Page 58 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2017 - Online Magazine

Big Daddy

by Deanna Duncan

When Ray Duncan’s granddaughter Elizabeth was two,
she memorized the 23rd Psalm—complete with hand
motions. In her sweet toddler voice she would literally
shout out, “I will fear no evil for you are with me.” The
family would laugh and the performance would start
again…and again…and again.
On a sunny day in May 2005, these same words flooded understand, this is a man who is sheer determination
Ray’s mind as he lay alone on a pile of bricks after falling personified,” explained Ray’s former pastor Jerry Joplin.
off a 22 foot roof. He cried out for help, but there was no “No one is going to tell him he can’t do something.”
one to physically hear him. As the sun warmed him and And so, rejecting what the doctors said, pulling on
the birds sweetly sang, he drew on his faith and asked every bit of faith he had and working harder than he
for a miracle. ever had before, Ray Duncan decided he would walk.
The first one came when a friend saw his truck on the “I was in the hospital for 45 days,” Ray explained.
deserted dirt road and stopped to chat. An ambulance “During that time, I would have therapy several days
ride, a Flight For Life trip and multiple surgeries later, a week. On the days I wasn’t scheduled my friend Bill
Ray found himself at University Medical Center (UMC) Carter would come up to the hospital and we would
lying in a bed. find some weights and do the same exercises.”
“I had heard a nurse at the first hospital say that I had For the next eight months, Ray continued to do daily
broken my hip and I figured that wasn’t really a problem. therapy—even if it wasn’t scheduled. “There were a few
However, when I woke up, I was numb from the waist things that sustained me during that time: the Psalms,
down,” he recalls. “I turned to a nurse and told her, ‘My people and my goal to walk. I counted every day as a
body’s gone to sleep. You have to wake it up.’ She just victory.”
smiled at me.” To celebrate his victories, one year after the accident the
Soon Ray learned that the broken hip was the least of whole family—three sons, spouses and six grandkids—
his injuries. He had a spinal cord injury, a broken back, went to California.
wrists, crushed pelvis and a broken hip. “He may have been in a wheelchair or a scooter, but
“They told us he would never walk again,” Linda we had to keep a close eye on him,” relates Linda. “I
Duncan, Ray’s wife, said with tears. “When they said look away and the next minute he is getting on a ride
that, my mind just shut down.” that goes upside down.” Ray just smiles.
Ray doesn’t always follow conventional wisdom. “Big As the months progressed, jaws would drop as Ray
Daddy (Ray) doesn’t really care what people think,” encountered people who had helped him in the hospital.
said granddaughter Elizabeth. “He is the hardest They were all amazed to see him walking, zip-lining and
worker I know,” added grandson Taylor. “You have to returning to the things he loved in life—like fishing.
That first trip back to the lake—the scene of the
accident—was an adventure. Neither Jerry nor Ray had
thought about how he was going to get into the boat.
He lashed ladders together and shimmied. Mission
accomplished.
“We get out onto the lake and Ray started teetering
about. I had to threaten to tie him to a chair if he
wouldn’t sit down. Linda would’ve killed me if he got
this far and then I let him drown,” Jerry relates.
Ray grins and adds, “I still beat him that day.” It is
rumored he insisted on fishing from the front the boat.
“All joking aside, twelve years later, what I see when
I look at Ray is a man who leads a purpose driven life,”