Wensday's page

Story date: Nov. 16, 2008

Dover Middle School student shows others ‘the view from her chair’

By Holly Ruppel
government@couriernews.com
DOVER — Especially articulate for someone her age, Wensday is quick to let those who have just met her know she is no different than other 12-year-old girls.
A seventh-grader at Dover Middle School, she is passionate about shopping for new clothes, watching television, talking on the phone and hanging out with her friends and family.
But unlike most 12-year-old girls, Wensday has had 26 surgeries and uses a wheelchair to move around her house or up and down the halls at school.
“I’m really like everyone else,” she said. “I just get around differently.”
Wensday has Spina Bifida, a developmental birth defect resulting in an incomplete spinal cord and paralysis from the waist down, so she has never walked.
But recently, she experienced weightlessness without the restrictions of gravity when she and three other wheelchair-bound young people had the opportunity to fly in a specially modified Zero G plane.
The flight is part of a special edition of “Nick News with Linda Ellerbee: The View From My Chair,” which is scheduled to air at 8 p.m. tonight on Nickelodeon.
Show producers chose Wensday to appear on the program after she attended National Spina Bifida Camp in Tucson, Ariz., where she went rappelling and helped the National Spina Bifida Association review the book “Spinabilities: A Young Person’s Guide to Spina Bifida.”
After camp ended, Nick News staff members contacted the National Spina Bifida Association seeking the names of children who attended the camp so they could feature Spina Bifida in an upcoming edition of the show, which is now in its 18th year and has won several Emmy Awards for Outstanding Children’s Programming.
A short time later, the show’s producers contacted Wensday and, after a series of phone interviews, she discovered she would be one of the show’s participants.
Nick News producers and a camera crew visited Wensday and her family at their home in Dover to interview Wensday and film her performing activities such as riding a four-wheeler, shooting a bow and helping out at her grandmother’s crafting store.
In October, Wensday and her parents traveled to Florida, where they met award-winning journalist Linda Ellerbee and the show’s other participants.
Ellerbee, who has also written several books for children, signed Wensday’s copy of her book, “Ghoul Reporter Digs Up Zombies.” Inside, in black Sharpie marker, Ellerbee wrote, “To Wensday, My Hero.”
According to Wensday’s mother, Lise, her daughter was thrilled because during the flight, Wensday stood for the first time in her young life.
Matter-of-factly showing off an album filled with memorabilia from the flight including pictures, a boarding pass and a name tag, Wensday said riding on the plane felt like “going up over a small hill, and then you feel a drop.”
“You can’t even describe it,” she added. “It’s like nothing else on Earth!”
Undoubtedly fearless, Wensday said while she wasn’t scared to experience complete weightlessness, her mother was concerned.
“She [Lise] told me the first hour I was on the plane, all she did was worry,” said Wensday, who was accompanied on the flight by her father, Jeremie.
Since her flight on Zero G, Wensday said she has kept in touch with Nia, another young girl who appeared on the show, and believes that “Friends are life.”
She has also been interviewed, filmed and photographed by several newspapers and television news crews and wrote a paper for school touting the importance and work ethic of camera and sound crews.
“They do a lot more work than you think and they deserve a lot more recognition,” she said.
Of her experience living her daily life in front of a camera crew, Wensday said, “I don’t get embarrassed in front of the camera. It comes with it.”
Editor’s note: For privacy reasons, Wensday’s parents requested her last name not be included in this story.

Wednesday.jpg (139988 bytes)
THE COURIER / Joshua Mashon
Dover Middle School student Wensday, 12, is pictured in a flight suit she wore when Nickelodenon's 'Nick News' gave her and three others the opportunity to fly in a Zero G plane.