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Six outstanding seniors share stories of their U-M careers >
Nine years ago Brandon Geiger was hit by a car while riding his bike to cross country practice. Two weeks later doctors said that with therapy one day he might learn to feed and dress himself again.
They were right — and wrong. On May 2 Geiger will graduate from the university with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, exceeding his doctors’ wildest expectations.
“My philosophy was always to never give up,” Geiger says.
Geiger suffered a traumatic brain injury before his freshman year of high school when a teen driving a speeding Mustang T-boned him in a school crosswalk. He was wearing a helmet, but doctors weren’t sure he would ever regain consciousness or make a meaningful recovery.
“For weeks, he couldn’t walk or talk or coordinate his movements. It seemed impossible for him to return to school,” says Mike Geiger, Brandon’s father, who is a 1975 mechanical engineering alumnus.
But Brandon persevered. He reached a turning point when learning to navigate stairs, a difficult task a month after the injury.
“Brandon had taken about 15 minutes to go down and back up a half flight of stairs with a therapist holding and helping him,” Mike Geiger recalls. “The therapist was congratulating him for completing the task, but Brandon interrupted, saying ‘Go again.’ After another 30 minutes on the stairs, Brandon was sweating and exhausted and could barely talk, but he says, ‘Go again with my dad,’ which we did.”
Nurses were gathered around. People were crying.
“A lot of times in recovery people will stagnate. But there was something that didn’t let me give up,” Brandon Geiger says.
Seven weeks after the injury, he started partial days at high school. He learned to run again, practicing at night on the soft fairway at a nearby golf course. He rejoined the cross country team the next year.
“Graduating from the University of Michigan has been a dream of mine since I can remember. The injury made it a much bigger challenge. But now, the feeling of accomplishment is awesome,” Geiger says. “The College of Engineering and the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, which I helped re-establish in Ann Arbor, will always be a huge part of my life.”
Graduation will be sweet for the Geigers, all of whom are engineers. His mother, Heidi, graduated from Michigan Tech. His brother, Derek, attends U-M.
“This graduation is the culmination of years of incredible courage and perseverance,” Mike Geiger says. “For Brandon to do what he did, it had to come from within him. As a parent, I am certainly very proud of him, but I am even more proud for him.”
