OXFORD – “I felt so bad. I felt like crying. I did cry. I felt like I did it to her,” said a young male student as he left the assembly in the Oxford High School following Jacy Good’s presentation.

Jacy Good graduated college at 10 a.m. on May 18, 2008 and had her life planned. She was going to work for Habitat for Humanity and move to New York and live with her boyfriend. She was 21 years old.

Driving home took approximately an hour and a half, according to Good. She rode with her mother and father, and once they reached the halfway mark to home, they stopped at a gas station.

“Stopping at that gas station is the last memory I had for the next two months,” said Good at the presentation in Oxford on Thursday.

Good’s husband, Steve Johnson, said he had received a phone call that day from Good’s phone. “But it wasn’t her,” he said. Johnson explained to the students and others in attendance that the woman on the other line was from a hospital, and she told him there had been an accident.

Johnson explained that he was told to await a phone call in two hours, but more than three hours passed and he hadn’t received a call.

“The only girl I ever even kissed, and she was gone,” Johnson said he thought. He then received a phone call from Good’s brother, notifying him that she was alive; but neither of Good’s parents survived.

“I loved them so much,” said Johnson. “Someday they would have been the greatest grandparents.”

The Goods’ vehicle was struck head-on by a tractor trailer as both entered an intersection with green lights. The truck swerved to try to avoid a man coming from the intersecting road who attempted to turn left through a red light.

That man was talking on his phone at the time.

Good was given a ten percent chance of survival as she lay comatose and nearly unrecognizable in intensive care that first night. “Her beautiful hair was gone, blood was caked on her head, and her head was swollen twice its normal size,” said Johnson. “If you didn’t tell me that was Jacy Good [as he pointed to a photo from the hospital], I wouldn’t have known.”

Johnson said he spent 12 hours a day by her side through four months of hospitalization.

“It sunk in that life was forever going to be changed,” said Johnson.

Good’s list of injuries have managed to heal through time – with the use of titanium rods, plates, and screws – but due to a traumatic brain injury, she is unable to use her left arm or lower leg and has minor lingering cognitive issues.

Good said that once she was transferred to the rehabilitation center from the hospital, she had to take it one day at a time.

“I had to re-learn the alphabet,” said Good. “Learn how to brush my teeth. Put on my shoes. Dress myself. Thankfully, I kept getting better.”

After three months of hospitals and rehab, she was allowed to put weight on her legs. “It was monumental, my first time standing,” said Good. “I took three steps.”

“I thought then that the dreams I had before, that I could still make those happen,” Good said.

Good was able to go home on Sept. 19, 2008. “It had been four months and one day and I got to go home to Mom and Dad’s. I got to finish that 45 minutes home from graduation day.”

Good said that it hurt too much to be true. “I was 21 years old, it couldn’t be true. Mom and Dad weren’t sleeping in their bed at night. Mom and Dad weren’t going to work in the morning.”

Good said she had Googled her name, as she knew very little about the details of the accident. Upon doing so, she learned that the 18-wheeler was a milk truck that had just been filled, and the driver that made the turn that caused the accident was an 18-year-old high school senior.

“Same age as you guys,” Good said.

The driver had his cellphone on speakerphone, stopped at the red light, but said his brain got distracted and didn’t see what was in front of him and tried to make a turn, causing the truck to swerve and hit her family’s car.

Good said both the truck driver and the young man on the phone had bumps and bruises but were alright.