For crash survivor, "can't" isn't in his vocabulary
This afternoon in Pennsylvania, Trenton and Robbie Buzard showed up for the wrestling meet of the year: Penn State vs. Iowa. Wrestling roots run deep in this family.
"I coach wrestling, I wrestled for 12 years," said Robbie. "Wrestling is in our blood."
The Buzard Family was forever changed on April 2, 2009, when a Chevy Cobalt was hit head-on by a drunk driver an hour outside Pittsburgh.
The airbags never deployed. 73-year-old Esther Matthews and her 13-year-old granddaughter Grace Eliot were killed. The lone survivor was Trenton. He was only 11 months old and he was paralyzed from the waist down.
We first met Trenton in April. Even thought his lungs have collapsed more than 20 times and his parents have lost track of how many surgeries he's been through, he fights. At six, he wants to crawl anywhere he can. He wants to wrestle.
"You can't tell a six-year-old he can't do something," said his mom, Marie. "He came home from school one day and he said they sent home wrestling sign-up forms and Trenton said "daddy I want to sign up for wrestling, all my friends are going to wrestling practice tonight.
"And you know, how do you tell him, Trenton you can't wrestle. We tell him...if he says he can't do something, we always say, Trenton, can't is not in your dictionary. We don't use that word in our house," she said.
Today, as Trenton continues his years-long struggle, we helped him meet his heroes. He got to see Penn State wrestling coach Cael Sanderson and wrestler David Taylor.
Trenton has taken his parents' advice to heart. "Can't is not a word he considers.
"He's got such upper body strength. At the age of 3, when I put him in the wrestling room, he could do more pullups than my 12-year-old," said Robbie.
And though his parents know his life will never be the same. That doesn't mean it can't be full of moments like this.
"When we're sitting here, yelling and screaming together, and he's shaking hands. You just forget about everything."
