Former ELI student thanks Newark community

The week of August 18 marked the homecoming for one of ELI’s best-known students.

Shiho Nabeshima (center) and her family celebrate her graduation from Tohoku University.

Though she only attended class for three days in 2002, Shiho Nabeshima is vividly remembered by classmates and by ELI teachers and staff. Some may not recall her name, many never saw her face, but most have not forgotten what happened to her.

While crossing Elkton Road in Newark, Shiho, a 22-year-old graduate student on an exchange program between Miyagi prefecture in Japan and its sister state of Delaware, was struck by a car and dragged several feet. The accident––which collapsed her lungs, fractured her pelvis and spine and damaged her gall bladder and kidneys––sent shock waves across the ELI and university community and swept her parents, who had never traveled outside Japan and spoke no English, across an ocean and a continent to her bedside in Christiana Hospital in Newark.

There she was to spend 50 days in intensive care, followed by four months in a hospital in Japan and six months of rehabilitation, before her life could return to normal.

But now Shiho, who recently completed her master’s degree in developmental psychology at Tohoku University, was back in Newark, along with her parents and her sister Aya, 19. Looking poised and radiant in a summer dress, Shiho explained the reason for the visit.

“I wanted to show [the doctors, nurses and volunteers at Christiana Hospital] what I am really like––that I can walk and run and sing,” she said, smiling. “They never saw me do that.”

And she and her parents wanted to say thank you to a lot of people.

“I remember so many students of ELI came to my room. They wrote me letters and messages. They gave me 1,000 cranes [a traditional Japanese ‘get well’ expression] and dolls. The doctors and nurses were so kind. One nurse––Cindy––called me ‘my little princess.’ They took great care of us, my family and me. I love them.”

Shiho rattled off a list of people from the university and Newark community who helped house her parents, translated for them and prayed for her daily.

“I am so happy to be able to meet these people again. For the past three years I always wanted to say thank you. I couldn’t three years ago.”

One of Shiho’s last activities in Newark, after a week filled with visits with UD and Newark officials and reunions with friends, was to deliver the keynote speech at ELI’s August graduation.

“Because of the accident, I am the person that I am today,” she explained in her address.

“Now I know that even after the most devastating experience one can find the strength to start anew and to lead an even stronger life. In this way, I am able to think in positive ways about my experience.

“Because of this experience,” she told the audience, “I am now attending medical school to become a doctor. It is my great pleasure to use my second chance to heal others. I want to be a doctor who can sympathize with the pains and sadness of patients and their families.”