She doesn't remember the driver sobbing at the edge of the highway or the helicopter that carried her to a hospital in Missoula.
Sheylynn, then 12, was coming home from a church youth group that meets near her home. As she crossed the highway, a car smashed into the girl, throwing her 65 feet. Her legs broke, and her skull fractured. Her shoes and cookies scattered. Her Bible landed on the highway.
That was Sept. 27.
Today, Sheylynn is alive. She's 13. She's walking and can't wait to run.
She's proof to her family that even a horrible accident can yield rich and unexpected blessings.
“We do give all the glory to God,” said Sheylynn's mother, Mary Cordle.
Ron and Mary Cordle live with their youngest daughter in a home just north of the Stevensville Wye. Five other children are grown and gone, but the couple keeps busy with Sheylynn. They home-school her, and she attends a few different Bible study groups, one just across the highway.
On nights when the sun sets late, she's allowed to walk home from church by herself.
A while ago, a huge and brightly lit Conoco sign illuminated the corner, but it doesn't anymore. When it's dark, Sheylynn is supposed to call her mother to come pick her up.
The night of Sept. 27 was dark - “darker than the devil's heart,” Mary said.
That night, Mary was to give Sheylynn a ride home - that was the plan. While Mary waited, she watched television. She looked at the clock. Shortly after 8 p.m., she expected the phone to ring.
Instead, she heard tires screeching. A dog started barking.
Accidents aren't uncommon at the Wye, and Mary thought a car had hit an animal - maybe a dog or a deer.
She walked outside to look. At first, she didn't see Sheylynn. Instead, she saw a gift she and Ron had given their daughter.
“I saw her Bible in the highway,” Mary said.
Then she saw her daughter. Sheylynn was lying on her side, and to Mary, looked just like she was going to sleep.
She wasn't sleeping, though. She needed urgent medical care, and it came in a flurry. A doctor who witnessed the accident asked to help. Soon other medical workers descended on the scene. They couldn't detect vital signs, and someone said a “life bird” was on its way.
On the highway shoulder, the driver of the car that hit Sheylynn sobbed and prayed. Mary hugged the driver and watched her daughter.
“I kept thinking how small she looked,” Mary said.
Ron Cordle was in Nevada at the time of the accident. Mary called to tell him about it, slowly breaking the news. When she mentioned brain trauma, Ron headed for home.
“I was in dire fear of losing her,” he said.
He prayed and drove and prayed. At one point, he felt his daughter would die.
“The angel of death was there,” he said.
A family member called and prayed with him over the phone.
The Cordles are a religious family. They're members of Jesus Community Church. A cross hangs on their front door. They believe in the power of prayer, and their friends and family sent many prayers heavenward for Sheylynn.
Ron and Mary credit doctors and their community for helping them through the ordeal, but they credit God first.
At the hospital that first night, doctors let Mary see her daughter only after clinicians cleaned her from the accident.
“She looked horrible,” Mary said.
Four men from different religious denominations laid hands on Sheylynn and prayed for her. “It was so beautiful,” Mary said.
The entire Bitterroot Valley prayed.
The family believes doctors had written off their little girl. At one point, one family member had to corner a doctor to demand that he relieve pressure from Sheylynn's brain, according to the Cordles.
Finally, about three hours after she was admitted to the hospital, Sheylynn's color started coming back.
That night, Mary's nephew didn't want to go to bed because he knew he'd dream about Sheylynn. When he did, though, he dreamed of her learning to walk on crutches.
After maybe a day and a half of driving, Ron arrived in Missoula. He broke down when he saw Sheylynn.
Soon, though, he too felt better.
“I was sure in my mind and in my heart that she was going to be OK,” he said.
Then came a setback. On Oct. 3, a life-threatening brain aneurysm sent Sheylynn and her mother to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center.
Mary had always wanted to fly in a Lear jet. The trip and the good-natured comments from a crew member brightened the otherwise frightening day. “We don't serve peanuts or anything like that,” one said.
Again, the little girl defied the odds. In Seattle at two different hospitals, Sheylynn started making gains. Her right eye started to open. She started to move her right hand. At one point, she set off alarms by pulling out her breathing tube.
That was the bad news, the nurses said. The good news was she was trying to talk.
That day, Oct. 10, she spoke for the first time since the accident.
Mary marked as many bits of progress as she could on a calendar.
On Nov. 3, both casts came off Sheylynn's legs.
“She took two steps that day,” Mary said.
Sheylynn started walking with “an old-lady walker” and then with crutches. Later, she graduated to a supportive belt. Eventually, the nurses gave Sheylynn a cane.
She never used it.
“They (the nurses) were just amazed,” Mary said.
Sheylynn was discharged from Children's Hospital on Nov. 16 and was home the next day. She returned to a community that poured out support for her and her family.
