LIFE AFTER NEAR-DEATHS: BURN SURVIVORS TELL STORIES OF RECOVERY

Burn survivors are all different shapes, sizes and ages. The scars are obvious on some, hidden by clothing on others. But all share one trait, Gary Hanson says.

"I don't think a lot of us would be burn survivors -- though we'd be burn victims -- if we weren't so tough," says the president of Burns Recovered Support Group Inc. of St. Louis.

Hanson was surrounded by burn survivors and family members Thursday night at the second meeting of a new support group the St. Louisans are helping form.

Eleven people attended the meeting sponsored by the SEMO Alliance for Disability Independence and held at the organization's offices. They were there to tell their stories and maybe say something that will help another burn survivor.

They talked about the itching that never goes away and the stares that sometimes follow them. Some talked about the pain of not being able to talk about how their lives changed in an instant.

Hanson was severely injured in 1991 when he was trapped inside his burning car. He and his wife, Linda, talked about the recovery process they both have been through.

Many burn victims are initially leery of going out in public and when they do make certain to cover up, he said.

"It's the hidden secret, in the closet, coming out. That makes the support group important."

He went out in public right away even though he was undergoing facial reconstruction surgeries. When children stare, he starts a conversation with them that leads to explaining why he looks the way he does.

Elizabeth Moore and her husband were asleep when an electrical fire started in their Scott City house last June 26. James died. Elizabeth was flown by helicopter to St. John's Mercy Medical center in St. Louis in critical condition.

She came Thursday with her daughter, Pam Henderson, who cried describing the call in the middle of the night that told her her parents' house was on fire and the agony of watching it burn. It haunts Moore that firefighters couldn't get in the house to save her husband.

Though unfamiliar with the specific circumstances, Cape Girardeau firefighter/paramedic Larry Galloway tried to explain why firefighters might not have been able to get to her husband in time.

When he was in the ninth grade at Jackson High School, Galloway's clothes caught on fire while he was welding in a Vo-Ag class. He sustained second- and third-degree burns on both legs, was hospitalized for two weeks and missed two months of school.

Naturally, Galloway grew up to be a firefighter.

"I've wanted to do this since before I was burned," Galloway says.

Before the advent of antibiotics and modern burn units, Peggy Lowes was burned over 35 percent of her body. Then, people usually didn't live who'd been so badly burned. The 3-year-old spent two years in the hospital.

"I was just a stubborn little kid," the Jackson woman said.

Lowes was burned mostly on her abdomen, so few people know she is a burn survivor.

That can be both blessing and curse. "Nobody ever talks about it -- your family protects you," she said.

"It was my clothes that caught fire. It's my clothes that cover it."

Craig Floyd, who was severely burned in 1982 while working on a gas station pump, came to the meeting with his wife, Barb. "It was a tough three months," she said of the aftermath, "but we survived."

Now, she said, "It's normal for us."

Doug Benton was spraying lacquer varnish on woodwork two years ago at his job in Colorado when he sustained third-degree burns over 32 percent of his body.

He is facing another in the series of surgeries that have followed, this one on an eye. His mother, Melinda McCulley, is dreading the pain she knows the surgery will cause him.

Linda Hanson reminds her that "it's his pain."

"Sometimes being the co-patient is harder than being the patient," Gary Hanson said.

The Hansons also run the Missouri Children's Burn Camp, which provides children with burn injuries with a one-week vacation in August. There they live and play with children who also have been burned.

The Southeast Missouri burn support group meets at 6:30 p.m. the second Thursday of every month at the SADI Community Room, 121 S. Broadview Plaza, Suite 10.