Keith Anderson is eager to begin his new career so that he can take care of his family.

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The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

He knew the visiting nurse would be arriving soon, by 7:30 a.m., to help him out of bed, but Keith Anderson had already been awake for hours, going over the kind of thoughts that occupy many married men around his age, 27. His infant son, Brandon, was asleep next to him, as was his wife, Jennifer. As he lay there, Anderson told himself he needed to push harder to start his new career of teaching. He had bills to keep up with and a family to take care of.

Soon, the nurse was there, beginning their familiar ritual. She pulled him into a sitting position, and with the little arm strength he has left, he held her in a kind of bear-hug. Then she slid him into his wheelchair and helped him get dressed.

After the accident that left him a quadriplegic, Anderson was told he should consider a motorized chair operated by a joystick. He declined. He got a power-assisted chair instead, which he has to push. It makes him feel more able

He wheeled to the kitchen where the nurse fixed him cereal. He no longer has use of his fingers, which are now curled, but he’s able to wedge a spoon between them. Soon, he was at his nearby work table, checking the day’s news on his computer. He used his pinkie knuckle to type on the keyboard.

“You find a way,” Anderson will tell you.

Then he began to study for an afternoon exam. He graduated Bryant University in 2004 with a degree in finance, and liked the mortgage business when he began working in it, but a few years ago, he saw it was heading for hard times. He decided to get a teaching degree from Providence College.

Bob Vachon works at PC with new students transitioning from another profession and at first was skeptical. Keith Anderson told him he wanted to teach high school. “Yeah, right,” Vachon thought to himself. “Thirty high-schoolers in a classroom, guy in a chair.”

Anderson insisted. “I’m hardheaded,” he will tell you. “I refuse to settle.”

Soon, says Vachon, Anderson became the star of his class, getting all A’s, save for a single B+, and squeezing what could have been a two-year program into one year. Recently, Anderson faced a major certification test that involved 12 essays, to be done by hand in two hours. Mindful of how Anderson had to wedge a pen through two curled fingers, Vachon told him to apply for unlimited time; he’d get it automatically. “Keith,” Vachon told him, “it’s a lot of writing.”

Anderson refused.

“I don’t want any exceptions for my injury,” he recalls saying. “I don’t want any sympathy or special treatment.”

Vachon told him he would buy him dinner if he passed.

Last week, Vachon discovered he had lost his bet. He sent an e-mail to his protégé.

“Shame on me for doubting you,” he wrote.

But he wasn’t totally surprised. As a student, Anderson had created the best portfolios Vachon ever evaluated. And despite pecking one letter at a time on the keyboard, taking hours to do what some could finish in minutes, he met all deadlines.

Keith Anderson was still chuckling about his free dinner when I visited him last Wednesday. He wheeled over and extended his right hand. He made time for me even though he had this one last test to take that afternoon, on East Asian civilization. He’ll be teaching history.

Anderson tends to be a planner, and has mapped out how he wants his life to look. From January through April, he’ll be student teaching at Toll Gate High in Warwick. After that, he hopes he’ll have a full-time job, if he’s lucky at Coventry High School, which is nearby.

“I could roll there,” he says.

He has plans after that, too. He’d like to have his master’s in five years, and in 10, be on track to be a principal, even a superintendent. Or he may opt for his PhD and teach college. His wife, Jennifer, will tell you her husband knows where he’s going.

They met at Bryant, after his accident. It took place in June 2002, just after his third year of college.

Anderson was 21 and home for the summer in Buxton, Maine, south of Portland, where he grew up playing basketball, golf and baseball. His mom worked as a nurse. His father, a large man everyone calls “Big Kenny,” was a medical technician with an ambulance company.

One night, Keith and a good friend went to watch the Red Sox at a nearby tavern. Afterward, they headed home. The friend was driving in his pickup truck. On the way, a woman in a van slammed into the fender on the passenger’s side. She was 40ish and had three times the legal blood-alcohol limit.

“Foolishly,” Anderson says today, “I wasn’t wearing a seat belt.”

The impact threw him sideways and he hit his head on the windshield. He was in a medically induced coma for two weeks. He remembers waking up with his family nearby and the doctor telling him he might never move anything below his shoulders again.

Anderson was confident they were wrong, even though his C5-C6 vertebra was fractured and his spinal cord severed.

He was hospitalized a month, then moved to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, which specializes in catastrophic care and rehabilitation.

After three months of denial, Anderson finally accepted the prognosis. He grew depressed. He stopped trying with his exercises and doubted he could face life this way. It went like that for two weeks. Then he got an unexpected letter. His friends had contacted the Boston Red Sox, who had all signed a note to Anderson saying they were pulling for him.

It was a small thing, but it got him thinking there were things worth stepping up for.

Anderson began working so hard in rehab they nicknamed him “Superman.” He got to a point of being able to lift his arms again, which was unexpected. Today, he smiles and says the doctors weren’t right after all.

Five months after the accident, he decided to go back to Bryant in January. People asked whether he was sure he wanted to push for it so quickly. He had just become a quadriplegic after an active life.

“There’s no way I’m missing the second half of my senior year with my friends,” he would say. “I’m not letting this stop me.”

On reflection, he says there was something that helped his turnaround more than that Red Sox letter. His dad.

His father, “Big Kenny,” put his job on hold and moved for months to Atlanta to help. When Anderson returned to Bryant, his dad got permission to move into a freshman dorm room. Every morning for the whole semester, “Big Kenny” would come to the campus townhouse where Keith lived with five friends. He would get his son dressed and to class. Afterward, he would bring him back, and cook dinner for the boys, doing his best as a 6-foot-3-inch man to stay in the background.

“He’s my hero,” Keith will tell you today.

One night on campus, Anderson went with friends to a small party at a student townhouse. The hostess, Jennifer Branca, said hello and the two started chatting. Hours later, they were still sitting together.

They began dating.

“It wasn’t like he was a helpless person in a wheelchair,” she says today. “We do the same things as anyone; go out to movies, dinner, seeing friends. He doesn’t let it hinder him.”

“Tell him the truth,” Anderson interjects. “It’s my devilish good looks.”

They married in July 2005, just past the third anniversary of the accident.

The childhood friend he was with in the pickup truck that night was his best man. The bride sat on the groom’s lap for the first dance. Their son Brandon, whom they had together through in-vitro, was born three months ago.

Jennifer is now on maternity leave, which is why Keith Anderson feels a particular responsibility to step up for his family. He knows he could rely on additional assistance by not working, but that’s not who he is.

“People should not have to support me,” he says. “They have their own needs to attend to.”

He feels he can be of particular value as a high school teacher. His mere presence, he hopes, will offer a message on what can happen with drunken driving. And by just being there every day, he says, he can show that no matter your problems, you can overcome anything.

It was time for him to do some final studying for his test.

That night, as he often does, he hoped to be lying in bed with his tiny son watching the Celtics together.

With a smile, Keith Anderson predicted he will likely be up again before dawn, thinking about his plans.

He has bills to pay, he says, and a family to take care of.

mpatinkin@projo.com