Student-athlete and amputee who helps empower others with limb loss commits to Hood

Seeking joy amid hardship has always come naturally to Emma McGraw. She’s the kind of person who came face-to-face with a daunting, life-altering crisis and could still smile, still crack jokes.

At 5 years old, she lay on a gurney being flown to Shock Trauma from her home in Forest Hill, missing most of her right leg and part of her left foot from a lawn mowing accident.

During her treatment, Emma wanted to “keep memories from the hospital happy, not sad.” So rather than dwell on what was happening to her, she gave names to her amputated limbs — Charlie and Bobo — and capped her complaining at how one medicine tasted more like metallic soda. She took what her parents call the worst day of their lives and, from a young age, reframed it into a point of gratitude.

Emma, 17, is now a senior at Concordia Prep in Towson, a two-sport athlete and has committed to play volleyball at Hood College in Frederick.

May 7, 2012, began like any other afternoon. Emma was sitting at the kitchen table, munching on snacks alongside her mom, Jen. Joe, her dad, was outside mowing the lawn. And her sister, Molly, was at dance practice.

“We were getting ready to leave to pick up her sister,” Jen said, pausing emotionally during the retelling. “But she went outside under the pretense of scaring him. He was backing up the lawn mower to put it away and … she was there.”

Those last words landed with a thud.

Joe raced inside with his injured daughter. With the help of a neighbor who was a paramedic, they were able to slow the bleeding. Paramedics put her on a helicopter that landed up the hill from their house. The neighbor persuaded the flight nurses to allow both parents, not just the usual one, on board — along with a slew of Emma’s stuffed animals. Jen and Joe recall vividly one exchange from the helicopter, in which they consoled each other, saying specifically: “I don’t blame you in any way. This was an accident.”

Emma spent the next five weeks at Johns Hopkins Hospital before moving for rehabilitation to Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital. One prosthetist said she’d never walk normally again; a heart-wrenching — and ultimately disproven — diagnosis.

Friends, classmates and community members poured in with support.

None left more of an impression than Emma’s nurse. Nurse Ashley, as they call her, saw the way Emma’s eyes lit up around hospital personnel and procedures. She invited Emma into her own care, charging the 5-year-old with pouring saline drops, removing bandages and helping to handle her IVs.

“She started my inspiration in the medical field,” Emma said, with her sights now set on becoming a doctor.

That year, she asked Santa for a medical dictionary and suture kit. She practiced first aid on a silicone slab in the kitchen, her eyes glued to instructional YouTube videos. “She’s right-handed, but was doing everything left-handed,” Jen said. “I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’” A young Emma informed her mom that surgeons have to be able to work with both hands.

Emma was home from the hospital by July 2012. In August, she got her first prosthesis. She now rotates between three legs for different purposes: athletic, water and walking.

Come September, she was back to running around playing indoor soccer. “After going through all this, she’s already out running around?” Joe said. “At that point, I knew it was gonna be fine.”

No sport was too intimidating. No physical challenge gave Emma pause.

Dance was her first love. After her accident, she got right back onstage, finding a way to tap with her peers. She ran stride for stride with friends on the soccer field. Basketball and tennis came next.

Emma plays softball for Concordia, adjusting her stance at first base so her foot can feel the bag.

Emma started playing volleyball before she started high school with Molly, who was then a rising senior. They practiced diving for loose balls together on a gymnastics mat in the driveway. Emma rarely feels the need to adapt how she uses her legs in the game. “If I do, I always find a way,” she said.

Although the pandemic meant she and Molly didn’t get to play a high school season together, Emma will join her sister at Hood for one overlapping year this fall.

Another new experience comes this month. From March 21-24, she’ll take part in a program in Oklahoma that helps develop potential players for the sitting volleyball team that represents the U.S. at the Paralympic Games. She plans to attend the National Team Development Program’s August and November sessions at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, as well.

Emma said there was a period as a child when she questioned what happened to her.

“For a little while after my accident, I had that stage where I wondered why God did this to me,” Emma said. “Then I just started to look at it differently.”

Emma was 7, two years removed from her accident, when this new, precocious outlook on life took hold. The anniversary the family dreaded became a day of celebration. Her “Alive Day,” as they call it, was better spent going to an Orioles game, taking family hikes, mother-daughter shopping trips and special dinners.

Emma credits Camp No Limits for stimulating her self-confidence journey. Since 2012, she’s been a regular with the organization, which empowers young people with limb loss, according to its website. There, she learned how to deal with bullies and spent time with other amputees.

The person Emma emerged from her accident as — the kind of 11-year-old who confidently presented a PowerPoint at a 2,500-person No Limits convention in Washington and who’s now a teenager writing letters to kids in similar prosthetic shoes — is someone who can find a twinkle in the shadows.

“The disability we have doesn’t determine us,” Emma said. “The attitude that we bring to the situation is what’s really most beneficial.”

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