FORT WAYNE – From the age of 18, Beverly A. Myers lived in hospitals and nursing homes. Severe injuries from a 1965 car crash in northeast Allen County had left her paralyzed.
For about 10 years after the accident, she was resolved to walk again, her brother Bruce Myers said.
“She was bound and determined to prove the doctors wrong,” he said.
But the damage had been done, and with only limited use of her right arm, she remained reliant on an electric wheelchair. Despite all this, her brother said, she kept up good spirits and was never bitter.
“Her faith was really strong,” he said. “She believed. She knew that one day she was going to be perfect.”
For her, that day came Friday when she succumbed to an infection.
Because she died this year, the county coroner’s office tallied her death as the county’s 19th traffic fatality of 2011. The office said the infection that killed her was due to complications caused by the injuries she suffered in the crash nearly 46 years ago.
Beverly Myers, 64, of Monroeville, was one of six people injured when two cars collided at Indiana 101 and Indiana 37, east of Grabill, on the evening of Aug. 8, 1965, according to a Journal Gazette article published the next day.
She was in the back seat of a car carrying three other young people. They were headed to a store at the intersection to buy food for dinner, Bruce Myers said.
Their car, which was headed south on Indiana 101, ran a stop sign and was hit by a car traveling northeast on Indiana 37. A man and a woman from Michigan were in the other car. Both were treated at a hospital; the woman was critically injured.
Larry Betz, 21, of Grabill, was riding in the car with Beverly Myers and was killed in the crash. Betz’s sister, Barbara, 17, was also in the car; she suffered a broken pelvic bone. The driver of the car, Larry R. Emerick, a relative of Larry and Barbara, suffered cuts and bruises.
Larry and Barbara’s sister, Marcia Niccum, recalled the crash Friday.
“I was at home on the phone with Grandma,” the 62-year-old said. “I had a little guardian angel watching over me that I wasn’t in the car.”
Niccum, of Spencerville, said she and Beverly Myers became good friends while in 4-H as teenagers.
“She was a great gal. I can’t speak highly enough of her,” she said. “We called each other adopted sisters.”
Niccum said she and her husband were struck by Beverly Myers’ positive outlook despite her circumstance. Beverly felt “lucky to be alive,” Niccum said. “She was our hero.”
After the crash, Beverly Myers was taken to Parkview Hospital where she was unconscious for 30 days. She was hospitalized until 1971, when she moved to Byron Health Center in Fort Wayne. In 2000, she moved to The Village of Heritage nursing home in Monroeville.
According to an obituary, she was a member of Monroeville United Methodist Church. She graduated from Monroeville High School in 1965 and worked for six months at North American Van Lines until the crash, the obituary said.
Her funeral services are set for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at Zwick & Jahn Funeral Home in Monroeville. Her interment will follow at Monroeville Memorial Cemetery.
