1960 -
AUGLAIZE COUNTY
NANETTE DAVIS FERRALL was born on April 15, 1960, in St. Marys, Ohio. She attended St. Marys Memorial High School, excelling in both academics and athletics. She received varsity letters in basketball, gymnastics, and track. She was a member of the choir, the Girls Athletic Association, the M‑Club (a local school‑based club), Thespians, and Y‑Teens, and she was active with the school newspaper, the Blue Print. On the evening of graduation day, June 4, 1978, on her way home from a graduation party, Ferrall was involved in a tragic automobile accident in which she suffered a spinal‑cord injury that left her paralyzed from the waist down. She was not expected to walk again. Her life turned, but it did not end. With the support of family and friends and with six months of recovery and rehabilitation behind her, Ferrall enrolled at Wright State University, graduating in 1983. While at Wright State, she met Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky, a professor of biomedical engineering and physiology who had developed a computerized electronic system that stimulated muscles with small jolts of electricity in order to enhance muscle tone and increase circulation to a paralyzed limb. Working with Dr. Petrofsky, Ferrall made history. On November 11, 1982, four years after her accident, she took five dramatic steps and became the first paraplegic ever to walk. In 1986, Ferrall launched an aerobic fitness program for paraplegics and quadriplegics, called Moving Again, at Middletown Regional Hospital, located between Cincinnati and Dayton, where she served for two years as administrative director. This program was designed to put Dr. Petrofsky's technological research into a clinical setting and to demonstrate that people with spinal‑cord injuries can do more and live healthier lives than ever before. Currently, Ferrall teaches elementary school in her hometown, manages her own driving school, gives inspirational speeches on health care and the importance of safe driving, works out several times a week on her computerized stationary bicycle, and plays golf occasionally with the aid of a walker. Ferrall's story was dramatized in a 1985 CBS movie, First Steps. The scientific breakthrough that permitted her achievement is on display at the EPCOT Science and Technology Exhibition Center in Orlando, Florida.
Source: Profiles of Ohio Women 1803-2003, By Jacqueline Jones Royster, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 2003.