Lyberde stops by for visit

Sat, May 17 2008

— By David May
editor@mineralwellsindex.com
How appropriate that on the week of Easter, a modern-day miracle visited the Mineral Wells Index on Thursday.
Lyberde Parker will turn 5 years old in June. Many Index readers will remember her. It is hard to believe more than four years have passed since she was severely burned while she and her parents slept inside their Crazy Water apartment off S.E. 25th Avenue on Oct. 30, 2003.
Lyberde was asleep in the living room on a mattress, wrapped in a blanket. A nearby fan shorted and fell into the mattress, setting it afire along with the blanket wrapped around her. She became virtually a fiery cocoon, left badly burned over 65 percent of her body. There were concerns whether she would survive. She did, though she lost her right leg and one hand is missing a finger.
Today, she bears the physical scars – but no apparent mental scars. Her custodial grandmother Katherine Parker said Lyberde – just 4 months old at the time – does not seem to have any recollections of the incident and has adapted amazingly well.
“She only knows (about the accident) what she hears, like at the doctors’ offices,” Parker said.
In talking with Lyberde, she acts like a normal 4-year-old girl, and her grandmother said there aren’t many things she can’t do despite her disabilities. Lyberde is an active, articulate and inquisitive girl. She danced around the front lobby like any other child.
She will shake your hand and say, “God bless you.”
Lyberde and her grandmother now live in Hitchcock, Texas, near Houston. She attends pre-kindergarten.
“I like my teacher, and my friends,” she said.
“Dora the Explorer” dominates her bedroom walls.
“She likes art, anything to do with drawing,” Katherine Parker said.
Lyberde has traveled a long road on her recovery, and has more to go. To date she has undergone 17 surgeries, endured 24 skin graphs and will undergo more reconstructive surgery on her right side.
Two years ago she was received a prosthesis from Shriner’s Hospital in Galveston, Texas. Parker said Lyberde will soon receive a new prosthesis, one that will allow her greater flexibility, especially in the knee joint. It will make riding her bicycle easier, though the limitations of her current prosthesis don’t slow her down much.
“God is awesome,” Parker said. “If it wasn’t for prayer and our faith in God, she would not have made it.”
After the incident, members of the community donated clothes, food and money to the family after a trust fund was established at a local bank. Much of the monies donated assisted the family with living expenses in Dallas while Lyberde was hospitalized and treated for her burns.
The local generosity is something Parker has not forgotten about.
“I am really grateful for the people, a lot of people in Palo Pinto County, who helped us,” she said. “We really send out our prayers to them.”

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