Joplin businessman defies odds, overcomes disease

July 08, 2008 12:12 am

— By Melissa Dunson
mdunson@joplinglobe.com
This Independence Day was symbolic for Chris Broadwater.
It was another step for the 22-year-old Joplin man in proving his independence to the doctors who said he would never walk. And if Broadwater did ever walk on his own, they said he would certainly never run.
“And I can do both,” Broadwater said.
Not only can he run down the street, he runs a local business, too. He and girlfriend Christina Spry, 20, both Joplin High School graduates, are 50/50 owners of the Jive in Java drive-through location at Seventh Street and St. Louis Avenue. They bought the business in April.
Broadwater was born with spina bifida and a hole the size of an orange in his back that exposed his spine, nerves and muscles as part of the defect. He is also missing several vertebrae in his back because of the condition. Broadwater wore leg braces for years, attended the Cerebral Palsy Center as a child and had to re-learn how to walk at age 3 and again at 7 years old, following his spinal surgeries.
“If you were to read the initial paperwork (on Broadwater), the prognosis was terrible,” said his mother, Teresa Nichols. “A lot of kids with spina bifida can never walk, or they have water on the brain. He’s a miracle, a walking miracle, standing in front of me.”
Something to prove
Broadwater had his struggles growing up.
He wasn’t as tall as some of his friends because his spine didn’t grow at the right rate. He didn’t run as fast as some others at school. He couldn’t play contact sports. And every time he fell as a child, Nichols said she “freaked out.”
But her son was smart, Nichols said, and determined. After starting at the CP Center, Broadwater has always attended regular school classes and managed a Sonic Drive-In for several years. He’s always been one to defy the odds, his mother said, especially when it meant he could prove someone wrong.
“He’s quiet until you get to know him, then you realize that he’s unstoppable,” she said. “He’s able to achieve almost anything he wants to, especially if you tell him he can’t do it.”
Spry describes Broadwater as a perfectionist who puts his all into everything he does.
“I could tell by the kind of person he was that he’d been through a lot,” Spry said.
But Broadwater faces all of it — even the almost certainty that he will have to have more surgeries in the future — with a smile.
“The only time when it scared me was when a doctor told me that I could die or be paralyzed from the surgery. I didn’t want to die,” he said. “But after that, it was either learn to walk, or people push me around in a wheelchair and drive me nuts.”
No stopping
Now, Broadwater bustles around the tiny Jive in Java trailer, mixing drinks for customers who know him by name. Most don’t know his full story but still find the 22-year-old entrepreneur inspiring for what he’s accomplished at his age.
And he found his match in Spry. She describes herself as a person who makes up her mind to do something, then does it regardless of the obstacles in her way. She said she has also always wanted her own business, and so far, the couple have been successful with their coffee-shop endeavor.
Broadwater and Spry own the coffee-shop trailer and rent the land it sits on. They lease the right to the Jive in Java name and its signature drinks, and are not involved in the 32nd Street and Connecticut Avenue location.
The couple already have a solid group of regulars who come by their drive-through window every day, and Spry said they sell out of some of their most popular items occasionally. And Broadwater wants to expand his business. He is constantly thinking about how to better serve the customers he already has and attract new ones. Some days, he stands on the sidewalk wearing a brightly colored clown wig while announcing the day’s specials.
In the future, Broadwater said he wants several more drive-through coffee shops and a host of employees to work in them while he and Spry promote the businesses.
“We’re not going to stop now,” he said.
The drive-through Jive in Java has coffee drinks, smoothies and some food items like fresh cinnamon rolls. It is open from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to noon Saturday. The shop is closed Sunday. For more information, call 659-8606.

What is spina bifida?
The disorder is a neural-tube defect where the brain, spinal cord and/or their protective coverings do not fully develop in the womb. The disorder shows up in varying severity from missing or malformed vertebrae, to an open lesion exposing the spine. Some forms of paralysis, excess brain fluid, learning disabilities and bowel or bladder complications are common with the disorder.
Source: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

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