LCBC bus crash survivor, Elizabethtown native pursues a medical career following recovery

Emily Williams can no longer ride a coach bus. She's still scarred by the memories of one of the most dramatic large-scale crashes involving young Lancaster County people in recent memory.

That's not the only major life change she experienced in the 37 months since the coach bus returning to Lancaster from a youth church retreat left the highway and smashed into some woods in Frailey Township, Schuylkill County.

The driver, who had suffered a medical emergency , and 31 passengers — five adult women and 26 girls ages 14 to 16 — survived. But several girls were left seriously injured , including Williams, then an Elizabethtown High School sophomore who suffered 13 broken bones.

After the wreck, those treating Williams were so effective that she was inspired to develop new career goals. She wants to be there for children and teens experiencing the most scary and painful moments in their lives, just like some of the special staff were there for her at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

'The mind remembers' While Williams is physically healed from the injuries sustained in the crash, she is sometimes reminded of the incident if she smells gas fumes at a gas station, or hears the revving of an engine or even the popping of balloons, a sound that reminds her of the tires that popped during the bus wreck.

"Or even hearing a car's tire go over a bump," she said. "It feels a certain way in my mind. It's insane how the mind remembers."

When those moments come about, Williams employs tools taught to her by Karen Mummau, founder and director of Matters of the Heart Counseling, which has offices in Elizabethtown Borough and East Hempfield Township.

Shortly after Williams returned from the hospital to her family's West Donegal Township home Oct. 2, 2021, she sat down with Mummau in four weekly therapy sessions.

"I had known the Williams family from us having gone to the same church years earlier," Mummau said. "After the crash I reached out to them and offered my support."

Mummau felt it was important for Williams to undergo therapy to learn how to mentally and emotionally process the trauma of the wreck. Specifically, Mummau employed a branch of eye movement and desensitization reprocessing therapy: recent event processing.

"If someone has an isolated recent event like the bus accident you can target ... and walk through the process of just that event," Mummau said. "Whatever it is that (Williams) paired with the accident, when you have a traumatic event, it's not just in your memory, it's in your body, especially when there's a sustaining injury."

Mummau taught Williams to take the bad memory of the crash, form it in a shape in her mind and mentally place it somewhere, then think of a place that made her happy.

Williams visualized placing the memory of the crash in a small, brown wooden box with a lock on it, the box located just in front of her. Her happy place was on the beach in Cancun, Mexico, where she and her family previously vacationed.

"Ultimately what that form of therapy does is put the memory off to the side, not directly in front of their line of vision," Mummau said. "So if the patient remembers the traumatizing event, they can recognize that it happened then continue on with life. If anything triggers the memory, it's not a big deal. ... It just brings it down a notch."

On Dec. 30, 2021, three months after the crash, Williams was cleared by a doctor to return to the basketball court for the Elizabethtown girls basketball team.

"I was excited," Williams recalled. "I had played since I was in kindergarten. I wanted that sense of comfort."

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'Changed our perspective' "The crash changed our perspective on a lot of different things," said Lynn Williams, Emily Williams' father. "We went from a basketball-obsessed family, traveling to tournaments all the time ... that was a high priority. That priority went several steps down the ladder."

"After (the wreck) I still loved the sport," Emily Williams said. "But it was so different. When I didn't play well, I knew then that the world is bigger, life will move on and I will be OK. I did it for fun then, I was grateful I was physically able to do it."

Emily Williams had no trouble riding on the school bus to away games.

"To this day school buses I have no problem," she said. "A coach bus is a different story."

The coach bus that crashed three years ago was returning to the Rapho Township campus of LCBC (Lives Changed by Christ), which has more than 20 campuses across the state, many of them in Lancaster County. The bus was coming back from a youth retreat in New York.

About a year after the wreck, crash victims were offered the opportunity to come to the Rapho Township campus of LCBC, where they could board a coach bus with the assistance of a professional therapist as another way to provide further healing from the event.

"I went over to the bus," Emily Williams recalled. "They gave me a fidget type toy. I had them turn on the bus while I stood outside of it. I stood there and talked to the bus driver. That was hard for me in being able to trust the driver. I got on the bus and sat down."

Emily Williams sat on the right side, the opposite side from which she rode during the wreck a year earlier. A therapist sat next to her.

"I had them drive in the parking lot," Emily Williams said.

She had the option of the ride continuing onto a nearby highway, but opted for the bus remaining in the parking lot.

She has not been back on a coach bus since then.

When LCBC hosted a youth retreat for the crash victims a year after the wreck, they provided vans for those who weren't comfortable riding on a coach bus. Emily Williams was about a half-dozen who didn't board a bus - she opted to have her parents drive her there and back.

"Being on the (coach) bus was still terrifying for me," she said. "The way the seat felt, the way the engine sounded. As much as I wanted to believe I was OK enough to go, I knew I wasn't, and I wasn't going to force myself to do that when it had been so traumatic for me."

On the way home from that youth retreat in September 2022, Emily Williams had her parents stop near the crash site. She and her father stepped out into the rain and looked up the grassy embankment towards the gap in the woods where the bus had come to a halt.

"I didn't go the whole way up," Emily Williams said. "I just wanted to stand there and see it. I could put it all back together. ... That little bit was all I needed ... Now I don't need to go back."

Lynn Williams walked up into the woods and picked up a rock from the crash site. The rock now sits atop a refrigerator in the family's garage in their home.

"I knew I wanted something (from the crash site), but I wanted something subtle," Emily Williams said. "Something small I can have in my own house."

"It's out of sight but it's close enough to bring comfort," Lynn Williams said.

Before the crash, Emily Williams intended to study marketing in college. Her experiences in the immediate days after the wreck has now led her to aspire to a different vocation.

READ: 'We will never forget': LCBC bus crash survivor named Miss Lancaster County Teen 2024

'It will be OK' An ambulance had transported Emily Williams from the crash site to Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Dauphin County.

"In the emergency room right after I got there, a woman who worked there gave me a squishy ball and Play-Doh," Emily Williams recalled. "She had me hold that as she talked to my parents."

The woman was part of Penn State Health's team of child life specialists who address the psycho-social, emotional and developmental needs of pediatric patients and their families, in part by making patientsfeel comfortable and safewhile helping them understand doctors' and nurses' roles in treatment and recovery.

A child life specialist visited Emily Williams each day during her two-week hospital stay.

"They brought in one of their therapy dogs," Emily Williams recalled. "Other days they'd bring different books, coloring books. Sometimes, depending on how the conversation went, they'd ask me more personal questions."

The interaction with the child life specialists left an impression.

"They were there to meet me where I was," Emily Williams said. "I obviously had my parents every day. But I was 15 years old. I didn't understand what was going on. It was scary. It was so scary. To have someone there to understand the doctor's perspective and my perspective, I wasn't as scared because they (child life specialists) helped me understand what was going on."

Emily Williams is now in her first semester at the University of Delaware, where she is pursuing a bachelor's degree in human services and family development, with a plan to become a child life specialist.

"My idea of a career changed in my mind because now I understood what it was like to be on the receiving end of the care," she said. "They helped me so much. And I know how they help other people as well. I want to be that person for someone in the future."

Framed inside Williams' dormitory room on the Delaware campus is the Bible verse Romans 8:28, which reads, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

The verse motivated Williams, a follower of the Christian faith, as she recovered from the crash.

"But even for those who are struggling who aren't a person of faith, I hope they read this story and understand things will work themselves out how they're supposed to work themselves out," she said. "It will be OK, even if it wasn't the way you wanted it to happen, there will be an ending to it and that was the ending for you."

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