Norman & Rosemary Levin.

A young ballet dancer, I would leave my childhood home in Johannesburg to marry in 1953 and follow my gold mining engineer husband into the remote African bush in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). 

We would live in a primitive mud brick thatched house and begin our mining career as ‘small workers’, a rare breed of unusual men who chance their very survival, if not physical then certainly their financial survival and their family’s in this most precarious of professions - working a small gold mine, independently, with a handful of inexperienced workers, their wives and dependents. High risk, under capitalized, often dangerous. 

Five years on I was injured in a motor accident near the small town of Gwelo in 1959.

A whiplash, my neck broken, a complete spinal cord lesion at 5/6 cervical. 

I was in my early seventh month of pregnancy on that day, with our third child. 

I was twenty eight years old. 

I would be in hospital sixteen months - - - Bulawayo, Johannesburg, England. 

I would carry the baby full term. She would be born perfect and the uterus would expel her in the normal way.

We eventually returned to live out on the mine where we had established our budding profession some six years earlier, with our three small daughters.

The extent of recovery was really slight as I experienced the long, long process of rehabilitation to help me live my life again, quite altered - different at the height of my strongest young womanhood, but always by my side to help me, Norman, my good strong and steadfast husband to carry me through until this last two years when he died in January 2007 almost fifty years later.

I was a patient at Stoke Mandeville in 1960. I knew the renowned Sir Ludwig Guttman. On my arrival that year there was great preparation and excitement, for the 'Games' were about to begin.

I swam in a backstroke event and actually won a gold medal!

I returned from Zimbabwe for several visits to have a checkup through the years until 1990.

On June 5th 2009 I passed a full fifty years as a 5/6 cervical complete lesion survivor - Guinness World Records have honored me by giving me a certificate for surviving my high cervical injury.

I have written a small verse to commemorate my momentous occasion.

The Longest Journey

I climbed into a chariot one day and began to fly around the sun -

around and around I went orbiting the fiery orb to this very day -

soon to commemorate though not to celebrate my arduous long voyage -

fifty years I continued on my pilgrimage day in day out day in day out -

until June the fifth two thousand and nine at exactly thirty minutes after nine -

when the sun will flare much brighter for a brief moment to proclaim -

“fifty years ago today Rosemary began her great eventful journey -

with her brave husband always by her side until this last two lonely years -

She still committed though alone must carry on around and around the sun” -

 June 2009

In 2007 Rosemary Levin came to live in Israel, in Zichron Yaakov, to be near her daughter.

See also - Rosemary's reply to Teddy Porter below