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One day early last spring, Emily Perona stopped at the Missouri University of Science and Technology for a run around the track. She set out to run four laps – one mile. Although it took her more than 11 minutes to complete her four laps, the time wasn’t important. It was amazing she was running at all. Less than six months prior, Emily was a junior at St. James High School on a late-summer band trip to Six Flags. Only a few miles from their destination on I-44, a semi-truck was stopped because of construction. That caused a chain-reaction accident that resulted in Emily’s bus rear-ending a pick-up truck, killing Daniel Schatz, 19, of Sullivan. Then a second bus carrying the rest of the band rear-ended Emily’s bus. Emily was sitting in the second-to-last row and was pinned between the seats. Freshman Jessica Brinker, 15, was in the seat behind Perona and was killed in the crash. “I can’t remember the 30 minutes before the accident,” Perona said. “All of a sudden there was shaking. I opened my eyes and looked left, and the landscape was at an incline. “Then the second bus hit. When I opened my eyes again, I was stuck.” That was about the time Ty Mayberry arrived on the scene. Mayberry was also traveling to Six Flags with his family from Sullivan. He boarded the bus and helped usher the girls to safety, and he helped comfort Emily until the firefighters could extricate her. Emily was taken to three different hospitals before arriving at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. She had suffered a crushed pelvis and would require surgery to insert plates and screws. “I told myself I will run again,” Emily said. “I wanted to get (surgery) over with and wanted to be ready to put it all together.” Emily’s mother, Loretta Perona, knew her daughter needed surgery. But the family didn’t want to think about what the prognosis would be afterward. “We never asked the doctor because we didn’t want to hear that she wouldn’t walk again,” Loretta said. “After the surgery, the doctor came in to check her leg. Her foot was drooping over, and then I was concerned. When she started physical therapy, she could move her leg forward but not back.” Then there was a second surgery in December to remove the plates and screws. Emily said she was excited for the surgery because she would get rid of the stabilizing bar that had limited her movement and prevented her from any type of training. The injury and surgeries had damaged the sciatic nerve and left her with drop foot. She didn’t have the ability to pick her foot up. Through a combination of a leg brace and some kinesio tape, they were able to stabilize Emily’s foot enough for her to walk.
Vincent thought she was only going to attempt a lap or two. “She said, ‘Dad, I’m not going to run two laps. I’m going to run a mile,’” Vincent said. “That’s when I started crying.” Those four laps let Emily know that everything would work out in the end. “It was hard for me,” Emily said. “But when I was done, I thought, ‘Yes, I can do this.’ It gave me a glimpse of hope that, yes, I’ll be able to run.” Along with the drop foot, one leg was now a half-inch shorter than the other. Emily found a better brace and shoe insert to help offset those limitations and set out to return for the track season. By the start of the season, she was running an eight-minute mile. By the end of the season, she ran a 6:53 at districts. She was within a minute of her sophomore PR time. Vincent, a middle school track and cross country coach, has had a hand in helping all of his children train. After the track season, he asked Emily if she was ready to tackle her goals again and get back to state in cross country. “I told her, ‘Then we have to pick up where we left off last summer,’” Vincent said. Before the accident, Emily had been showing some promising signs as a runner. She finished sixth in districts as a sophomore and qualified for the Class 2 state meet. She had finished 36th and 44th in two trips to the state cross country meet. It was after the accident that St. James coach David Bond saw just how much running meant to Emily. Despite her intense pain and immobility, Emily traveled with the team to every possible meet. She was there to cheer on her team and show her support. “It wasn’t immediately apparent she really loved running,” Bond said. “I thought she was a basketball kid who was out for cross country. By the time we got through the accident, it became clear to me that this kid loves to run.” Bond said he saw Emily sitting beside the course at meets or struggling to get around on crutches. He saw the pain she was in, and it broke his heart. “I know she missed us, and she felt obligated to be there because we had made her a student leader,” Bond said. “She was worried, scared, in pain – it was hard for the family. Not that anyone complained.” Throughout every moment of the last year, Emily and her family held onto their faith. They never wavered, and Emily is still resolute in her conviction. When she started racing this fall, Emily was lagging behind her freshman sister, Hannah, who had also been involved in the bus accident. Hannah escaped unharmed, and now she was beating her older sister. That only motivated Emily to work that much harder. “I thought, ‘Why is this happening?’” Emily said. “I decided to run for God and run for the love of running.” Not long after that decision, Emily mastered one of her biggest goals. Since her freshman season, Emily had set out to best the time of 21:30. She had made signs and notes and put them up around her room as a reminder of her goal.
Then at the Dixon Invitational this year, Emily broke through that barrier with a 21:24. “I didn’t look at my watch as much as I usually do,” Emily said. “And when I crossed the finish line, it was cool to see 21:24.” She has now lowered that goal to 20:45. Bond said he thinks Emily will prevail over any goal she sets before her. He’s not only seen her recover from her accident and run again. He’s witnessed her come back even better than before. “Her times are better; her places are better; her form is better; her strength is better – any way you want to look at it,” Bond said. It’s been a long journey over the past year to reach this point, and Emily and her family know the climb is not over yet. She only recently began to see some movement return to her foot, which Vincent said has served as a constant reminder of that fatal accident. “Running has helped the healing, but the accident is always in the back of our minds because a month ago she couldn’t lift her foot; it’s never very far away from us,” Vincent said. And Emily has not tried to run away from happened, either. She dedicated the season to Jessica, and even wrote her name on her shoes. She’ll often remind her dad during their jogs together that she’s doing all this for Jessica. Emily has always put others first. She was concerned for Hannah’s safety during the bus accident and directed her sister off the bus. She focused on being present for her team’s sake last season despite the pain she was in. She continues to keep Jessica present in thought and deed. Bond said none of what Emily done is surprising. But it is still amazing. “She’s just being a good sister, a good teammate, a good captain,” Bond said. “She decided last year that she didn’t want to be the bus tragedy girl. She wanted to be known for her accomplishments, her success and her hard work.”
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It was after one of her hour-long physical therapy sessions that Emily and her father, Vincent, were driving home past the S&T track when Emily said she wanted to stop and run.