Beginning

My name is Hope Brooks and I was a teacher – 4th grade, elementary music and piano. My life was busy. School years were exhausting but fulfilling. In 2018 I was doing everything I had dreamed I would do as a child but all that came to a crashing halt.

On April 13 my life changed drastically. In less than two seconds what I knew was lost. When I left my house early that morning I had no idea what was going to happen. I was on a field trip with my students along with third grade. We were in Charleston and staying on board the USS Yorktown. My co-worker and I had taken our students every other year since 2005.

We arrived and boarded the ship. We dropped off our luggage and went to a local park for lunch and to give the students time to run around after the long bus ride. When we got back to the USS Yorktown we toured the flight deck. This also was something we did every trip as a group. After exploring the flight deck a group of students wanted to go higher up and see the bridge. We started up and as I was climbing one of the ladder like stairs where you had to kind of pull yourself up to the next step my head collided with the solid steel opening.

I lost most of my memories about that time. I remember holding on to the cold handrails with everything I had just praying my food would stay down. For years when I would flashback to this time I could feel the coldness of those handrails. I didn’t know then how much my life would change. I didn’t know that I would start to be in constant pain. My life changed in that single second of time….God put me on a different road. A road I wouldn’t have signed up for if I had a choice.