Sue Burgess has been the primary caretaker and best friend to her grandson Andrew Evans since a traffic accident in 1996 that left Evans a quadriplegic. At top is his jacket from Millard South, from which he is graduating Saturday.

Christopher Reeve rolled onto the stage of Omaha's Civic Auditorium in a wheelchair as 6,000 people gave him a standing ovation.

Reeve, a quadriplegic after a horse-riding accident, met with a 9-year-old Omaha boy, also a quadriplegic, and told him to be strong and "keep on rollin'."

On Saturday, that boy, Andrew Evans, will defy the odds and roll onto the Civic stage to receive his Millard South High School diploma.

Evans, who was paralyzed in a traffic accident on Christmas Day 1996, will graduate on time and with honors. His classmates voted him the "most respected" boy in their class.

The accident that broke his neck initially shattered the religious faith of his grandmother Sue Burgess. She was driving him to Christmas Mass when another driver ran a red light and Burgess' minivan struck the car.

But witnessing her grandson's indomitable spirit, the bountiful kindness of strangers and remarkable events over the years, Burgess has regained her faith. She and her grandson have grown together, seizing life with a zest that came from the realization that beyond today, there are no guarantees.

That Evans has reached this cross-
roads of young adulthood required an army of paramedics, doctors, nurses, teachers, friends, siblings and family, plus a settlement with Daimler-Chrysler over the airbag that deployed and broke his neck.

But it also took the devotion of a grandmother to her grandson, who in a pact with Evans' mother refused to institutionalize him and became his primary guardian.

His mother, Jeannie Gerstemeier, remarried (Evans' father, Robert Evans, died in a car accident before his son was born) and moved in 2004 to be with her new husband, who is in the military and stationed out of town.

Gerstemeier was confident, family attorney Roger Holthaus said, that her son was in good hands.

Andrew Evans stayed in Burgess' care with his siblings, Bob and Chelsea, and aunt Laurie. Burgess devoted herself to the boy. She describes their relationship as "symbiotic." If one of them gets sick, the other does, too.

Though Evans' body may seem useless, his mind is strong and bright enough that he will graduate with a "silver honor cord" for keeping his grade-point average above 3.5 all four years. He plans to study pre-law at Creighton University in the fall.

He wants to pass the bar exam and become a personal injury lawyer.

"I feel I could help people by what I've been through," he said.

Evans cannot breathe on his own. Expensive machines do the work for him. Even a tiny hole in his air hose would cause a dangerous drop in pressure, forcing Evans to alert caregivers by smacking his lips.

One particular device helps Evans use a laptop computer. He wears a tiny magnetic sticker on the tip of his nose, and a camera reads his movement and moves the cursor. He lingers on an icon to activate it.

The computer helps him stay in nearly daily e-mail contact with his mother.

He steers his wheelchair — actually a mobile life-support unit — by blowing into or sucking on a tube.

He has no privacy. Only vigilance by caregivers keeps him healthy and comfortable. He can speak, in between breaths, in the same clipped manner in which Reeve spoke.

He is not vengeful or angry about the accident, though Burgess said she was mad at God when it happened.

Then came the taxing search for a new house, and the call from the agent who found the perfect one with an elevator and ramps. Only after buying it did she learn that it once served as the rectory for St. John Vianney Catholic Church. Priests had said Mass in the house.

Famous people came calling: Reeve's wife, Dana, who before her death in 2006 kept in touch with Burgess and Evans; legendary Cornhusker football coach Tom Osborne, who visited the house and signed footballs; then-Nebraska Lt. Gov. Kim Robak, who took a beautiful Black Hills gold pin off her lapel and pinned it to Evans' pajamas.

One day, a carpenter knocked on the door, said he'd done some bad things in his life and offered his help. He built a ramp and a shelf for the house, then left — and Burgess never heard from him again, she said.

Many times she has been at a store buying something, and when the clerks learn it's for Evans, they refuse to accept Burgess' money, and say: "This one's on us."

Prisoners have written to Evans. Schoolchildren describe him as their hero. Elderly women still walk up and say they're praying for him.

Before Mother Teresa's death, Burgess' cousin wrote to her. The famed nun wrote back, urging family members to offer up their sufferings for others. At first, Burgess thought that was a silly response. But over time, she saw the effect that her grandson had on people. She saw his magnetism, how his arrival in a classroom changed the tone of his classmates, how he brings out an inherent goodness in people. Then she understood.

"She knew before I did," Burgess said.

Together, she and Evans have learned that life is what you make of it, Burgess said. That means having fun, tapping the trust fund set up with the settlement from the auto company for a trip to New York, or climbing aboard their RV to visit the Black Hills.

Most people save for a rainy day, she said. "Our rainy day is today."

Evans may not live to be 50, or even 40, she said.

The family still holds out a glimmer of hope that stem cell research will find a way to repair his spinal cord, she said. Burgess keeps in close contact with doctors in Boston who are on the cutting edge of stem-cell research.

Like any incoming freshman, Evans is excited and a bit nervous at the prospect of college.

He thought about attending Harvard. Christopher Reeve had directed a 2004 TV movie about Brooke Ellison, the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard. But Evans settled on a college close to home.

During an exploratory visit to Creighton, he and Burgess stopped and said a prayer at St. John, the church on campus.

"We came out and we just knew: That's where he belonged," she said.

A nurse will accompany him on campus.

Burgess takes no special credit for Evans' success. In his case, she said, it takes more than a village to raise a child: "It takes a big city."

The Millard Public Schools "bent over backward" to accommodate him, she said. And of course, there are the doctors, nurses, insurance people, medical suppliers and many more.

Asked about his grandmother, Evans said: "She's good."

Said Burgess: "Andrew and I look at each other sometimes and wonder who's got the angel on their shoulder, me or him."