She fought for rights of the disabled, then was disabled in a car crash. It didn’t stop her.

STAUNTON – In an airport not far from here in 1979, a young woman walks off a plane and out into the parking lot. She finds a car waiting for her, unlocked. Key under the mat. She climbs in, starts the car up and drives into the future.

Almost 40 years later, the woman laughs at the casual nature of the arrangement. What seems like a scene from a spy novel was a sign of a trusting, small-town environment she was about to become inexorably part of.

"This is Staunton," she remembers. 

Twenty years later. A cold January winter morning in 1999. While on her way to take her son to religious school, her Jeep skids on black ice and wraps around a tree that would break through the windshield on the driver's side.

"The tree came through my window into my brain," she shares. "And my just turned 8-year-old son sitting in the seat next to me sees his mother unconscious with blood coming down the back of her head over the steering wheel. They couldn't get him out of the car."

Her son survived the accident without a scratch. Rabbi Lynne Landsberg wouldn't be so lucky. Emergency crews rushed her to the hospital where her chances of survival were slim. She suffered massive head trauma and medical professionals performed brain surgery. In a deep coma, the doctors thought she'd never wake up. While her body was ready to quit, her spirit kept fighting and six weeks later she opened her eyes.

She was 48 years old when the life she knew would never be the same. 

Re-learning how to live

Landsberg doesn't take no for an answer. 

Whether it's an obstacle personally or professionally, there is no stopping her. She is going to fight the good fight and keep fighting it, so you might as well say yes because she isn't going anywhere until you do. 

She had already accomplished a lifetime of such fighting before the patch of black ice took her life off the road she knew so well.

As an advocate for social justice representing the Reform Jewish Movement, she spoke to people of different faiths on over 50 issues about which the movement had policies, some of which include violence against women, poverty and homelessness, LGBTQ rights, gun control, bettering Black-Jewish relations, apartheid in South Africa, reproductive rights, the environment and disability rights.

Referring to those years almost as if it were a different incarnation of herself, she says, "I have been told that in my former life, I was an effortless multi-tasker, a fast-talker and a quick thinker."

"I would speak on women’s issues or gay rights or any kind of economic justice issue. Sometimes I spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to thousands of cheering people. And I did this with only jotted notes."

When you meet Landsberg, the first thing you notice is her smile accompanied by a subtle laugh weaving throughout her dialogue. She instantly embraces you. Empathetic and interested, she will immediately begin to ask questions because she wants to know you. She wants to know your story. She wants to figure out how she can help you. 

"Judaism is faith-oriented, but it's much more community-oriented and people-oriented," says Landsberg. "That's what I focus on – people."

For those who are vulnerable, she is their champion. A passionate advocate for civil and human rights, especially of the disabled, she became a major force in creating a more inclusive environment in places of worship for the disabled.

Petite in size, but not in spirit, Landsberg is a survivor.

Eighteen years ago, the first thing she had to do was learn everything all over again, as she began the slow and painful rehabilitation process that comes with traumatic brain injury.

"I couldn’t walk, talk, read, concentrate or focus for any time at all. After four solid months in the hospital, I came home with 24-hour nursing. Years and years of intensive rehabilitation followed."

She had to start life over, beginning with learning her ABC's. 

"Over the years, I’ve slowly re-learned how to live. But the traumatic brain injury has left me with persistent physical and cognitive challenges. Now, I walk with a cane or a walker, require assistance with minor tasks, and my speech therapist still says I must speak slowly to be best understood. For a native New Yorker, that is the hardest part."

Before the accident would alter her path in life, Landsberg worked tirelessly at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C. But her beginnings go back much further than this. They begin when a New York rabbi moves to Staunton. 

'This is Staunton'

Landsberg grew up on Long Island in a loving and supportive family. She was very involved in the synagogue from a young age.

"The synagogue was my life. I brought people home from college to see my hometown, I would take them to the synagogue because that was such a significant part of my life."

She went on to study early childhood education at Boston University and get her masters at Harvard Divinity School, serving as co-president of the student body.

"Of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of students I have taught over more than four decades at Harvard, she stands out and is in a class of her own," says Harvey Cox, Landsberg's former faculty adviser in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin.

While at Harvard, Landsberg decided she wanted to become a rabbi.

"If I wanted to do anything in the Jewish world, I should have rabbi before my name, so I applied to rabbinical school. My student pulpit was Staunton, Virginia. That was my introduction to Staunton." 

In 1979, Staunton needed a rabbi but couldn't afford to hire someone full-time, so they hired Landsberg, a student rabbi. 

"Staunton would pay for me to fly down, leave a car for me at the airport with the key under the mat," she laughed. "This is Staunton."

Every two weeks for two years she would stay at a hotel and perform services at Staunton's Temple House of Israel until Congregation Beth El in Harrisonburg joined together with Staunton's Temple House of Israel to hire her as a full-time rabbi. They offered Landsberg the position, but she instead took the position of Assoc. Rabbi at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, one of the largest Jewish congregations in the country. Three years later, the synagogue in NYC asked her to stay another five years, and she said no. 

