Art after injury: woman paints Santa Dollar art
By ALEXANDRA CALDWELL
Article published on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008  |
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| Photo by ALEXANDRA CALDWELL |
| Brooke Becker sits at her desk with the painting she did for the Santa Dollar program. Becker had a major head injury in a car accident in 1992, and this year her art will be featured on the Santa Dollar bills and cards nationwide. |
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CLEARWATER – At 14, Brooke Becker taught the 20-something models how to move for an ad. She was popular, wore a big smile and wasn’t afraid to give her dad a kiss when she later worked as a hostess in a Clearwater restaurant.
At 20, her date’s car was hit by a truck. She was in a coma for months. Her right side is paralyzed. The right side of both her eyes are blind. She can’t form sentences or say most words.
But Brooke Becker can paint.
This summer, Brooke, 36, of Clearwater painted the Santa Claus face that will appear on more than a million Santa Dollars across the country and painted the picture that will appear on the cards.
Doctors doubted she would wake up from her coma.
“She was hurt beyond belief. Beyond survival, really,” said Bob Becker, her father. “She was in a coma for months at Bayfront Center, and after several months she was transferred down to Bradenton to a coma rehab hospital. The accident happened in June 1992. In January, the money ran out and she had to come home.”
Brooke ate from a feeding tube for two years. Her parents still cringe when they recall the telltale beeping in the middle of the night that alerted them when the feeding tube had gotten disconnected. Bob and Gaye, Brooke’s mom, would go into her room to find the machine pumping “green gook” all over the carpet.
Eventually, Brooke could scoot around in a wheelchair. On her birthday about two years after the crash, she grabbed a piece of birthday cake and ate it. One day she could lift herself onto the toilet by herself. Then she could walk with a cane.
One day, Bob saw an ad for an art class with the Abilities Foundation for people with head injuries. He signed Brooke up immediately.
“Art has been the number one thing for her,” Bob said. “It helps her communicate, for one thing. Express herself.”
Brooke motions to her father. She’s trying to explain that she was right handed before the crash. Now that hand is curled up into a fist. She and her father work to stretch it out, but she still has to do everything with her left hand. But she can dress herself, shower, put her bathing suit on, brush and fix her hair and paint using only her left hand.
Brooke hadn’t done any art before her accident, but since the art class, she has painted religiously. Painted rocks, lamp shades, bird houses and canvasses with bright, cheerful flowers filling her bedroom. Bob reduces the images to greeting card size and sells them. Brooke gives away many paintings as gifts. She has painted about 100 canvasses, Bob said.
Bob attended a luncheon with the Abilities Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that helps people with disabilities become independent and also provided the art class that Brooke took. There, he met June Watts, founder of the Santa Dollar program. And there, Watts found her artist for the 2008 program.
Watts of Palm Harbor, founded the program 23 years ago, which sells dollar bills in Christmas cards to raise money for charities. The stores where the cards are sold choose the charity they want to help. A press-on sticker of Santa’s face is placed over Washington’s head on the dollars. The local Publix grocery stores sell these at holiday time with all proceeds benefiting Abilities.
“At Christmastime when I was a kid, one of the things my dad liked to do was hang dollar bills on the tree Christmas Eve, and we’d get up and all the dollar bills would be on the tree,” Watts said. “It wasn’t a lot of money, but to a little kid, it was like, wow, money does grow on trees.”
Watts worked in marketing for three shopping centers and remembered this childhood story. That triggered the idea to create Santa Dollars. Each year, more than a million of the cards with dollars are sold across the country, including Alaska and Hawaii. People give them as gifts to children, Watts said.
“When I send Christmas cards, I don’t fool around,” Watts said. “I send a million or none.”
This summer, Brooke painted Santa’s face, which will be turned into the sticker that goes on the dollars. She also painted a picture of the North Pole that will be printed on the inside of the cards.
Brooke and Watts greet each other with hugs and smiles. Watts thanks Brooke for her collection of artwork. It’s beautiful, she says.
“Thank you, thank you,” Brooke says.
Watts shows Brooke a prototype of the Santa Dollar. Brooke smiles.
“Brooke’s been an inspiration to me,” Watts said. “I’ve really enjoyed this experience. A lot of times, even though this is my job and we’ve been doing this for so many years across the country, I don’t get to meet the people this helps. We know it’s helping, but I don’t get to reach out and touch somebody and know that somebody’s being helped.”
Brooke still can only say a few words and communicates mostly through her parents. Gaye said she can practically read Brooke’s mind. But with only half her mouth and tongue functioning, Brooke gets frustrated when she says a word that people can’t understand. She spells out some words with her finger or gestures with her hands, but it’s hard for her and her parents. Brooke used to be so talkative.
But she doesn’t need words to paint.
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Article published on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008
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