By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
I came into the convention center at Moody Gardens in Galveston a little later than the start time for the 17th Annual Women’s Conference, and the atmosphere at the event was incredible. The room was quiet. The only sound I heard was the voice coming from the stage.
Honorary Speaker Kechi Okwuchi had captivated the audience, and I needed to know why. Who was she? What was it about her that had moved the audience to silence and created a feeling of awe and reverence?
Who was this woman who sang so beautifully after speaking? Why did the singer need her family for support? What caused her to need the physical therapists whom she admired?
Kechi was the inaugural singer at the annual women’s conference, announced Mia Gradney, news anchor for Houston’s KHOU 11 TV station.
Looking at the agenda, I saw the speaker/singer was sponsored by Shriners Children’s Texas. This gave me a clue as to who she was, but I needed to know more. So, I determined I would spend time finding out.
I learned that in 2005 right before Christmas, Kechi lost 60 of her classmates in an instant. She was on a plane heading for her home region in Nigeria. She was a student at a boarding school, and it was time to go home for the holidays.
The plane crashed, and as Kechi said, “It is still considered one of the worst disasters in Nigeria. There were 109 passengers on board and only two of them survived.”
Kechi was one of the two survivors.
She was taken to a regional hospital where she was stabilized enough to be flown to Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. She would remain in the intensive care unit there for four months and would continue as an inpatient for another three months.
Her mother, Ijeoma Okwuchi, was by her side throughout her hospitalization.
After Kechi had recovered enough to make another move, she was brought to the Shriners Burn Center in Galveston, where she underwent extensive reconstructive surgeries for her scars.
She remembers Hurricane Ike because all the staff and patients were transferred to the Shriners hospital in Houston.
A 2009 Ball High School graduate, she continued her education in the United States at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, where she completed a bachelor’s degree in economics and marketing and went on to complete an MBA (Master of Business Administration).
She and her family have been calling the Houston region their home for a while now, and when she was on stage speaking, I could not detect in her speech that she was not born in the USA. She has no plans to make her home outside the Houston area.
“I love it here; I wouldn’t move anywhere else in America,” Kechi said. “I’ve met the best kind of people here. The food is the best. I can find any type of cuisine in Houston, and I can find any type of person in Houston.”
Her singing debut happened in front of an enormous audience on America’s Got Talent (AGT) in 2017. After her appearance on AGT, Kechi’s schedule of motivational speaking engagements began to fill up. She has since traveled the United States speaking and singing her words of inspiration.
Recently, she was hired by an American company to work in its digital marketing and communications department. She assured me that her new position will give her the flexibility to work remotely when she is called upon to share her story with others.
As I sat with Kechi in the vendor area of the women’s conference, where she was selling her book, “More Than My Scars,” countless women stopped by to express how much her story had inspired them. Plus, they were eager to purchase her book
I, too, purchased her book. I’ve read just a few pages of it so far, and I’m engrossed in it.
If you would like to be inspired by her, purchase her book, or learn more about her, you can find her at https://www.kechiofficial.com/.
