By Thea Jarvis

Lisa Mancuso, the Holy Cross parishioner injured in a Jan. 24 bus accident involving Notre Dame University’s women’s swim team, returned to class last week.

The 18-year-old Dunwoody High School graduate was released from Notre Dame’s student health center Wednesday, Jan. 29, and was back in class that day. She is walking with an air cast on her right lower leg to alleviate the considerable pain she still experiences, according to her mother, Barbara.

The injured women are negotiating campus terrain with the aid of golf carts, Mrs. Mancuso said, and at least one class has moved from a fourth-to a first-floor site to accommodate a student paralyzed from the waist down in the accident.

“They are giving her a lot of hope,” Mrs. Mancuso said of the paralyzed student, since she has regained movement in her knees and toes.

Mrs. Mancuso, director of elementary religious education at Holy Cross, said her daughter undergoes physical therapy at the campus swim center for two hours each day. Ms. Mancuso and other swim team members have met with school psychologists as well, she added.

Six Notre Dame women who were able to compete swam in a scheduled meet last week, said Mrs. Mancuso. Her daughter attended part of the meet, along with other injured swimmers.

The women “tried to win for them,” her daughter had told Mrs. Mancuso by phone.

“They probably have more of a bond now than they ever did,” Mrs. Mancuso said.

She and her husband, Phil, returned to Atlanta the day before Ms. Mancuso was released from the health center. The trip to Indiana, Mrs. Mancuso said, had been “the longest flight in the world.”

During their time at Notre Dame, the Mancusos learned the details of their daughter’s ordeal. She had been sitting next to her friend, Colleen Hipp, on the bus ride back to campus from a swim meet at Northwestern. At one point, the two women discussed changing seats to view the snow that was falling outside.

The accident that caused Ms. Hipp’s death and the death of another student, Megan Beeler, was attributed to the snowstorm.

“It was one of those questions that are unanswerable,” Mrs. Mancuso said, why some students survived and others died.

While Ms. Mancuso was trapped under the bus, another swimmer had stayed with her, holding her hand and calming her, until several truck drivers with crow bars managed to lift the bus from her leg. During that time, her mother said, she lost consciousness, awaking later in arm of one of the drivers carrying her to a waiting ambulance.

“You must have a name…I love you,” she told her rescuer, according to Mrs. Mancuso.