Office of Public Relations
Missouri Baptist University
One College Park Drive
Saint Louis, Missouri 63141-8698
314.392.2307 / fax 314.392.2265
www.mobap.edu / pr@mobap.edu
For Immediate Release
RE: Full Circle
Full Circle
June 27, 2005
Despite an occasional blow of a horn or a sporadic round of prideful screams, a fidgety silence prevailed at Missouri Baptist University’s thirty-third commencement exercise. Hoping to conduct an orderly ceremony, MBU officials had asked the audience inside the jam-packed Greensfelder Recreation Complex at Queeny Park to hold their applause until the end of the ceremony.
Landwehr returns to the road, just north of the intersection at Mason and Clayton, where the accident occurred more than eight years ago.
His story of strength. His story of courage. His story of faith.
It was Spring of 1997, and then Missouri Baptist College was bustling with excitement as the school’s Spring Spectacular, a sort of variety show, drew near. Landwehr, a sophomore who loved theatre, was an important, if not critical part of the production. He designed the show’s stage set, supervised the production’s technical operations and was planning to act as emcee for the event.
On a sunny and chilly March afternoon, just weeks before the production was set to debut, Landwehr and one of his good friends, a fellow student at MBC, ventured off campus to get a few supplies needed for the set. A local hardware store had just what they needed— a half-pound of drywall screws, some staples and a couple of one-gallon cans of flat, black paint.
By the time the pair had left the store, heavy rain and hail had erased the day’s fair skies and cool temperatures. Landwehr gave the inclement weather little thought. After all, he had driven the five-mile trek from school to the hardware store many times before.
So as the windshield wipers worked at maximum capacity, Landwehr slowly crept eastward on Manchester Road, before turning onto curvy Mason Road. As he inched northward on Mason, with the rain still pounding on the hood of his car, something happened. In an instant, Landwehr lost control.
“To this day I don’t know if I hydroplaned or skidded,” Landwehr said. “Bottom line is I lost control, the car spun counterclockwise directly into the path of a Cadillac and utility van.”
Landwehr’s friend died instantly. An unresponsive Landwehr was rushed to a nearby hospital. And a lively Missouri Baptist College suddenly stopped and prayed.
Questions flooded the mind of Jo Ann Miller, then the dean of students, shortly after news of the accident made its way to campus. Who was it? Were there injuries? Was it one of our kids?
Soon after, local police officers confirmed Miller’s worst fears. She immediately cancelled the night class she was teaching and rushed to the hospital.
“It was a pretty late night,” recalled Miller, now the executive director for constituent relations at MBU. “There were about 25 to 30 kids at the hospital when I arrived. Tim was just hanging on at that point.”
With a ruptured diaphragm, punctured and collapsed lung, mutilated spleen, broken pelvic bone, cracked rib, broken jaw and traumatic brain injury, Landwehr lay in a coma for nearly eight weeks. Meanwhile, students and faculty attended a funeral for one of their own. A bitter-sweet Spring Spectacular proceeded as planned. And students, faculty and staff continued to pray for their unconscious friend.
When Landwehr awoke, his life started over—without the skills needed to walk or talk, much less the ability to cope the loss of his dear friend.
Eventually, Landwehr’s slew of broken bones and punctured organs healed. It was the traumatic brain injury he suffered that proved far more consuming.
“It is very similar to having to go through your entire infancy, childhood and adolescence all at the same time,” Landwehr said. “You fall down and break a leg, it heals. You’re heart stops functioning, you get a heart transplant. But with a brain injury, you have to relearn how to use everything.”
Through months of intensive, inpatient rehabilitation and years of outpatient therapy, Landwehr began to steadily progress. Before long, first steps were replaced by walks around the rehabilitation center. Single, slurred words were added until full sentences were formed.
“I can remember laying in bed in rehab, and it began to finally dawn on me what had exactly happened,” Landwehr said. “I prayed unto myself, ‘Oh my God. I’ve had a brain injury. This is going to take a lot of effort on my part to get over. Nobody can do this for me. Only you can do this for me.’”
With continued strength from God and an unwavering determination of his own, Landwehr began to defy odds, redeveloping skills and strength much faster than what his doctors ever thought possible. And in 2002, Landwehr began a journey to finish what was abruptly put on hold that rainy day in March.
“Recovery is returning to whatever you were doing before a catastrophe occurs,” he said. “I was a college student living in St. Louis, majoring in ministry. So in January of 2002, I once again became college student, living in St. Louis, majoring in ministry. I’ve recovered.”
Now, Landwehr, who still speaks with a slur and walks with a stagger, not only accepts his disability, he embraces it.
He’s spoken to over 130 church, school and rehabilitation groups about traumatic brain injury. In 2001, he was elected to his current position as secretary for the Brain Injury Association of Missouri.
And through much support, he’s comes to terms with his friend’s death.
“It was an accident,” Landwehr said. “Accidents happen. Unlike so many car accidents where somebody else is at fault, no one was drunk, no one was speeding, no one was high, no one was talking on the phone. It was bad weather. Who am I going to blame?”
To Landwehr, who graduated with a Bachelor of Professional Studies in Ministry and Leadership, the short walk across the platform at this spring’s graduation ceremony signified much more than the end of a college experience.
As indicated by the rousing response led by his professors, it signified a miracle.
“It was almost a little too much to handle,” he recalled. “I could see out of the corner of my eyes some of my professors begin to stand. Yeah, I’ve come full circle.”
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Missouri Baptist University is a premier Christian university in Saint Louis, offering graduate and undergraduate studies in over thirty specialized fields and nine degrees. MBU's education and fine arts programs are nationally known in addition to business, religion, administration of justice, and more. MBU is one of the fastest growing higher education institutions in Missouri with an enrollment of over 4,500 students at five locations in the bi-state region — West County, Lincoln County, Jefferson County, Franklin County and the new Illinois extension at Lewis and Clark Community College.
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