T 7-8 level, fractured four ribs, fractured a vertebra in her neck, and sustained a collapsed a lung.

Kelly underwent 10 hours of immediate surgery to re-align and stabilize her spine at the Berkshire Medical Center. Then it was off to the Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in Denver, where she’d spend the next two-and-a-half-months tirelessly rehabbing for what would become her new life — in a wheelchair.

Were she a glass-half-empty person, Brush could have settled for a sedentary lifestyle.

But that’s not Kelly Brush.

With the help of family, friends and scores of others she’s never even met, Brush quickly returned to an active lifestyle, thanks to adaptive recreational equipment that allows her to bike, ski and enjoy other outings with a family that includes husband Zeke Davisson and their young daughters Dylan and Nell.

It’s a sense of joy, exhilaration and independence that Brush has able to share with many others living with spinal cord injuries, thanks to the foundation that bears her name. The Kelly Brush Foundation, or KBF, is an idea born just days after her skiing accident. The organization offers inspiration and resources to help other with mobility issues acquire the equipment they need to get out and go.

It’s about more than recreation, though.

“When you’re out there on the hill, road or trail, as your heart rate rises and you feel the wind on your face, disability fades away,” reads a passage on the KBF website. “An active lifestyle forges connections with others — both new friends and old, in and out of a chair.”

Brush, during a recent phone interview with the Independent, reflected on her life, KBF, and the upcoming Kelly Brush Ride that serves as a huge fundraiser for the foundation’s work. The ride was started 19 years ago by Brush’s Middlebury College ski teammates. The annual ride routinely draws hundreds of cyclists of varying abilities to Middlebury, but it has gone national. Folks as far away as Utah hold their own rides, inspired by Kelly Brush’s story and the work KBF is doing.

Brush continues to be in awe of how the ride and KBF continue to endure.

“So many people start foundations, and they do it for a while and it kind of peters out. I’m proud we’ve been able to maintain not only an incredible bike ride with such a great following… but also the foundation in its totality and the work we do,” she said. “I think we’ve made an incredible impact in the adaptive sports community and we’re so excited to continue it for the next 20 years.”

What has KBF accomplished as it enters its 20th year? It has:

• Awarded 2,100 adaptive equipment grants, totaling $6.8 million.

• Given 400 people their first-time adaptive sports and recreation experiences.

• Engaged 25,000 people in adaptive sports, in 2024 alone.

Kelly never gets tired of seeing the reaction of people when they receive, and start using, their adaptive equipment. Positive testimonials abound, but two in particular stand out for Brush.

“One was a woman (in Colorado) who got injured and sat around for a number of years and didn’t do anything,” Brush recalled. “She found our foundation, saw what I was doing, and she messaged me… She said, ‘I want to do that too.’”

KBF connected her with an adaptive bike.

It was a life-changing gift — not only for the recipient, but her entire family.

“All of a sudden, she got to go out biking with her two boys,” Brush said. “Their lives are so different; they can now see their mom engaged with them, with society and active again. We think about the physical benefits of being active, but the emotional benefits — and the benefits to people around us — are so great.”

The second testimonial involves a Vermont woman who, after her spinal cord injury, believed she’d never be able to have children. Kelly reassured her of the possibilities.

“I talked to her just a few days after she got hurt. I told her about my family, the kids I’ve had since I got hurt, and what my life is like now,” Brush said.

The woman also enrolled in one of the several camps that KBF hosts from Vermont to Oregon. She got into mountain biking.

“Being able to touch people at all these points along their journey is so important,” Brush said.

The foundation doesn’t just reach adults. Brush spoke of an elementary school-age girl in Illinois who, after her injury, suddenly couldn’t participate in gym classes or recreate with her peers. KBF connected her with peers who were also rebounding from spinal cord injuries. The foundation got her an adaptive sled that allowed her to play hockey with her friends.

“She was able to be a kid again, to compete alongside her peers in the same way they are,” Brush said.

INSPIRED COUPLE

Kelly Brush has inspired a lot of people, including a ton of Middlebury College alumni. Among them are Marc and Mimi Tabah of Cornwall. The couple has rarely missed a Kelly Brush ride since 2006. The Tabahs have built the event into an informal, post-Labor Day reunion they’ve enjoyed for years with fellow Middlebury grads of the mid-1980s.

Marc Tabah said the Kelly Brush Foundation and ride have taken on several layers of importance for the couple.

First, they believe in KBF’s mission — that every person should have an opportunity to be active. This hit home in an even bigger way when one of the couple’s classmates, Brad Frazee, was paralyzed following a 2006 bike accident.

“We were so aware how quickly things can change and how lucky we are to have what we have,” Tabah said, adding that supporting KBF “is giving back in a way that dovetails with our own life philosophy.”

Supporting the foundation has also maintained and strengthened the Tabahs’ alumni friendships and increased their appreciation of the Middlebury community at large.

“It’s a pretty special organization to us, on so many levels,” he said.

Kelly Brush loves to hear about that kind of support for KBF, which she said will need to get even stronger to meet demand. There are currently more than 300,000 Americans living with spinal cord injuries, a list that grows by 17,000 each year, according to KBF. 

Four weeks is the common limit for inpatient rehabilitation post-injury, which doesn’t allow time for education on adaptive sports, leisure and recreation. It costs an average of $5,000 for entry-level adaptive sports equipment. Meanwhile, the average monthly Social Security Disability Insurance payment is $1,580.

With that in mind, Brush and other KBF officials are brainstorming ways to push the foundation’s current boundaries.

Fortunately, the foundation is there — literally and figurately. It will just need more effort. And Kelly Brush has no shortage of that.

“It’s so incredible the thing we started years ago, that we thought up in my hospital room, is doing as well as it is and that we have so much potential ahead of us,” she said.

There’s still time to register and participate in the Sept. 6 Kelly Brush Ride, which starts and finishes at the Middlebury College football stadium. Check out kellybrushfoundation.org/ride.

John Flowers is at [email protected].