The long road home

Last November, Veronica “Vo” Hubble’s world changed in an instant.

Her daughter Jordana, then just 6 years old, was struck by a car after getting off her school bus near Olney. She was reportedly thrown 60 feet from the point of impact, and has been on a long road to recovery for a traumatic brain injury sustained in the incident. For the past seven months, Jordana has undergone intensive rehabilitation at the Nexus Children’s Hospital in Houston.

In late August, Jordana and her mother finally made the return trip to Montana. But before they settled in at home, the family spent a week at Bigfork’s Flathead Lake Lodge. The guest ranch hosted more than a dozen children with life-threatening medical conditions and their families for A Week of Hope — held in honor of the lodge’s 75th anniversary.

“You don’t make it 75 years without a lot of other people helping you, so we didn't just want to throw a party and make it about us,” General Manager Chase Averill said. “We wanted to do something to help someone else out.”

The Lodge worked with the nonprofit Hope Kids and the Montana Children’s Hospital in Kalispell to select 20 families for the weeklong excursion, three of which were from Montana. Over the course of their stay, the Week of Hope families spent time horseback riding, sailing, mountain biking, shooting sports, among other activities. And while staff and volunteers catered to the group’s needs, they also wanted them to have an experience just like any other guest would.

“The whole motto of the ranch is we treat everyone the same — and we treat you well,” Averill noted.

For Vo Hubble, the weeklong getaway was a way for her family to salvage their summer, spend valuable time together and get to know other families dealing with medical hardship.

“It was really really nice because I had felt like being away for so long, you have phones and you have technology and all these things that are great for being in touch, but I feel like we missed our Montana summer. It was really nice to feel like we had a bit of a makeup for our summer.”

Vo, Jordana and her two other children, Ember and Soren, were joined by three other family members for the adventure. Among their favorite moments was an evening steak fry, going boating and taking a ride on a seaplane. For Vo, the Week of Hope was also a time to reconnect with her other two children, whom she’d missed while being in Texas with Jordana.

“They've grown in seven months,” she observed. “They’ve gone through a lot and really had to step up and do a lot more than what I think should be expected of kids [who are] 13 and 9 years old.”

Though Jordana and Vo’s time away from the rest of their family has been challenging, Jordana has made substantial progress.

“When we first got to Nexus they were excited to work with her but she was not doing a whole lot. She had her eyes open and she was having response to people around her … but she wasn’t talking, wasn’t tracking visually with her eyes,” Hubble recalled.

But Jordana tackled her rehabilitation head-on, attending physical, occupational or speech therapy every day during the week.

“There’s no stopping Jordana — she’s going to do what she’s going to do,” Hubble said. “That attitude has definitely paid off.”

After months of hard work, Jordana can now walk independently, though she is at times a bit unsteady. She can also eat on her own and is learning sign language to help communicate with her family while she continues to work on her verbal skills.

Now that the Hubbles are back in Montana for good, Jordana will continue rehabilitating at Whitefish Therapy and Sport Center.

But their time at the lodge provided a much-needed break from the medical setting. Jordana, once an avid swimmer, found her way back to the water.

“Just being able to see her in the pool. I had a moment. It was amazing seeing her back in the water,” Hubble said. “She can just move around and be herself and she just had a blast.”

BEING IN a community of other parents with children going through similar journeys was also helpful for Vo.

“It was really great to be surrounded by people who understood even if their struggle was different than ours was … you feel like you don’t have to explain as much,” she said. “They get it. They know what it’s like, the waiting and not knowing and the uncertainty.”

Averill said one of his primary goals for the week was to provide space and time for families to relax.

“What we originally set out and hoped for was for the kids and the families have the ranch experiences that everyone else has and have a break from their challenging everyday realities,” Averill said.

He admired the positive attitudes the Week of Hope families had, despite everything they’d been through. He also noticed many of the children were more mature than typical guests, having already gone through challenging experiences in their young lives.

“Every week at the end we do a little thank-you toast at dinner on Saturday night and play a highlight video or slideshow of photos. Usually it involves some jokes about funny things that happened over the week,” Averill said. “This time we were all just crying the whole time. Everyone was choked up … I think it was impactful for everyone.”

Lodge staff and the Flathead Valley community also banded together to make the event a reality. Crew members, sometimes as many as four per guest, helped Week of Hope kids acclimate to life in the saddle and one longtime former employee even returned for the event and carried one participant all the way up the trail to Avalanche Lake. Community members stepped in by donating golf carts, medical supplies and hundreds of thousands of airline miles to help cover transportation costs.

“We always joke that we cater to the kids and tolerate the adults and that’s kind of how this idea came about,” Averill said. “It was as good or more special than we could have ever planned for, and more so for the impact that it had on all of us.”

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss may be reached at 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.