LOGAN -- The bullet that tore through Bryan Burningham's face didn't so much as graze his spirit.
In fact, it may have kindled it.The quick-witted 18-year-old with an infectious laugh has undergone 50 surgeries to reconstruct parts of his face destroyed a 1993 accident.
Yet despite missing 205 classes for surgeries this year alone and the entire seventh grade, the Sky View High senior is graduating on time as a top calculus student who breezed a two-hour Utah State math 105 final in just 20 minutes.
"High school is kind of easy. It's not very hard at all," says Burningham, who hit the books hard his first years of high school to reserve electives for his senior year, including four ceramics classes, astronomy and an art class from Zan Burningham, his mother.
He hopes to study math at USU or Hampshire College in Massachusetts, then weigh his career options. He has received a $1,000 scholarship from the Utah Education Association and Smith's Food and Drug Centers.
But first, he's awaiting a call to serve an LDS mission. Maybe he'll proselyte using sign language or enter a service mission, perhaps building homes halfway around the world. He has practice. He helped his father, Lee Burningham, an art teacher at Box Elder High, build the family's house.
"He wants to serve humanity," his mother said. "He's my hero. I don't know how I gave birth to such a wonderful child."
Burningham has testified before the Legislature in favor of a failed gun negligence bill -- "I did my part," he says -- and spoken about his accident at middle school assemblies and a Brigham Young University sociology class his sister, Mari Carpenter, was taking.
In September 1993, Burningham was looking for money in a closet while his mom and dad were out buying milk. When he moved a gun, it discharged.
A bullet struck the 13-year-old's face. His sister Mari, four years his senior, ran to his side while brother Brenen phoned 911. Mari held Bryan upright to keep him from choking on his own blood and told him jokes to keep him alert until paramedics arrived.
Burningham was awake through it all, including when doctors made an incision to place a tube in his throat and during a helicopter transport to Primary Children's Hospital, where doctors finally induced unconsciousness.
The boy underwent surgery to repair his face, which was missing a chin, teeth, mouth, nose and his right eye socket, which ended up where his cheekbone was supposed to be.
Local hospital workers who helped Burningham underwent counseling. The helicopter crew cried over him. General authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prayed for him.
Doctors said Burningham would never talk or eat. But "feisty relatives," as he puts it, would not accept that. They found Miami surgeon Robert Marx, who specializes in repairs following gunshot wounds to the face and facial cancers. Some of Burningham's 50 surgeries have lasted as long as 17 hours, his mother said. But some are followed by a deep-sea fishing trip with the doc.
The Cache Valley community eagerly offered assistance to the family through Christmas gifts, organizing fund-raisers and setting up a trust fund now worth more than $100,000. Health-care costs to date total around $1 million, covered by his parents' insurance and donations.
Burningham spent a month in the hospital to heal from the accident. His family tried to keep him upbeat, but they didn't know what to expect when the boy asked for a mirror in a handwritten message.
"There was no big scream or cry or 'Why me?' He just looked at himself, like, whatever," his sister said.
That's Burningham in a nutshell. He just takes the hand dealt to him and happily moves on.
"It happened, and this is what I am. You don't limit yourself."
Indeed, Burningham laughs at the thought of limits. He sky dives. He jumps into icy lakes for fun. He rides horses. He motorcycles. He's a closet romantic who once took a date on a midnight canoe ride, the glassy water twinkling by the light of a full moon.
"He's very easygoing. He's had challenges to overcome but to be around him, you'd never know it," says brother in-law Matt Carpenter.
At first, Burningham's prosthetic nose fell off easily, so he learned to joke about it. More than once when the family went to a restaurant, he and Mari would pretend to fight and make the nose fall on the floor, to the customers' horror and the siblings' roaring delight. They laugh about it still.
Now, Burningham's prosthetic nose -- a mold of Mari's, minus the freckles -- stays put much better.
"It's a choice. Everything's a choice," Burningham says of his attitude. "There's no such thing as stress. Stress is something you create in your own mind."
In fact, if he could change one thing about his life, it would be to erase the childhood teasing he dished to Brenen, not the shooting accident.
"I've gained much more than I've lost. I have lots of blessings. It's brought our relatives close together, our family closer, and it's good. I've learned a lot about life and myself."