How Greg Abbott overcame a life-threatening accident to become governor of Texas

Greg Abbott’s conservative roots go back to before he was even born in Wichita Falls. He had a grandfather who was a church minister, and his parents were big supporters of Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator whom some credit for the rise of modern conservatism.

His family moved to Longview when he was a child and then to Duncanville. In his senior year in high school, Abbott participated in a mock trial.  

“I played the role of a lawyer, which was one of the experiences that stimulated my interest in law,” Abbott said in his memoir, "Broken But Unbowed."

He would win a scholarship from the Duncanville Police Department that helped him attend the University of Texas, where he graduated with a degree in finance, then headed to Tennessee for law school, focusing on constitutional law.

After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1984, Abbott and his wife, Cecilia, who also was a UT student, returned to Texas, where he secured a job with the downtown Houston law firm Butler & Binion.

“This position was exactly what Cecilia and I were aiming for as a young couple,” Abbott said. “The future we had dreamed of was on the brink of becoming a reality.”

Just weeks later, he was out running in the River Oaks neighborhood when an enormous oak tree fell on him, crushing some of his vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He was still studying for the bar exam.

“The doctors told me I was never going to walk again, so I focused on how good I could be without walking,” he told the Houston Chronicle in a 2014 interview.

The accident and the recovery have become an essential part of Abbott’s political story. In campaign ads this year and past campaigns, he’s featured the long road to recovery and perseverance to overcome obstacles as key components of his character.