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About Ethan Dozeman

Halfway through Tuesday's performance of "Beauty and the Beast" at DeVos Hall

, the audience witnessed a real-life love story as Ethan Dozeman proposed to Kendra Start.

During intermission, WOOD TV-8's Gerry Barnaby called the couple to a landing on the stairs in the lobby, under the guise of picking a contest winner out of a hat. Instead, Start picked a note that read: "I love you Kendra. I want to spend the rest of my life with you so ..."

When she looked up, Dozeman was on his knees

with a bouquet of roses and a ring, popping the question. Hundreds of people gathered in the lobby applauded at her enthusiastic "yes."

"Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this, but I knew he was an incredible person, so it doesn't surprise me that he would set up something like this," Start said later that evening.

Start, who turned 25 Tuesday, looks a bit like the dark-haired beauty in "Beauty and the Beast," and Dozeman is a bit like a prince waking from a beastly spell.

Dozeman suffered a severe closed-head injury Aug. 27, 2000, when he fell off a horse while riding near his Allegan County home. He spent three weeks in coma and three months in therapy learning to walk and talk again.

"Every morning when I wake up, I take a deep breath and thank God for a second chance to live," said Dozeman, 20.

"A year ago, I would not have predicted Ethan would be doing as well as he is," said Dr. Christian VandenBerg, medical director of rehabilitation at Spectrum Health Butterworth and Dozeman's attending physician. "He's on his own, working, driving and now proposing."

Dozeman remembers little of the months after the accident, except what his family told him and showed him in pictures. He was riding with Valentine Bolshava, a Russian exchange student at Grand Valley State University, who had just met the Dozemans, her host family, the day before.

Suddenly, Bolshava saw Dozeman on the ground, unconscious and not breathing. She performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, then ran to a neighbor's house.

"When the horses came back I thought, 'Oh, no. I hope somebody hasn't fallen and broken an arm,'" said Ethan's father, Hap Dozeman. "Later, I was wishing it was a broken arm."

Ethan was taken to Spectrum Health Butterworth, where he was in a coma for three weeks.

"We had worldwide prayer," Hap said, listing friends in Germany, Russia and Japan. One of Ethan's parents or his four siblings was with him at all times.

VandenBerg said a CAT scan showed bleeding inside Ethan's skull.

Even when Ethan began to regain consciousness, he had little motor control.

"I couldn't sit up on my own," Ethan said, pointing to a photo of himself staring blankly and strapped limply in a wheelchair.

He was transferred to Mary Free Bed Hospital in mid-September 2000, and by Oct. 25, two months after his accident, was able to walk out of the hospital. He continued outpatient therapy for two more months. In February, six months after the accident, he still had some speech and motor difficulties but took a job as a telemarketer, selling home improvements for Pacesetter Corp.

"I learned a lot from that job," Ethan said. "It helped me to not be afraid of rejection. When you call people and 99 percent slam the phone down, you can't take rejection personally."

In September, 13 months after the accident, Dozeman went to Craig's Cruisers in Wyoming to buy tickets for an overnight party with his 15-year-old brother, Nathaniel. Kendra Start waited on him.

"She said the six words that changed my life forever," Ethan recalled: "Don't you go to First Assembly?"

Although they had never met, both attended First Assembly of God Church in Wyoming. They began dating.

"I just swept her off her feet," Ethan said.

"Yes, he definitely did that," Start said later Tuesday evening as the couple cuddled on a couch at Cygnus lounge at the top of the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel. "He does the most romantic things, and he actually likes it."

Start, who is a singer and songwriter, now works as an office manager at Star Truck Rentals in Wyoming. Dozeman passed his Realtor exam and works at Platinum Realty Group in Grandville, MI.

"I'm way more persistent, way more outgoing, way more happy."

Although Start didn't know Dozeman before the accident, she agrees.

"I love his zest for life, and that's what (the accident) gave him."

contact: Ethan Dozeman