ACCIDENTS BRING PAIR TOGETHER; COUPLE MEET IN REHAB TREATMENT

When Jeff and Kim Harms first met four years ago in a brain injury rehabilitation program, both were trying to salvage lives shattered by serious injuries they had suffered in car wrecks.

Now they're husband and wife in a relationship that embraces a special kind of cooperation and determination.

Kim's wreck left her without a sense of smell and permanently damaged the tear duct in her left eye, requiring her to avoid cigarette smoke and dry, hot environments. Jeff, on the other hand, has memory problems.

"She's my road map," Jeff, 32, of Cape Girardeau, said of his wife, who admits to only being in her late 20s. "You can take this lady anywhere for the first time and she can find her way back.

"My memory, to today, isn't that good. I'm religious about writing stuff down." Also, he said, he has to rely on word association.

The couple believe God planned for them to meet.

Kim said: "We get along so well with each other. For me, he's just the perfect companion.

"I admit I am very dependent on Jeff when it comes to the sense of smell."

The couple were hurt in single-car accidents that occurred just over two months apart, Jeff's near Rolla in June 1986 and Kim's near Anna, Ill., in August. Both accidents were alcohol-related and no seat belts were used.

The couple met through the six-month Rusk Brain Injury Rehabilitation Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia Hospital in January 1988.

In his accident, Jeff said, his Chevrolet Corvette hit a bad spot in the road and turned over twice, throwing him from the car. Jeff, an Army veteran and former Cobra helicopter gunship pilot who later worked as a recruiter for a military school and college, said the accident happened early in the morning on the first day of summer and he was drunk. He had started drinking beer the previous afternoon while playing 27 holes of golf, he said.

Jeff, then 27 years of age, fractured his neck in five places and received a closed head injury when his brain slammed against his skull. A friend was also thrown from the car, but only received a bad case of poison ivy.

The accident, Jeff said, left him in a coma for 19 days and strapped to a rotary kinetic bed that turned once every seven minutes. After coming out of the coma, Jeff faced a long road toward recuperation.

A former student at Southeast Missouri State University, Kim was injured when the car she was a passenger in turned over at the bottom of an embankment off Highway 51, about 1.4 miles north of Highway 146. Kim, whose maiden name was Hill, and the driver, Mark Lynn Brown of Jackson, were on a date and returning from Carbondale, Ill.

The accident ejected Kim through the car's sun roof. Brown died. Because the wreck wasn't visible from the road, Kim laid exposed to the elements for four days and three nights until deer hunters came upon the wreck.

In the accident, Kim said, she received a broken nose and a seriously dislocated jaw. The damage and lack of attention after the accident caused her to lose her sense of smell, Kim said.

Jeff said he now has his memory back, but that the process covered 1 years.

"You don't know how scary it is to not know how to tie your shoes at 27 years of age," he said.

"I compared it to watching movies I had seen before; someone would say something and I would say, `Yeah, I remember doing that'. But (in the movies) I was the movie star, of course."

Jeff said he and Kim first dated on Valentine's Day weekend in 1988. On that weekend, he said, he asked Kim, whom he knew was homesick, to accompany him on a trip to his parents' home in Boonville, where his father took him every Friday, Saturday and Sunday while he attended the rehabilitation program.

"My parents live north of Sikeston," Kim said, "and because of the distance I couldn't go home."

Jeff said his parents told him to bring somebody home from the program.

"But they didn't have any idea I'd bring Kim home with me," he said. "They thought I'd bring one of the guys home."

Kim was one of three women in the program, the couple said. The program had five men in it.

Twenty months later, in October 1989, Kim and Jeff married at the Jefferson City courthouse.

Today Jeff speaks about drunk driving and seat-belt use to students and civic groups and has testified before a Missouri House of Representatives subcommittee on toughening DWI laws as well as open-container laws. Kim works as a part-time secretary at VIP Industries on Highway 74 in Cape Girardeau.

Jeff also spends his weekdays volunteering as a transporter at St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. The job involves showing people around the hospital and transporting patients between departments, the couple said. Kim also does volunteer work at the hospital.

One night last week, the couple said, Jeff spoke to a 4-H club at Biehle.

"He really caught their attention," Kim said. Jeff will speak this Thursday to both junior and senior high school students at Zalma.

Jeff is also determined to get his story published as a book. Currently, he said, he has five chapters written of a book titled "Harms' Way" that will tell his story and how he and Kim met.