ALUMNI FEATURE
Leaving a Legacy for Those Who Come After
By April Feagley assistant director of communication
As a senior at Juniata, giving was at the heart of the speech delivered by Leigh Ann (Suhrie) Wilson ’02 when she won the Bailey Oratorical. The tragic loss of her mother two months after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 inspired the college senior to implore her campus community to donate blood. “She was diagnosed with cancer in September of my freshman year. She needed 13 blood transfusions during the course of her treatment. It was a three-year battle,” Leigh Ann said. “I wanted to challenge the assumptions about blood donation that happened after Sept. 11 and encourage people that they should be giving blood regularly— not only because of a national tragedy.” The support of friends, including her now-husband, Matthew Wilson ’04, and faculty members helped Leigh Ann through that difficult time. Leigh Ann came to Juniata from East Stroudsburg, Pa., to study biology then switched to marketing and communication. Matt, from Mundy’s Corner, Pa., studied biology with the goal of becoming a physician.
A desire to help others drew Matt to volunteer service with Habitat for Humanity while he pursued his studies in pre-med. “We did some projects around Huntingdon, but the big ones were the spring break trips,” Matt said. “The first year, we went to Kentucky. It was my first major exposure to Habitat and how things worked. During my sophomore year, we went to New Mexico, then to Georgia my junior year, and Alabama in my senior year.” Following Matt’s graduation from Juniata, he enrolled at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, where Leigh Ann had been employed since earning her degree. The couple married in 2005. Settling in York, giving remained central in the couple’s lives and they found ways to instill that love of helping others in their two children, Nolan, 10, and Odette, 7. That inclination toward philanthropy came into even sharper focus following a serious car accident March 9, 2018.
| Juniata
The Wilson family acknowledges their good fortune in the days, weeks, and months following a near-tragedy. Throughout the ordeal, they had the same thought: What happens to people who aren’t as fortunate?
40
“I always dreaded Matt being in a car accident,” Leigh Ann said. “I called Matt on his commute. I never call him, but I called him to tell him a funny story about Odette. He didn’t answer, so I went downstairs to work out. He called me back. I heard the crash, but the call didn’t end. I just kept yelling, ‘Can you hear me?,’ and asking him to pick up.” What Leigh Ann heard was the impact of a pick-up truck traveling at 75 mph slamming into the rear of Matt’s vehicle, ultimately causing a four-car accident. “A nurse who was two cars back was able to tell me he was responsive. She could see his doctor’s badge and that he worked at Pinnacle,” she said. “At that point, I had no idea of the severity.” After that brief conversation, Leigh Ann received no further information from the scene. She decided to head to Pinnacle’s emergency department in hopes of locating her husband. “I went to the emergency room and I was immediately patched through to Hershey and told he had a brain bleed,” said Leigh Ann, who learned that the road closure she had avoided on the way to the hospital and the medevac helicopter her coworkers told her about were both related to Matt’s accident. Matt doesn’t remember anything about the accident or the three-night hospitalization that followed. His first memories are of being home and realizing he had staples in his head. Healing from the brain injury and whiplash required intensive occupational, physical, and speech therapy—a challenging regimen for a family with young children. Fortunately, an unusual solution proved perfect as all three therapies were provided at a nearby facility for senior citizens.
