I have made the decision to move back to Loisiana. It has been a long time since I have been there but I will be starting a great job and I am ready for much bigger and greater things.

I was sixteen years young and unbreakable.  I was captain of my high school football team and by the end of the season I was nominated for all state, all city and all confrence.  I was the first sophmore to be nominated for all three in Ohio High School Football History.  My friend and I just dropped off our dates and were on our way home.  The back way to my rural farm house was on quite dark back roads.  But just off of the highway there was a small curve with a bridge over a creek bed.  It just so happened we hit the water on the road just right to make us hydroplane.  We were not drunk, high on any drug, messing around, speeding, or speeding.  I was driving and over curected and started sliding sidways.  The guardrail on the bridge pierced through the passenger door at our knees and stopped at the driver side against the door.  The car then ended up driver side down, ten feet just under the bridge.  My first thought was uh-oh I just wreck my car but I then relized me nor my friend could move our legs.  Then thinking no one would see us I decided to go get help.  With a three inch piece of bone missing in my left leg and broken femur and right foot cut off with almost all of my skin missing on my right calf aswell I pulled myself over my friend and out the passenger side window.  Then scooted back against the bridge and did a chin up to sit down on the bridge.  After I got up on the bridge I relized there was the flashlight that was in my back seat on the road about ten feet away.  So I rolled and layed on my belly doing an army crawl so that I could use it as a signal.  It felt like forever before anyone came.  No one up from the highway saw the light and just turned off.  Finally I saw a car coming from the other direction.  I flashed the light to signal them and it wouldnt work.  I slamed it down several times, and by this point they were getting closer.  Finally the light came on and the car drove around me.  I thought they didnt see meand I pulled my arm back ready to through it and then they stopped.  They then put the call in and soon the EMT's and chopper arrived.  Later talking to them and the EMT's no one saw the car in the creek.  It was a dark foggy night in they all said if it wasnt for me my friend and I would have died.  I woke up several days later in ICU with people calling me a hero.  I know everyone that said that would have done the same thing for someone they loved.  I only did what I did because of my best friend in the world.  My friend lost his left leg above the knee and broke his left leg.  Hes doing well.  There was a teacher I had in middle school that put everything in perspective about the hero thing.  She told me "James from knowing you and what kind of guy you are I would have not expected anything less from you".  And so from that day forward the day that changed my life November 15, 2003 I live my life excepting only the best out of myself and the people around me.