Kijuan Amey

Kijuan Amey refueled fighter jets in midair for the Air Force, lost his sight in a motorcycle wreck, and now speaks and writes for a living.

Brad Banyas bought his book and read the whole thing before recording, which is not how most of these go. Amey wrote Don't Focus on Why Me: From Motorcycle Accident to Miracle, and he came onto the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast to talk about it. Banyas kept steering off the details so listeners would go and buy it. He did raise one story Amey said nobody else had ever mentioned to him, the day at the rehab facility when Amey's older brother had to put on a blindfold and learn to move without sight.

He has played drums since he was seven and still plays at his church every Sunday he is home. He sings too. He served four years on active duty, then moved to the reserves, and his job was in-flight refueling on a KC-135 out of Seymour Johnson in North Carolina. Fighters cruise at about 315 knots while he passes them gas, and with the radios out a pilot puts a thumb to his mouth and holds up three fingers for three thousand pounds. He had a year left on the degree he needed to commission and fly himself. He was also running a photography business and managing a church website at the time. The lake on the book cover is a photo he took. So is the motorcycle.

On May 5, 2017, he rode out to Jordan Lake to sit at his usual spot before a night shift. A car pulled out of an intersection in front of him while he was doing 55. He does not remember any of it. The police report says a silver Honda Accord, and the drivers stopped behind it told officers they had seen him coming. He came out of the coma on June 6, a month and a day later, blind. His spine is fused with two rods and twelve screws. A metal plate left a carving in his forehead and a skin graft gave him a new eyelid. He had to learn to walk again, which he points out is a different job at 235 pounds than it is at twenty. His right knee collapsed under him in rehab, and his right foot, the kick drum foot, is still the one he works on.

What he credits is faith and the people who showed up. He woke from the coma with his mother and his girlfriend already in the room, and his uncle told him later that people had prayed for him every hour, around the clock, until he left the hospital. He has less patience for the friends who could not stand to see him that way. The drums brought him back. He compares putting his hands on them again to being shocked after coding on a table.