National Enquirer, April 22, 1997

When a car wreck left Lynn Parks unable to walk she told her fiance,"I won't marry you until I can walk down the aisle." It took SEVEN YEARS but she did it!

"Everyone in the church was watching her and holding their breath, praying she'd make it," Lynn's overjoyed mom, Joan McGovern, told The ENQUIRER.

"By the time she reached the altar, there wasn't a dry eye in the whole church. We were all so happy for her."

Lynn's triumphant march down the aisle capped a painstaking battle to walk again after the car crash left the pretty brunette in a wheelchair.

She was a passenger in a vehicle that was broadsided. She broke her collarbone, several ribs, her pelvis in three places - and suffered extensive brain damage.

"When I got to the hospital," recalled her devoted mom, "doctors told me she might not live."

Amazingly, Lynn pulled through. But she was semicomatose for seven months and bedridden for two years. Doctors expected her to spend the rest of her life in a vegetative state.

"Everyone considered me a hopeless case - everyone but me," the remarkable young lady from Tinley Park, Ill., told The ENQUIRER.

At the time of the accident, Lynn had been planning to wed her boyfriend Jamie Parks. But after the horrendous crash, Lynn told him she wouldn't wed until she could do it without her wheelchair.

Jamie 35, a mail carrier, told The ENQUIRER: "I said, 'O.K., that's fine with me.' I didn't care if it took 27 years. I told her I'd be waiting."

Once she was no longer bedridden, Lynn charged into the rehabilitation process with the ferocity of a lion. She exercised three hours a day, every
single day, for five years.

"I never had any doubts I would walk again," confided Lynn, 34. But it wasn't until five years after the accident that she took her first step.

Seven times she and Jamie made plans to wed and seven times they canceled their plans because Lynn feared she would fall in the aisle.

But gutsy and determined, the young woman kept up her grueling exercise and rehabilitation program until she was ready to walk the 50 most perilous feet of her life.

As the assembled church crowd went breathless with anticipation, Lynn gingerly took 47 steps down the aisle with her dad James and brother Scott flanking her. Step by step, she moved slowly until she reached her fiance.
"I had to concentrate real hard. I was so afraid I'd fall," said Lynn. "But I did it - I walked just like I said I would!"

Confided Jamie: "I was so proud of her. Tears were streaming down my face and I was srniling from ear to ear."

The service lasted 45 minutes. Although a chair was provided for Lynn at the altar, she stood for much of the ceremony - including the dramatic moment when Jamie slipped the ring on her finger.

After the joyous couple were pronounced husband and wife, Jamie picked up his radiant bride and carried her in his arms. "It was the moment I'd been waiting for so long," he said.

Although Lynn still needs assistance when walking distances, she has a cherished goal - to be completely free of her wheelchair forever.

Said her proud mom: "Lynn has totally defied the odds to get where she is today. Her life has been one miracle after another. She proves that you should never give up hope."