When Asher Mendonsa came out of a weeks-long coma in 2005, it was more than just waking up. It was being reborn.
The 17-year-old’s back and neck were broken. His legs no longer worked, nor did his right arm. He had serious brain injuries. All the result of a 40-foot fall in the Parkway Towers building next to Finley Stadium.
“When he woke up at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, that was a place of rebirth for him,” said his father, Andy Mendonsa. “He was not who he was before.”
Asher decided a new last name was needed to reflect that he had changed. After leaving the Shepherd Center in January 2006, he took the last name “Love.” In the years since, he also had eight teardrops tattooed on his face beneath his eyes, five on the left, three on the right.
Asher Love Mendonsa“The idea of love was very important to him and, in his last years of living, forgiveness was at the forefront of his life — forgiveness of others, the forgiveness that we’ve been given by God,” his father said. “(People) remain in the past, remain angry, remain bitter, and forgiveness kept coming back as a recurring theme in his life.”