Living the high notes: Music teacher doesn’t let injury keep her from passion

She was hanging upside down.

It was the first thing that Shannon Henry noticed when she regained consciousness behind the wheel of her Jeep Grand Cherokee, a stray observation that would turn out to be one of only a handful of memories that were not eventually diluted by blood loss or anesthesia.

The details of the crash would eventually be laid out in great detail — on television, online and even in crisp black and white right here in the pages of this newspaper.

Her story made the front page of the Aug. 26, 2015 edition — because that’s what happens when a vehicle flips over onto its roof and shuts down a major road during the Grange Fair.

The article, which is credited to “CDT staff reports,” hews closely to the report issued by state police at Rockview and delivers a clear and unambiguous account of what transpired on the morning of Aug. 25.

To read it is to understand the broad strokes, that Shannon Henry was traveling northbound on state Route 144 when she lost control of her vehicle. The Jeep flipped onto its roof and in the process, cracked a utility poll in half.

Police responded to the scene, and the road was closed for several hours while Centre Hall Fire Company, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials and West Penn Power worked with law enforcement to make repairs to the downed power lines. The road reopened later that day, at 2:10 p.m.

But that’s big-picture thinking.

To truly comprehend the scope of the crash, you have to read the fine print. It’s important to remember that Shannon Henry is the wife of a sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve. It’s important to remember that Shannon Henry is the mother of a 7-year-old girl.

It’s important to remember that Shannon Henry is a music teacher.

She was hanging upside down.

It was the first thing Shannon Henry noticed when she regained consciousness — but it wasn’t the most important.

A Jeep Grand Cherokee had just landed on her hand.

The Scene

It was bad.

By the time Chris Henry reached the scene of the crash, Shannon had already been taken to the hospital.

They had spoken briefly over the phone. His wife had insisted on being the one to notify him about the crash, the one to prepare him for what he was about to walk into.

And now here it was — the family vehicle overturned on the side of the road, the front-end bearing a striking resemblance to a crushed soda can.

The police were going to let Chris remove some of Shannon’s belongings from the vehicle, things that they didn’t want hauled away inside a heaping pile of wreckage with matching interior.

Their daughter’s booster seat, empty at the time of the crash, had been thrown underneath the dashboard and the airbags were stained with large patches of crimson.

“I was worried that that’s the last I’d get to talk to her, it was that much blood,” Chris said.

Shannon and Chris grew up together in Warren, a town with a population of 9,477 where playing hard-to-get still yields results.

They met as children, attended the same church and even became friends, but it wasn’t until years later — the summer before Shannon’s senior year of college — that Chris finally asked her on a date.

“It was like ‘whoa, when did you get hot?’ ” Shannon said.

A little more than a year later she was living a dual identity, music teacher by day and a Marine spouse at night. They were a ways away from Pennsylvania by now, stationed at bases in North Carolina and the Washington, D.C., area.

After leaving the Marines in 2005, Chris accepted a job in information technology at Penn State. The couple settled in Spring Mills, where they have been raising their daughter, Ginny.

This summer, they will celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary.

The call that Shannon made to her husband from the side of state Route 144 is the last thing she remembers doing before waking up in the hospital.

Her index finger had arrived separately.

The Jeep’s sunroof had been ripped off during the crash. Shannon’s right hand was thrown outside of the vehicle mid-tumble and one of the two anonymous good Samaritans who eventually pulled her from the wreckage used his shirt to staunch the flow of blood from her mangled limb.

“He said ‘I thought we were going to pull you out dead,’ ” Shannon said.

Dead or not, the damage was extensive. The top half of her index finger had cut clean off, and the adjacent digit had been completely “de-gloved.”

She saw bone.

Class in session

The Henrys live in a picturesque house in Spring Mills tucked back off of the main road. It’s a small neighborhood of only a couple of streets or so, a throwback to a time when yards were still yards and not slender patches of green tucked in between adjoining back patios.

Chris and Shannon relocated to Centre County shortly after he left the Marines and took a job in information and technology at Penn State. Living in the land of blue and white had been a lifelong dream, and they were both giddy at the prospect of being back in Pennsylvania, closer to family and friends.

