Friends: Culp’s will unwavering
By DAVE GOSSETT, Staff writerSTEUBENVILLE - Ted Hart was sworn to secrecy when his friend Connie Culp told him she was a candidate for a face transplant.
"When I talked to her about the surgery at the Cleveland Clinic she told me she was looking forward to the surgery because she didn't have a life with the disfigurement. I am so happy that the surgery has been a success for her and when I talked to Connie's sister, she told me her sister is actually beautiful again," related Hart.
Culp went public Tuesday at the Cleveland Clinic as the first successful full face transplant patient in the United States.
Culp was injured in 2004 when her husband shot her in the face with a shotgun.
Hart said he met Culp several years ago when she joined the local painters union where he served as a union business agent.
"You wouldn't believe how strong she was for a little woman. She was always a very determined woman. She is still a union contractor. We collected money for her medical care when she was first injured by her husband. Everyone that came in contact with her liked her and respected her. Connie was a hard-working person and a perfect mother who cared about her kids," said Hart.
He noted Culp was involved in several local painting projects, "including the new Sears store, the new Kroger store, Harding Middle School, the renovation at the Steubenville Municipal Building and the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center.
Bernice Hart described Culp as "strong, hard-working with a bubbly personality."
"I visited her at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh a few days after she was shot by her husband. She had severe injuries to her face and she had trouble talking but she knew me," recalled Bernice Hart.
"Once she recuperates from the transplant surgery I figure she will move forward. That is who she is. I hope I can talk to her again soon," her friend noted.
City employees remember Culp working with her husband during a painting project in the City Building and also noted her strong work ethic and friendly personality. But the relationship between Connie and Thomas Culp erupted in violence on Sept. 21, 2004, at the OK Corral in Hopedale.
Harrison County Sheriff Ronald Myers was a department captain at the time of the shooting.
"It was a very bad scenario. Any domestic incident that involves firearms is bad, but this was a very bad case. I know at her husband's sentencing Connie still expressed her love for him, and he indicated he loved her," related Myers.
Thomas Culp pleaded no contest to charges of attempted aggravated murder and felonious assault and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Harrison County Prosecutor Shawn Hervey called the incident "the worst case of domestic violence I have ever seen."
After Thomas Culp shot his wife in the face with a shotgun, he used the same weapon to shoot himself.
Former Harrison County Sheriff Mark Miller said at the time of the shooting incident Thomas Culp planned to kill his wife and then himself.
"He had plans to shoot her and then shoot himself. It would have been a murder-suicide," Miller said.
Both Culps initially were transported to Harrison Community College and then by medical helicopter to Allegheny General Hospital.
The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye, and hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face, according to reports. She needed a tube into her windpipe to breathe, and only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were left.
A plastic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Risal Djohan, got a look at Culp's injuries two months later. ''He told me he wasn't sure if he could fix me but he'd try,'' Culp recalled.
She endured 30 operations to try to fix her face. Doctors took parts of her ribs to make cheekbones and fashioned an upper jaw from one of her leg bones. She had countless skin grafts from her thighs, and still, she was left unable to eat solid food, breathe on her own or smell.
Then, on Dec. 10, in a 22-hour operation, Dr. Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80 percent of Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.
Hervey said Tuesday he last talked to Culp in January.
"It is good to see that her external scars are healing. But I am afraid she will deal with her internal scars from domestic violence that won't heal for a very long time," Hervey stated.
(The Associated Press contributed to this story. Gossett can be contacted at dgossett@heraldstaronline.com.)
