SPREADING THE WORD: STAY BELTED, SOBER

After a near-fatal car accident on June 21, 1986, Jeff Harms spent 19 days in a coma, then had to re-learn such simple tasks as swallowing and tying his shoes.

Today, Harms works to prevent anyone else from having to endure what he went through by spreading the word to motorists to use their seat belts and drive sober. He speaks to civic organizations and schools on behalf of the Missouri Heads Up program.

"The way I look at it, God wanted me to survive for a reason, and this is it," he said, explaining that he considers the opportunity to spread the safety message "a blessing."

Harms, who lives in Cape Girardeau, suffered a closed-head injury and his neck was fractured in five places when his bright red Chevrolet Corvette ran off the highway and flipped twice. He was driving drunk after a day on the golf course, and neither he nor his passenger, a man with whom he had been golfing, was wearing their seat belts. Police reports indicate the car was going at least 85 mph.

"I did it to myself. I'm the only one I can blame for being out there drinking and driving and not wearing a seat belt," he said.

His passenger was ejected from the vehicle during the first flip, landing in a patch of poison ivy. The rash was the extent of the passenger's injuries.

Harms was ejected during the second flip.

"I got poison ivy too, but it didn't itch me a bit while I was in my coma," he said Wednesday in a speech to the Cape Girardeau Lions Club.

"If I'd had my seat belt on, all I would have experienced was a couple of pieces of glass in my arm," he said.

He spent 11 months in the hospital after the accident.

Harms suffered damage to the frontal lobe of his brain, causing memory loss. His parents showed him old photographs to help him remember much of his life before the crash.

"Very little of my memory came back. I always say I have my parents' long-term memory," he said.

Harms still has problems with his short-term memory. He can memorize a list of instructions or a process, but he can't put that information into practice, he said.

"Every time I have to make a rapid decision, I make the wrong decision," he said.

An Army veteran who used to fly Cobra helicopter gunships, Harms said he should have known better than to be driving without a seat belt.

"The very first thing that the Army wants you to do is fasten the (helicopter) seat belt and shoulder harness. It's the first thing on the pre-flight checklist, and now it's the first thing I do when I get in the car."

Harms is driving again, but now his wife, Kim, serves as navigator, checking maps and reading street signs "while I concentrate on driving," he said.

He and Kim met in 1988 at the Rusk Brain Injury Rehabilitation Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia Hospital. They married in 1989.

Kim Hill Harms, a Sikeston native, was also injured in an alcohol-related accident as she and a friend were driving home from Carbondale, Ill. She lay in a coma for four days and three nights before hunters discovered the car off an embankment near Anna, Ill. Kim's accident occurred in August 1986.

Since the accident, Harms says he writes everything down so he can remember it. "My memory now is the door leaving our apartment," he said, explaining that he sticks the notes on the door so he'll see them before leaving for the day.