During a tour of the house that they would eventually fill with a daughter, a couple of dogs and an impressive assortment of holiday décor, Shannon had already identified the space that would eventually become her classroom.

For as long as she could remember — and she can remember learning to play the piano at the age of five — Shannon has always wanted to be a music teacher.

“Music has always been who I am,” Shannon said.

The room she selected is just to the right of the front door so that the piano is one of the first things the eye catches upon entering. The rest of the accouterments are mostly predictable: three framed diplomas — two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s — and the obligatory array of music-related knick-knacks.

More prominently featured are the family photos, snapshots of parents and grandparents placed with care just above the piano. It’s a small touch, but an important one. Shannon wants her students to feel at home.

And it seems to be working.

Alex’s piano lesson was supposed to have ended five minutes earlier, but he seemed content to sit at the piano bench and continue an ongoing discussion about the way that music was played in the 1700s.

This was his Thursday afternoon routine and after a long day of middle school, he had sprinted up the driveway to the Henrys’ house in what was either the mark of a truly devoted student or a vain attempt to outrun the February chill.

Alex and his family moved to Spring Mills from Virginia two years ago. Finding the right piano teacher had been a process of trial and error, but he was eventually introduced to Shannon through a mutual friend.

“I feel like I connect on a different level than I did with my other teachers,” Alex said.

That day, they were working on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and the pedals on the piano kept tripping him up. Shannon listened to Alex play the song all the way through, her initial praise growing more and more emphatic with each keystroke.

On the rare occasion that she did the touch piano, it was usually with her left hand.

In the aftermath of the crash, the doctor’s original plan of action had been to remove what was left of Shannon’s index finger and amputate half of the middle one. He was asked to reconsider by one of the Henrys’ neighbors, a nurse anesthetist at the hospital who reasoned that a music teacher could use all of the fingers she could get her hands on.

If the crash had been a blow, then the recovery was utterly demoralizing. The tip of her index finger had been reattached but was still numb, and the open wounds on her hand were prone to infection, confining Shannon to bed for long stretches of time.

Worse were the feelings of helplessness, difficult to quantify and expressible only as a laundry list of tasks she continues to struggle with: opening a can of soda, pushing the button on a can of Pledge, giving a bath to her daughter.

Returning to music seemed like a leap, with the piano ranking high on a scale of tasks requiring greater dexterity than it takes to open a jar of peanut butter.

Alex’s mother was persistent, though. This woman didn’t care that Shannon could no longer play the notes, but she was more than happy to be in the possession of the rare seventh-grader who ran up the driveway to music lessons.

A few months ago, Alex accompanied the Penns Valley Middle School choir on piano.

Shannon slips this seamlessly into the conversation, the kind of harmless backdoor brag that comes naturally to a proud mother — or in this case a proud teacher.

“If it’s the students playing and not me playing, maybe that’s OK,” Shannon said.

Call of duty

Last December, the Henrys attended the holiday celebration at the 811th Ordnance’s base reserve center in Chambersburg.

It was Shannon’s coming out party, her return to the land of the living after the long, lean months where her social calendar consisted primarily of whoever else happened to be sitting in the waiting room at the physical therapist’s office.

The unit had helped maintain her sanity during the recovery, not just by emailing a kind word every now and again, but by making her feel like she was still needed.

As the Family Readiness Leader of the 811th Ordnance, Shannon serves as a resource for army spouses and significant others, someone who is acclimated to a life of service and the sacrifices that it requires — and also knows how to throw a party.

The holiday soiree was a hit. Shannon did crafts and played games with the unit’s kids. They even sang a couple of songs together.

“That was truly the first time that I was feeling like myself again,” Shannon said.

And she is still herself.

Yes, it’s six months later and she still can’t open a door with her right hand. Physical therapy is ongoing. The pain is still there.

But that’s small-picture thinking.

Shannon prefers to focus on the things that matter — her husband and daughter, the men and women of the 811th Ordnance and her eight private music students.

“I truly believe that the Lord put me on the earth to help. He saved me for some reason,” Shannon said.

This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Living the high notes: Music teacher doesn’t let injury keep her from passion."