Brittaney Ewing has never gotten to wear her crown. She hasn’t even been back to school since just before she was elected homecoming queen at Hamilton High School.

But Friday night, for the first time in a year, courtesy of a ride from the Steuben County Council on Aging, she’ll be back, just in time to celebrate her birthday and hand off her crown to the new homecoming queen.

Ewing, who was a senior at Hamilton High School last year, was critically injured in a car wreck on Jan. 12, 2011, just before she was elected homecoming queen.

She didn’t know she’d won the honor. She was in a coma for eight weeks after the crash, and when she emerged from the coma, she was paralyzed.

For the next eight months, Ewing remained in hospitals and rehab centers, where she gradually regained some of her abilities. About two months ago, she moved into her grandmother’s house in Steuben County, where she receives 24-hour care.

“She needed to come home,” said her grandmother, Cheryl Dewire. “She thought she’d never be able to go home.”

Since the accident, Ewing has been slowly recovering. She has regained some movement.

“She got her right side back, and now we’re trying to get her left side back,” Dewire said. She is able to move her left arm and left leg.

Ewing, who suffered severe head trauma in the crash, still can’t speak, but she is able to communicate by writing.

In the back of her mind, though, all the time, was homecoming. Last week, while getting a ride in a Council on Aging bus, one family member mentioned that Ewing really wanted to attend homecoming this year, but her family had no way to transport her.

Ewing is 6 feet tall, and her wheelchair won’t fit into a van with a lift. The type of vehicle needed, the type used by the Council on Aging, costs well in excess of $50,000, said Sandy Baughman, transportation coordinator for the council.

That’s when the driver stepped forward. If he volunteered his time, could he use the bus to drive Ewing to homecoming?

That created a problem. The council’s bus operates only between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., and drivers have to be paid. Because the trip to homecoming wasn’t for medical purposes, Medicaid wouldn’t pay for it. Baughman decided to make an exception.

“It’s out of the ordinary for us, but the driver wanted a special exception,” Baughman said. So Baughman agreed to let the driver use the bus on Friday evening, if someone picked up the tab.

It wasn’t long before Hamilton High School Principal Barbara Weber announced the school would pay for the driver and gas.

Where will the money come from? I asked Weber.

“We haven’t gotten that far,” she said. “But we knew we would find a way.”

Maybe there’s an extra-curricular fund they could dip into, or maybe some other source of money.

Regardless, Ewing will get her ride to homecoming Friday night.

“It will be the first time she’s been out except to go to the doctor,” Dewire said. “She’s so excited, especially about seeing her friends, to see everyone at once at school.”

“And she has her hair back,” Dewire said. “She can wear her crown” and take it off herself to hand to the new homecoming queen.