INDIANAPOLIS – Savannah Boehrer is standing in her wedding dress and waiting. She has been waiting for 21 years.
“Now it’s time for the father-daughter dance,” announces the DJ. The song begins to play: “Daddy Dance With Me”.
Since the age of two, Boehrer wanted him so badly. But his father Sam Schmidt couldn’t dance. He couldn’t walk.
On this April day, however, as the words “I know what you see when you look at me … as we walk down the aisle,” she sees something remarkable.
Schmidt walking towards her to dance.
Boehrer’s hand goes to his mouth. She starts to cry. Everyone in the lobby starts to cry. There are cheers, gasps and wonder.
For the first time since 2000, when an accident paralyzed Schmidt from neck to toe, he dances with his daughter – using an exoskeleton.
“I always dreamed that that day would come,” said Boehrer. “So for that dance, it was amazing just to be his daughter, and for him just to be my dad. So that we could have the daddy-daughter dance that every little girl dreams of. hands and dance. ”
“It was the best day in the past 21 years,” Schmidt said this week. “No exceptions.”
Same injury as Christopher Reeve
Schmidt was testing in Florida in January 2000, preparing for the IRL Indy 200 season opener later that month. He was in his Treadway Racing G Force-Aurora at Walt Disney World Speedway when he spun and hit the retaining wall.
He doesn’t remember what happened.
Schmidt detonated his C3 and C4 vertebrae and did not breathe for almost four minutes. Because it was an IndyCar test, the safety team was there, which to date claims Schmidt saved his life. The crew pulled him out, resuscitated Schmidt, and put him in a helicopter bound for Orlando.
What followed were days and weeks in a hospital, filled with disbelief and devastation.
On hospital television, a story crossed SportsCenter. “It’s a lot worse than we initially thought,” a spokesperson for Schmidt’s Treadway Racing team told ESPN. “He has the same injury as Christopher Reeve.”
Doctors told his wife, Sheila, to start looking for nursing homes, her 35-year-old husband might not live to be 40, that he would stay on a ventilator. If Superman couldn’t get by, Schmidt certainly couldn’t.
But Schmidt, now 56, stepped out of the fan. He founded Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, now known as Arrow McLaren SP. He started the Conquer Paralysis Now foundation. He learned to live in a wheelchair.
And for two decades, deep in his head, Schmidt had a dream. Take a walk to her daughter’s wedding.
I missed a lot of times
The journey dates back to 2013, with Schmidt’s dream of driving again. He started a project with Arrow Electronics who, along with his team of engineers, modified a Corvette to allow Schmidt to drive using only the movement of his head.
Seven months later, in 2014, Schmidt drove Carb Day at Indy and did 107 miles an hour.
“Jokingly I said, ‘You know, if we get it right with this Corvette when my daughter’s ready to get married, you’re going to have to create something for me to walk her down the aisle and be part of the wedding, ‘”, said Schmidt.” And’ ha ha ha, laugh, laugh, laugh. ‘”
But Schmidt wasn’t kidding.
Boehrer, now 23, was two and a half years old when Schmidt was injured. Her son Spencer was six months old.
“We had just come into life. It was that time in life that I could take him to swimming lessons… just have fun and then I had an accident,” he said. he declares. “They only really knew me in the wheelchair. I just missed a lot of the whole body hugs and those moments.”
In 2019, Boehrer had been dating her husband, Adam Boehrer, for about two years.
“I kind of got a feeling that things were going in that direction and he was about to ask,” Schmidt said. So he went to Arrow. “And I said, ‘I don’t know how much time we have, but it’s not a lot. We have to go.'”
Arrow rode it with the same passion, strength and ingenuity as with the Corvette, Schmidt said. Four engineers were assigned solely to design an exoskeleton that would allow Schmidt to walk.
They took an existing, proven exoskeleton product, then adapted it, added some technology to it, and customized it for Schmidt’s injury level, which is much higher than most exoskeletons are for. designed.
The device operates from the waist and has motors at the knees and hips to simulate walking.
Market. Schmidt had to go to the gym. Bone density and atrophy can be problems after sitting for two decades. He hadn’t used any of those muscles. He had to make sure they were strong enough.
He spent four to five days a week, two hours a day exercising, losing weight.
“It peaked on April 25 in Laguna, Calif.,” He said. “And we shocked a lot of people.”
‘It was crazy. It was chaotic ‘
The wedding took place outside in a grove of 120-year-old trees. Schmidt had hoped to get Boehrer to walk down the aisle, but it was rough terrain, even moving his wheelchair was difficult.
“And frankly, walking down the aisle should really be about her and not me,” he said. “And she was beautiful.”
After the wedding, Boehrer was waiting in this reception hall. The exoskeleton requires a person to balance Schmidt from behind.
“And we walked in together and it was the first time she had seen me standing and walking,” he said. “So to say that there wasn’t a dry eye in the room was pretty much an understatement.”
Growing up, Boehrer said, no part of his family’s life was “normal,” at least not in the traditional sense.
“My brother and I came to love and cherish all the ways that our childhood and now adulthood were different, and we wouldn’t change our situation for the world,” she said. “That being said … being able to dance with my dad at my wedding was more than a dream come true.”
Schmidt danced the first dance with Boehrer and the second with his wife to the song “Stand By Me”.
“When my mom came for the next dance with him, that’s when the emotion filled the room,” said Boehrer. “It had been over 21 years since my mom had been able to stand and dance with my dad. At that point, even just for a dance, she was able to come back. special that I have ever witnessed. “
For the third, fourth and fifth dance, the rest of the wedding crowd joined us.
“It was crazy. It was chaotic,” Schmidt said. “It was better than anyone could have imagined.”
No more tears, this time at IMS
He’s at a loss for words to describe what it’s like to walk. How do you describe what it’s like to sit for 21 years and then get up and take steps?
“It’s euphoric. I had forgotten what the view looked like up there,” Schmidt said. “Because I’ve been sitting here staring at people’s waists for 21 years, and then I get up and look at the top of their heads.”
Schmidt is 6-1, but he had forgotten what it was like to be that tall.
Weeks after the wedding, Schmidt had another emotional moment while walking. He was at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the GMR Grand Prix on May 10.
Tim Baughman, IndyCar’s track safety manager, is the man who pulled Schmidt out of the car in Florida after his accident.
Schmidt found him at IMS that day – and he arrived behind him. Baughman turned around “and he just started screaming. He just lost it,” Schmidt said.
The two kissed.
The exoskeleton is now version 1.0, Schmidt said, the purpose of straightening it up and making it work. The way the unit works, its body has to shift its weight left and right to move its legs. Schmidt cannot make this change.
Arrow is working on version 2.0 which will use voice command to allow Schmidt to initiate the steps and not require the body change.
“The big obstacle in Stage 3 would be non-intervention,” he said. “I do it myself.”
One last moment of wonder for Schmidt came the day after the Indy 500. He was at a friend’s house for a barbecue. The friend had recorded the race and Schmidt was watching it when, after the checkered flag, an Arrow commercial aired.
Schmidt had no idea this was going to happen.
Images of his accident in Florida, Schmidt in hospital, the Corvette at 160 km / h, then Schmidt getting up from his wheelchair, walking towards the car and walking away.
Before his eyes, the last 21 years of his life have unfolded. A life he never imagined he would have.
“The sky is the limit,” he said.
Boehrer feels exactly the same.
“Our family motto is ‘It’s not if, but when he walks again,'” she said. “And that’s just the beginning.”
Follow IndyStar Sports Journalist Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Contact her by email: [email protected].