"When I said no, they said, 'What could we do to make you stay?' I said, move to the Shenandoah Valley." 

Which she promptly did, to start her new job.

"I just loved it here. First of all, the Jewish community being a vast minority here, they appreciated everything that you did. Wherever they came from – here they were very, very involved in the synagogue. I liked that."

She moved into a cute little house on Sherwood Avenue and served as Staunton's full-time rabbi.

"The Klu Klux Klan marched in Staunton while I was the rabbi here in the '80s," she remembers. "We had massive amounts of people come to the synagogue and paint huge signs, and we went along Beverley Street with them."

Lynne and Dennis

Always impeccably dressed, one night after Friday night services, she stopped at a friend's home.

"I'm wearing my Armani suit and pearls, and there's a guy in jeans and a flannel shirt sitting in the corner who stands up and says, 'Gut Shabbos.'" 

She looked at him curiously and asked, "'How do you know that?'" She knew everyone in the area who was Jewish, and she didn't know him. It's Yiddish for 'Good Sabbath' said on Friday evening, the Sabbath eve. And with those thoughtful words he'd caught her attention. 

Originally from Los Angeles, Dennis Ward came out to visit an old army buddy, fell in love with Staunton and stayed.

"It turns out that his former girlfriend's mother was the director of the Jewish community center in Los Angeles," smiles Landsberg. "So he learned a lot from her."

They began dating and two years later were married in May. Ward converted to Judaism before their wedding day. The following year on Christmas day, their son Jesse was born.

From Staunton to Capitol Hill

Ultimately, Landsberg says, what really pushed her buttons was the social justice aspect of Reform Judaism. 

When Rabbi David Saperstein, former Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C. (known affectionately as 'the RAC') and U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom during President Obama's administration, called her to take the Associate Director position at the RAC, she couldn't turn it down.

"When he called and asked me to come up, I flew there."

About 35 denominations in Washington work on a broad range of public policy. For eight years, Landsberg advocated tirelessly on multiple issues, giving speeches and talking at press conferences across the country. Until the car accident.

"I went to New York and met Bishop Tutu and handed him a 100,000 dollar check from a Jewish philanthropist. I represented the American-Jewish community who was actively anti-apartheid and met privately with Nelson Mandela when he visited the U.S."

"Everyone loved her all over the country," says Saperstein when talking about Landsberg's work at the RAC. Saperstein was giving a speech at the Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello on July 4 and stopped by Landsberg's home for a visit. "She had a major role in a whole range of interfaith coalitions and public interest coalitions in Washington."

After the crash, Saperstein wanted her back as soon as she was able, and Landsberg returned in a volunteer capacity as an adviser on disability rights, an issue that had become very personal for Landsberg. After her accident, she'd begun to notice how differently people treated her. 

"The first major bill I worked on was the Americans with Disabilities Act," she says about when she first began working in D.C., long before her accident. "Little did I know that a decade later, that piece of legislation would directly affect my life." 

The discrimination was felt most painfully within places of worship; her home as a rabbi. Landsberg's driving spirit would shift to emphasizing the importance of disability inclusion in houses of worship and faith communities exempt from the ADA. 

"A number of religious groups tirelessly advocated for the ADA. However, after its passage, I was surprised to learn that due to pressure from other religious groups — whatever their reasons — houses of worship were, in fact, exempt from and therefore did not have to comply with significant portions of the ADA."

Without the law looking over their shoulders, she says, congregations were very slow to make necessary changes both physical and emotional.

This issue became the focal point of Landsberg's work as Senior Advisor for Disability Rights at the RAC, co-founder of the Jewish Disability Network, which helped to pass an amendment to the original ADA that addresses employment discrimination against people with disabilities and serving on the Steering Committee of the Interfaith Disability Advocacy Coalition with representatives from over 30 national denominations and religious groups.

"She was a galvanizing presence whose influence was really felt in synagogues all over the country," says Saperstein.

On April 30, Rabbi Landsberg was honored for her decades of service to the Jewish people and the cause of disability rights at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism's Consultation on Conscience, a three-day social justice, leadership and advocacy gathering. 

"Lynne played one of the lead roles nationally in the religious community in general and the Jewish community, especially what people thought about the urgency of the issue and a moral obligation to be more responsive to people with disabilities," says Saperstein who gave the speech at the ceremony honoring Landsberg.

"I got a standing ovation, and nobody even knew I had cancer," she says.

Recently diagnosed with stage four uterine cancer, Landsberg is currently undergoing chemotherapy at UVA. Given what her body has been through, it's been very difficult, with visits back and forth to the hospital due to infections, along with emergency surgery from complications. 

But Landsberg is a fighter who doesn't take no for an answer. 

"I didn't need the cancer to appreciate every day. Every day of life is a miracle."

This story is part of a series on wonder women in the Shenandoah Valley.

Reporter Monique Calello can be reached at (540) 430-0620 or mcalello@newsleader.com. Follow her on Twitter @moniquecalello.