Jennifer Radil
Jennifer of Omaha, Nebraska lives a very fulfilling life years after a tragic car crash paralyzed her from chest level down back in 2000. She is considered a quadriplegic due to the position of her break and the loss of mobility in her extremities, but through hard work in therapy and adaptive crossfit, she is now functionally a paraplegic.
It seems this injury hardly slowed her down, going right back to school and getting her degree in studio art and later a master’s in art therapy, a field where she worked with adolescents for years. Wanting to pursue her own dreams, she rented a studio in 2012 and runs her own mixed-media art business. Her art is complex and colorful, using geographical motifs to create truly unique images. You can find her website and artwork here. She met her husband back in 2014 and the pair were married three years later. Despite her injury, Jennifer is fully independent.
Jennifer discovered the Dive Pirates in a rather unique way. Her husband had expressed interest in wanting to learn how to scuba dive for some time. To surprise him, she went to her local dive shop, DiVentures, which also happens to be a Dive Pirates chapter, to book dive lessons for her husband as an anniversary gift. When the staff mentioned that there was the possibility that she too could learn to scuba dive, she was a bit perplexed.
However, she remembered that the local paper had run a story about another paralyzed individual with paraplegia who learned to scuba dive as well. If he could do it, why couldn’t she? This amazing woman reached out to us and plans to become one of our newest recipients. One can only imagine the amazing artwork she will produce after a dive in Cayman Brac!
