Pure automotive determination at it’s best

In a world where it’s easy to allow our circumstances to get the better of us, it lends perspective to look back at others and remember that there’s someone worse off than yourself.

These are the words of Shirley Chapman, describing her life’s journey after losing both of her legs at the youthful age of 16 after the vehicle she was travelling in struck a landmine in the war-stricken former Rhodesia in 1976.

One of two people who survived the blast which claimed the lives of a mother and her three daughters, Shirley remembers being unable to lift herself off the ground following the explosion – the sudden realisation that her legs were gone.

Little did she know that her spiral of events would lead her to meet her doting husband Richard Chapman two years later in a medical rehabilitation centre, after suffering a landmine explosion himself which left three dead, three permanently paralysed and Richard himself with critical spinal injuries among others.

Moving to South Africa was an inevitability, and after tying the knot in 1980, the couple made the trek down to Durban in 1981 using Shirley’s Volkswagen Passat – modified by the Terrorism Victim Relief Fund to feature hand controls for the throttle and brake pedal, amazingly allowing Shirley to drive normally despite her handicap.

The dilemma arose comically in 1985 when the couple bought a red Toyota Corolla, and Richard was faced with the task of removing the hand control mechanism which was custom-built for the Passat and refit it into the Corolla.

Being from a humble background where resources were scarce, Richard managed to find things around him to reassemble a system that fit into the new car – including bits of steel rebar and even a lever from an excavator.

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A few weeks and some drilling later – and the home-made hand controls worked just as well, as they did in 1987 when the controls were transferred and retrofitted to a blue Toyota Cressida for Shirley who recalls a few hairy but comical moments when the contraption became stuck while driving.

“I remember driving down Ballito Drive to our old home in Hawkins Road when the bicycle cable that controlled the accelerator jammed open.

I did not think to switch the car off and managed to steer the car quickly down the road, bounce through the yard and out the other side where I stalled the car on an incline,” Shirley recalls in a fit of laughter.

“All our friends called me ‘Sarel van der Merwe’ after that.”

Richard continued to place Shirley in other cars, such as a late 90’s Corolla which he still keeps at home for his in-laws to use and still shows the history of its modified past in the brake pedal and steering column hardware, where Richard’s hand control mechanism used to fit.

In 2005 however, when the couple bought a more modern Toyota Verso, Richard had to hand over the reins to a professional fitter to develop a more bulletproof implementation without, for example, a bicycle cable which got Shirley into another complicated but amusing situation when she had her Cressida.

“I was driving back home over the Tongaat bridge when the cable snapped and I could not accelerate. I managed to nurse the car back home by pressing the pedal with my right hand and steering with my left,” she says with a giggle.

Shirley and Richard Chapman display a die-hard sense of ‘get up and try again’ which they had to see them through the harshest of times – something Richard attributes to the rough military lifestyle they had experienced in the former Rhodesia.

“During the war you had a brotherhood with the people you fought with, there was no colour or race, just family, friends and a positive outlook. I’m surprised we lost actually,” he chuckles.

Shirley herself doesn’t see her handicap and continues on regardless, indicating plainly that there is no time for a ‘victim’ mentality if one is to move forward in life.

Her vehicle for the last eight years has been a reliable and well-equipped Hyundai Elantra, also fitted with professionally made hand controls which, according to Richard, gives the dealer an extra few quizzical hours on the shop floor removing and replacing when the car is sent for a service.

It goes to show that with determination, truth, friends and even a little humour, the worst of situations can also turn into one of the most inspiring stories to tell.

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