When he was 17, Cornell “Bread” Bailey dreamt of becoming an aircraft pilot.

One day he walked into Tariq Lynch-Wade’s office looking for advice. At that time, Mr Wade was a pilot and flight operations technical assistant at the Bermuda Department of Civil Operations.

“As soon as I started talking to him, he said he could tell that I knew what I wanted,” Mr Bailey remembered. “He told me I would be a great pilot.”

Neither of them could have imagined just how long it would be before Mr Bailey got his hands on the controls of an aircraft.

In late March 2011, three months before Mr Bailey graduated from Saltus Grammar School, university acceptances were rolling in.

However, he was still waiting and hoping for an acceptance to the flight programme at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada.

One day he was riding home on his motorbike when he was involved in a collision with another bike and car on North Shore Road in Hamilton Parish, near Shelly Bay.

He was critically injured and flown to Boston, Massachusetts. At Massachusetts General Hospital, doctors found he had damaged his C1 and C2 vertebrae, a spinal cord injury that often leads to total paralysis or death.

Doctors thought his injuries were too severe to be repaired by surgery.

“They did not know if he was going be a vegetable,” his mother Sherry Bailey said. “They could not tell us what the future held.”

With his family and friends praying for him, he spent more than a month in a coma and then a year in hospital and rehabilitation overseas.

His acceptance to Seneca came the day after the crash.

His sister, Kenisha Dill, accepted his high school diploma from Saltus, for him.

“I kept deferring and deferring university,” Mrs Bailey said. “We just did not know what was going to happen. It was more than hard. We had dreams for this young man from before he was even born. Everything was right on target until he got into the accident.”

Mr Bailey never did go to university. He is still as witty and intelligent as ever, full of humour and smiles. While he was not completely paralysed, as initially feared, he does have mobility challenges and now communicates by typing. The right side of his body is weaker than his left and he uses a wheelchair.

Now 30, he has never given up on his dream to become a pilot and neither has his mentor Mr Lynch-Wade.

Mr Lynch-Wade was director of operations for the Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority for 14 years and is now safety officer at BermudAir.

“Tariq made a promise that he would get this boy up and flying a plane,” Mrs Bailey said.

Last month Mr Lynch-Wade made good on that vow. He called the Bailey family and asked to take their son flying with Blue Sky Flights, Bermuda, in St David’s.

“I did not even blink,” Mrs Bailey said. “I just said, no problem.”

The flight on November 30, almost did not happen due to the weather. That day, there was a front coming in carrying wind and rain.

However, two hours before Mr Lynch-Wade had to make a decision on whether to take his friend flying, everything suddenly cleared. He called Mrs Bailey and said the flight was going ahead.

Mr Bailey’s parents and family waited on the tarmac while Mr Bailey was put into a small plane with Mr Lynch-Wade. When the plane took off, family and friends on the ground cried tears of joy.

“There was not a dry eye among us,” Mrs Bailey said.

When they reached 1,900 feet, Mr Lynch-Wade told Mr Bailey that he was actually going to fly the plane that day.

An enormous grin burst over Mr Bailey’s face when he heard the news. Until then he thought he was just going for a ride in the plane.

“My hands are off the controls,” Mr Lynch-Wade said holding his hands up. “Can you give me a right turn towards Flatts? You have two clouds to the right and left. We are going to stay in the middle.”

After a minute, Mr Lynch-Wade said: “Are you a pilot or what?” Mr Bailey gave a happy shout in response.

Watching a video of the flight more than a week later, Mr Bailey grinned all over again. His hands subconsciously made the same moves they did on the big day.

Flying the plane for a few minutes bolstered his determination to one day become a pilot.

“We still have big dreams for my son,” Mrs Bailey said. “This has been a journey since 2011.”

Mr Bailey’s favourite inspirational saying is: “God: I heard your prayers. Trust my timing.”

When the accident happened, his mother took early retirement from the Accountant General’s Department, where she was a payment supervisor. She now also cares for Mr Bailey’s father, Cornell Sr, who had a stroke recently.

“When my husband had a stroke, I said ‘God, I cannot take any more’,” she said. “But we are still here. I have a good support network of friends and family. We do not know what the future holds but we are trying to push Cornell’s dream as far as we can.”

For fun, Mr Bailey loves the therapy ponies at Bermuda Riding for the Disabled at WindReach Recreational Village in Warwick. He had to stop riding however, when his father had his stroke.

“My son is over 6ft tall and we had to push him up on to the horse,” Mrs Bailey said. “I cannot do that on my own. We need really tall volunteers to make it happen.”

Mr Bailey explained that his nickname was originally “Cornbread”, a play on his name, Cornell.

“That got shortened to Bread,” he said.

He even had “Bread” printed on his Saltus Grammar School class ring. As a teenager, he was an avid sportsman and played baseball, cycled and took part in duathlons. Today, he loves watching Philadelphia Eagles NFL games and pedalling on his recumbent stationary bike.

“He is quite strong,” Mrs Bailey said.

Every year she does the Convex End to End Walk, while her son pedals the same distance, 24.1 miles, on his stationary bike.

To keep his mind agile, he is learning French, a subject he loved in school.