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GREENSBORO -- Every aunt, uncle and cousin twice-removed made the trip down from Ahoskie to the Greensboro Coliseum on Sunday to watch Joseph Lee Williams cross the stage at Southeast Guilford High School’s graduation.

Since this was Williams’ first weekend out of the hospital after a near-fatal accident in May broke his neck and cost him one leg, it was no surprise that his 40 relatives hooted and hollered when English teacher Joni Garrett wheeled him across the stage to get his diploma.

But when the entire graduation class, along with the guests filling the coliseum also erupted in cheers for Williams? That was something to write home to Ahoskie about.

“The whole school stood up and everyone in the coliseum, stood up,” Joseph’s aunt, Tarsha Howard, marveled afterward. “We had no idea they were going to do that. It was overwhelming.”

Her quiet, soft-spoken nephew moved in with his aunt and uncle in Greensboro after his mother became ill a year ago. The night of May 2, the high school senior, age 19, was crossing the bridge on U.S. 29 when he had a flat tire. He pulled to the left shoulder of the narrow bridge near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Interstate 85 to change it.

An oncoming car struck Williams’ car, police said, pinning him between his car and a guardrail. His leg was so badly damaged that surgeons had to amputate it.

Though exhausted from a month in the hospital — “watching 'Bonanza,’” he joked Sunday, “the same thing my great-great-grandmother used to do” — Williams said he was determined to cross the stage.

“I wanted something to show for all the years I’ve been in school,” he said. “I wanted to be with my classmates today.”

That included his cousin Desmond Williams, his Aunt Tarsha and Uncle Randolph’s son. Desmond walked two places ahead as Garret, the English teacher who helped Williams get everything in order for graduation, literally helped him the last few paces of the way.

Williams’ career goal has now changed from law enforcement school to the possibility of mechanics’ school, once he has recovered more fully and has the financial ability to get a prosthetic leg. Going from being 19, in the prime of his youth, to relearning simple tasks, is a tall order.

“I used to bench press 300 pounds. I probably can’t even bench press 50 now,” he said.

“While I was in the hospital, I lost a lot of strength, a lot of muscle, a whole lot of stuff.”

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com