Frederick MD 6/29/98
Former Catoctin athlete critical;
hopeful of recovery
from the Frederick News-Post,
Frederick MD, June 29, 1998, page 2.
By Julia Robb and John Cannon
Prominent former Catoctin High School athlete Kathy Messner is in critical
condition at R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore following a Friday accident,
but doctors believe she will not be paralyzed, according to Marie Messner, Kathy's mother.
Miss Messner, 18, who graduated from Catoctin this spring, can move her arms and
legs, her mother said, adding that Kathy is on a respirator.
Miss Messner, who won a national high jump championship in March and has 12
state track titles, recently began competing again after another injury. Last week
she won an AAU Regional Track and Field title, in Horsham, PA.
Miss Messner was driving a Ford Escort east on MD 140 near Tract Road when the
accident happened. She had stopped to make a left turn when another eastbound
vehicle, a pickup truck, struck Miss Messner's car in the rear, spun it around and sent it
across the center line where it was hit by a tractor trailer, sheriff's deputies said.
The tractor trailer ran over Miss Messner's car. She had to be freed by
emergency personnel.
Ms. Messner said her daughter has a full athletic scholarship from Penn State
University. And she's hoping her daughter will make it to school next fall because
"she's a fighter. We've seen her down before and she's always come back.
We're counting on that spirit. I just saw the car. It's a miracle
she's alive."
Doctors told Ms. Messner that the accident fused her daughter's fourth and
fifth vertebra, lacerated her spleen and left a deep gash on her left arm. During
surgery that lasted more than 14 hours, Ms. Messner said Kathy's doctors fused a bone from
her hip to her neck to replace a vertebrae and placed a steel plate in her neck.
Ms. Messner said she believes Kathy's father, Larry Messner, who died in 1994,
was with her and protecting her during the accident. Her father was a big track fan,
said Ms. Messner.
And she knows for sure her sister Ann was there. Ann Messner is
chief of the Emmitsburg Ambulance Co., and she heard her sister's accident from the
National Fire Academy. Ann Messner "went out there and saw a heap of rubble and
there sat her sister in there and Kathy said "Ann get me out of here," said Ms.
Messner, explaining Kathy never lost consciousness.
Miss Messner also asked her sister whether she would live, said Ms. Messner.
