ABOVE Although he also plays football and basketball, Brittan’s talent really shows in baseball. He started out playing at the Lyons
Recreation Department usually making All-Stars. Eventually, he began playing with area traveling teams. This year the Lyons Recreation
Department All Star teams produced three GRPA State Champs including Brittan’s team. (8U Flea Boys, 10U Mite Boys, and 14U Junior
Girls). BELOW Henrietta Tabor, Brittan’s grandmother, shows her support just like she did with her son Britt.
Hometown Living At Its Best 35
fateful night, “There weren’t even any
seatbelts in that little Nissan truck.”
Twenty-seven years after the accident,
Britt still remembered the loud pulsating
sounds made by the blades of the
helicopter that carried him to Savannah.
Before they could get him loaded, he
argued with the paramedics. “I wanted
them to leave me and find my friend,” said
Britt. “I kept telling them to go find him or
I was going to get up and do it myself.” He
didn’t yet know that his friend was okay
but getting up was no longer an option.
Britt’s injuries were extensive. In
addition to broken ribs and damage to his
knee, his neck was cracked in two places.
If he hadn’t been an athlete and in such
good physical condition, the nerves in his
neck might have been severed as well,
which would have left him a quadriplegic.
But his broken back was the worst injury.
Only one month earlier, the FDA
had approved a drug that helped reduce
swelling of the spinal cord. Although Britt
believed the drug helped prevent further
damage, he soon learned that he was
paralyzed from the chest down. He was
kept in the trauma unit in the hospital
in Savannah for a month and fitted with
a halo and halo vest to immobilize the
cervical spine to allow the bones in his
neck to heal.