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Christopher Reeve’s children reveal the first words they told him after the accident
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Christopher Reeve’s children reveal the first words they told him after the accident

Christopher Reeve’s children remember the first time they spoke to their father after the life-changing accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed.

Matthew Reeve, Alexandra Reeve Givens and Will Reeve spoke to Diane Sawyer about their late father ahead of the documentary’s release Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story on Good morning America Monday, September 16th.

Alexandra, 40, recalled how stepmother Dana Reeve informed the children before taking them to see Christopher. She explained that she “led us downstairs and said, ‘This looks really scary, but he’s still there. Just talk to him. Ignore everything. Just talk to him.'”

“She said, ‘You can hold his hand.’ And there are machines on it, you know, and you reach for his fingers and hold them,” she continued.

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Christopher and Dana Reeve with their son Will Reeve in Hollywood, California, on April 15, 1997.

Steve Granitz/WireImage


“As far as I can remember, my first words were just, ‘I love you. We’re here,’” Matthew, now 44, added.

Will, 32, was just under 3 years old when his father was thrown from his horse and landed on his head during an equestrian event on May 27, 1995, causing a severe spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down.

As Will said on Monday GMA, “I think my mother made sure that I was involved in the process in a reasonable way so that I wouldn’t be permanently afraid of my father.”

“That meant I was always around him, touching him and helping lift his legs so I could see him, which is important for someone with a spinal cord injury,” the ABC News correspondent explained.

Superman Legend Christopher died in 2004 at the age of 52 and his wife Dana passed away 17 months later at the age of 44 after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

Will told PEOPLE that he received an overwhelming amount of support from his family and friends after losing both of his parents at such a young age.

“I moved in with our beloved neighbors who were our best friends,” he explained of what happened next. “And that has been such an incredible, wonderful experience for almost 20 years.”

Will went on to say that “everyone helped him” and called it “a situation where everyone did their best”, including his “maternal grandparents, Charles and Helen Morini”, who were “incredibly indispensable”.

“We were fortunate to live in a tight-knit community,” he said. “We had great groups of friends and teachers and coaches and people from the past and people from the present who just contributed in whatever way they could.”

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story can be seen in a number of theaters on September 21 and 25.