Standing Tall

The moment was brief and violent. Its aftermath will linger for the rest of Ranny McKee's life, and perhaps beyond.

A dirt motorcycle course near Sam Boyd Stadium on a cool January day in 1991. McKee, blessed (or cursed) with uncommon valor, navigating and hip-hopping his dirt bike over various jumps and ditches.

He spies a particularly tricky jump as he steers out of a turn. He accelerates to a small but harrowing mound of dirt, preparing to vault no more than eight feet high but 60 feet through the air.

While airborne, McKee shifts gears and braces for a jarring landing, after which he must instantly regain control of his bike to navigate yet another sharp turn.

"No one would ever take that jump," McKee says now. "It was very technical, very difficult and not many people wanted to try it. But I knew I could make it."

This time, and for maybe the only time in his life, McKee was wrong.

As a half-dozen fellow motorcyclists watched in astonishment from the track's perimeter, McKee took the jump and soared at low altitude toward the highly banked turn. But the bike got away from him, its front tire pitching skyward with McKee reduced to a helpless passenger.

"The last thing I remember before landing was thinking that I was going to come up short, that the back tire would land hard and the bike would pitch me forward," McKee says. "Usually in those situations you try to push the bike away and take the fall, but I couldn't because I was heading straight for the banking of the turn."

Head first.

Ninety seconds after careening into the hard dirt wall, McKee had regained consciousness. He turned, dazed, to his left and saw what he was certain was his disembodied left arm.

"I thought it had to have been severed, because I could see it but I couldn't feel it," McKee says. "I thought for sure I'd lost my arm."

McKee then noticed his right hand resting on his cheek. He tried to move it and couldn't. There was no feeling, no movement, nothing.

"I bit down hard on my other hand and couldn't feel it," McKee says. "Then I tried to get up and all I could move was my head. Then I got scared, because I knew what had really happened."

McKee had dislocated his spinal column between the third and fourth vertebrae near the base of his skull, and fractured another vertebrae between his shoulder blades. He was paralyzed, a quadriplegic at age 25.

"It was the thing I feared the most growing up, especially riding motorcycles," McKee says. "I'd see people on TV talking about it, and it scared me."

Now, seven years after an inspired recovery, McKee is one of those people, literally walking the walk and talking the talk.

Using his own riveting story of hope, recovery and success as a focal point, McKee has been hosting a live, half-hour talk show on KTV Channel 63 (cable 42) entitled, "Achieving the Possible."

The weekly program debuted on the local station -- which is devoted to programming directed at health and wellness -- on Aug. 20 and it airs every Thursday at 7 p.m. McKee features guests who share stories similar to his own triumph over seemingly boundless obstacles.

One guest was off-road racer Evan Evans, who has managed to continue a successful driving career as a paraplegic with a truck modified with hands-only controls. McKee has also found time to feature the latest in rehabilitation equipment, and plans to interview a 7-year-old boy who was an avid skier and karate expert and is now battling to overcome a stroke.

What gave McKee -- a contractor by trade who owns his own custom home company, Elegant Homes -- the notion he could host a live television program with absolutely no broadcasting experience?

Perhaps a peek into his persona provides the answer.

"I have always set my mind to do things and worked extremely hard to reach my goals," the 33-year-old McKee says. "When I was a kid, I had a picture of a motorcycle on my wall. I wanted that motorcycle, but my parents said that if I wanted it, I'd have to buy it myself."

So, at age 14, McKee found work in construction. He got his bike.

"I've always thought that you can achieve goals if you put your mind to it," McKee says. "Even before my accident, I was very self-motivated. It was something that was instinctive."

McKee gained a contractor's license by age 18 and took up motorcycle racing. He was well on his way to a successful, lucrative career building custom homes for a company owned by a couple of his friends when he was rendered, it seemed, a lifelong quadriplegic.

But with the support of his wife of 11 years, Tricia, as well as his family, McKee embarked on an aggressive rehabilitation program that had him walking -- albeit haltingly -- in eight months.

"I was constantly being told I couldn't do it," McKee says. "Even when I'd make progress, it was like it didn't mean anything because the doctors were always telling me I wouldn't walk again. They were conditioning me mentally for a life in a wheelchair."

Tricia was being prepared for that life as well, being instructed to leave her husband alone during the early stages of rehabilitation so McKee could grow accustomed to being alone in the chair.

"I finally said, 'Enough of that,' " says Tricia, five months pregnant with the couple's first child. "Ranny wanted to walk again. I wanted him to walk again."

So, with McKee relocated from Las Vegas to a hospital in Pasadena, Calif., the family embraced an aggressive physical therapy program. Rather than working out for the prescribed two hours per day, the family doubled it to four and made sure the hospital's gymnasium was kept open late at night.

"We'd go down and put weights in my hands, even though I couldn't move them," McKee says. "My family always kept me moving, all day long, moving my feet and hands, my legs and my arms. Even though I couldn't move myself, my muscles were staying in shape because I was always being moved."

Then, after two months, McKee regained movement in his right toes. Then he was able to bend his right knee. Then both arms.

After four months spent hospitalized, McKee returned home and his brother and father continued rehabilitation in his parents' back yard. McKee would be propped up and stand for a few moments before falling.

The moments turned to seconds, the seconds to a minute. Then there were a couple of steps. Then, in time, laps around the back yard.

"It didn't happen fast, believe me," McKee says. "But we worked constantly. It was important for me to stand, even with assistance, and when I was out of the chair and in the walker, I never went back to the chair, even if I was falling a lot."

The walker soon gave way to a cane, and the walker was discarded. Finally, around seven months after the accident, Tricia returned from work and spotted the cane resting in an outside garbage can.

"That was the big moment," she says. "I knew there would be no more chairs or walkers or canes."

McKee returned to work as a superintendent for Woodside Homes, though he was still unable to complete a workday without a dozen or so tumbles. But he kept picking himself up, physically and spiritually.

"We spent our whole life savings on my medical bills," McKee says. "Our families spent a lot of time and money. It was important for me to get back to work, to earn a living and show that I was a productive person again."

In 1995, McKee started Elegant Homes, which specializes in building custom houses in the $1 million-range and constructs only five or six per year. His goal is to be "physically 100 percent, make people happy in business and in life and to live for other people."

McKee still walks with a distinct limp with a brace on his left foot and can't run, but has been an inspiration to a multitude of rehabilitating adults and children for years.

"There is nothing more pleasing, more rewarding, than for a paraplegic child to see me walk in the door and know I was once where they were," McKee says. "That's why I decided to do this show, to reach as many people as possible. I can't tell them what their doctors are telling them, and I never say they will definitely make it.

"But I can say that someone once told me I couldn't do it, and look at me now."

archive