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Tada lost sensation in her legs and hands through a diving accident on the Chesapeake Bay. She had just graduated from high school. Vivacious and athletic, she had short, stylish blond hair and a face that loved the camera. This sweet, eager girl, paralyzed for life? And yet, she seemed so hopeful when she spoke of her faith in God and her thankfulness for life. (Never mind that the hopefulness came after a long nightmare of furious despair, when she begged her friends to help her end her life.)

Joni (pronounced Johnny) caught the attention of the media. She appeared on NBC's Today with Barbara Walters. She gave her testimony at a Billy Graham crusade. Her life story became a bestselling book. A movie followed, distributed by the Graham organization. Millions came to know her—the pretty girl who loved horses and broke her neck when she was 17.

Her celebrity might have ended there. She might have been an inspiring figure who flashed through the media for a season—like innumerable athletes, entertainers, and people afflicted with interesting tragedies. Yet she was always more than that, for those who troubled to notice. She came to public attention not through her accident—such calamities are, after all, distressingly common—but through her art, painstakingly created with a brush or pencil held in her mouth. The paintings and drawings were good in a girlish way—horses and kittens and seascapes—but represented something quite un-girlish. She worked hard at her art. She launched her own company to market it. She had a dogged determination to make something of a shattered life.

Art led to other opportunities, revealing other strengths. Joni, the bestselling book she wrote with Joe Musser, showed surprising levels of thoughtfulness. When the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's World Wide Pictures made a movie of her life, Tada starred as herself, and did so creditably. Then, responding to innumerable letters pleading for help and counsel, she launched Joni and Friends. She wrote more books—on suffering, on heaven, on how to relate to disabled people—without a ghostwriter's aid. Ronald Reagan named her to a presidential council advising the federal government on disability. She learned to engage in policy debates, and consulted on the draft of the historic Americans with Disabilities Act. Meanwhile she traveled the world, speaking to large audiences in 37 countries, and learning about disabilities across the world.

Tada has reached her mid-50s—her mother's age at the time of Tada's accident. It seems incongruous, almost impossible, that the pretty girl who broke her neck has become a middle-aged activist. As Ken Tada, her husband of 21 years, says, "She's not 17 anymore."

Ken Tada is discussing the ministries of Joni and Friends, from family retreats to having prisoners refurbish wheelchairs. "It has to be God," he says. "Over 2,700 people for our family retreats? That's amazing. People who will pay their way as volunteers, use their vacation time to serve the disabled? People think that's crazy, it will never work. But it's happening. They not only are willing, they come back to do it again and again.

"Twenty thousand wheelchairs for people all around the world. That's amazing. And how would we have gotten them refurbished if not for these prisoners?" Ken adds. "As the ministry has grown, so has Joni. Last year I saw her at a press conference with Chuck Colson on stem-cell research. People saw that she was a balance to Christopher Reeve. She has won respect for her years of Christian service. She travels to Cuba. She goes to Ghana. Joni has become a spokesperson for disabled people all over the world."

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January 2004, Vol. 48, No. 1