Perfect strangers left messages on the family's answering machine.
“We don't know you, but we're sure praying for you.”
Those messages lifted them.
“People don't realize what effect that can have on you,” Ron said.
Strangers sent get-well cards. Business owners set out donation bins for customers. Banks set up accounts for contributions, too.
“We knew that we were blessed before,” Ron said. Now, he's blessed by strangers he doesn't even know.
Mary has always loved living in Stevensville. Now she feels like she has roots here.
One week ago today, Sheylynn met the woman who drove the car that hit her.
“I feel happy with her because she prayed for me,” Sheylynn said.
She returned to her youth group, where she received lots of hugs.
She can't hear out of her right ear, and may need surgery to correct that. Her right leg will be just a tad shorter than her left leg, so she'll wear a lift in one shoe. Some screws hold bones together, too.
She still can't run, but she's getting stronger. And her eyesight has improved.
“I used to see double, but now I don't,” she said.
Both parents say that Sheylynn isn't only their little girl anymore. As it turns out, she belongs to the whole community.
One get-well poster hangs from a closet door in the kitchen. On a photo attached to the poster, someone wrote, “Sheylyn (sic) The girl of faith!”
Ron is disabled, and the family doesn't live in a mansion. “It's an old, beat-up farmhouse,” Ron said.
But their home is filled with love and family and faith, and it sits amidst a community that gave more than they ever dreamed possible.
Ron and Mary figure that probably makes them the richest people in the valley.
Reporter Keila Szpaller can be reached at 523-5260 or at Keila.Szpaller@missoulian.com
Parents call for more lighting, slower speeds
STEVENSVILLE - Ron and Mary Cordle don't know whether anything could have prevented the accident on U.S. Highway 93 that left their daughter barely clinging to life.
A car going 55 mph hit Sheylynn, who was jaywalking across the street just north of the Stevi Wye.
Ron and Mary are relieved that Sheylynn, 13, is recovering quickly, but they'd still like to see changes along the stretch of highway near their home.
They want lights to brighten the area. They also want to see the speed limit reduced. Right now, the speed limit through the Stevi Wye intersection is 65 mph. The Cordles and other community members want it dropped to 45 mph.
The speed limit drops to 45 near Victor and Florence.
But apparently, any change could take at least a few months, and a reduced speed limit isn't guaranteed.
Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Scott Bennett responded to the Sept. 27 accident and wrote a report. In it, he said the accident was caused primarily because of pedestrian error - a darkly-clothed child running across the highway - and also inattentive driving.
But in the report, he also offered a recommendation: “This crash would likely have either been prevented - or at least significantly reduced in severity - if the Highway 93 speed limit was lowered near this intersection.”
He requested a speed study - which can prompt a speed limit change. That was the second time Bennett said he had requested a study for that corner.
In February 2006, troopers responded to a crash at the Stevi Wye that left six people injured. Bennett said that accident led him to request an initial speed study. His September report referenced that wreck, and added that the Highway Patrol investigates numerous crashes in the same area.
“Because of the high speeds involved, these crashes often result in serious injuries,” he wrote. “I, as well as the other MHP troopers that work out of Detachment 113, would like to see the speed limit reduced to 45 mph.”
He specified the portion of highway from North Kootenai Creek Road to South Kootenai Creek Road.
Montana Department of Transportation district administrator Dwane Kailey said the department receives numerous requests for speed studies. The department studied the Stevi Wye in 2000, and back then the area did not warrant a speed change, he said.
He didn't have a February request for a speed study on file, but he does have a request from September.
He said officials can't immediately respond to all requests for studies.
“Growth is very high in western Montana,” Kailey said. “It's very challenging to keep up with it.”
It's difficult to predict where the need will be greatest, too, he said.
He expected that the department would undergo a review of the Stevi Wye area sometime this spring. For such studies, workers set tubes across the road. If they do that in the wintertime, snowplows can tear up the tubes.
Work on the ground takes just a couple days. Analyzing the information and making a speed recommendation could take more time depending on the workload, he said.
A speed reduction is not guaranteed.
You can help
Sheylynn Cordle has insurance under the state Children's Health Insurance Program, but that program won't cover all the medical expenses from her accident.
“I think they'll be forever in debt on this one,” said Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Scott Bennett of the family. Bennett responded to the accident.
To help the family, contact any of these banks:
Rocky Mountain Bank, 220 Main St., Stevensville, MT 59870, telephone 777-5555
Farmers State Bank, 725 Main St., Stevensville, MT 59870, 777-7210
Ravalli County Bank, 39 Stevensville Cutoff Road, Stevensville, MT 59870, 777-0002
Missoula Federal Credit Union, numerous locations, 523-3300
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