As a boy, Brad Bergener spent plenty of time searching for the Wizard of Oz.

He first saw the classic movie when he was 9 and immediately identified with the Scarecrow, who sings:

"I would not be just a nuffin'

My head all full of stuffin'

My heart all full of pain ...

If I only had a brain."

Nearly five decades later, the self-deprecating Bergener says, "I figured he was singing my song."

Like the Scarecrow in the film, he wanted to ask the wizard to grant his greatest wish: "I knew if you had a brain, you could be somebody. So I spent a lot of time looking for the Wizard of Oz.

"I guess you could say I found him in the Lord."

Five years before Bergener saw the movie, when he was only 4 years old, he nearly died after becoming asphyxiated in a farm accident. He spent three days in an oxygen tent in the hospital.

"At first, they didn't know if was going to make it," says Bergener, now 57. Then, "They didn't know if I was going to have a mind or not."

He made it. And while learning has been a struggle sometimes, Bergener never gave up. Today, he's the owner and fleet manager of Medstar Cabulance in Yakima, which provides 24-hour, nonemergency transportation services.

He's also active in his church, the Zillah ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And he's learning to fly.

If all goes well, he's hoping to have his pilot's license in the next couple of months.

"When you think about it, my whole life is a miracle," he says. "I should be dead."

Bergener, of Zillah, grew up near Oakley, Idaho, in a large and poor -- he makes no bones about it -- farm family. His folks couldn't afford a baby sitter.

He was the sixth of eight kids. And during potato harvest, he would go from truck to truck, riding with family members and farmhands in the fields. He would take his toy cars and trucks and play on the seats.

One afternoon, those toys rolled onto the floorboards, where Bergener stayed and played -- and where there was little fresh air. Soon, the boy seemed to be sleeping.

He had actually fallen into a coma. Fumes from the old, poorly-ventilated truck asphyxiated him, and he was rushed to the nearest hospital in Burley, Idaho. Doctors didn't expect him to survive. And when he pulled through, they weren't sure whether he would have a normal life.

These days, Bergener says his life has been "exciting." And it's not over yet.

"It's just a little tougher for me sometimes," he says. "But I figure it makes me a better person."

Because of the accident, he started school late, at age 8, two years behind other first-graders. And he was placed in special education classes, where he remembers playing with clay and learning to weave.

Still, school was a struggle. He couldn't read or write. He felt self-conscious. And many kids were cruel.

"They all thought I was a dummy," says Bergener, who recalls spelling his name D-R-A-B, confusing the first and last letters. "They put mud on your coat and said you were a dummy. You always felt sad about it. You wanted to be smart like them."

The first achievement he remembers accomplishing by himself is folding a paper crane by looking at pictures in a book about origami. The task took him six weeks to complete. But the finished product inspired him.

So did a neighbor and retired teacher who tutored him, helping him to learn what he wasn't getting in school -- "the ABCs and 1-2-3s," as Bergener puts it.

By junior high, he was enrolled in mainstream classes. And he graduated from a traditional high school in Idaho in 1973 at age 20. Shortly after that, he embarked on a two-year mission for the Mormon church.

Bergener grew up in the Mormon church, in which young men and women in their late teens and 20s are encouraged to go on missions.

The young missionaries work in pairs and can be stationed throughout the United States as well as other countries around the world.

Missions typically last two years.

Bergener was assigned to Washington state, serving in Spokane, Walla Walla, the San Juan Islands, Quincy and back to Spokane. And the experience strengthened his faith as well as his resolve.

"It really opened my eyes to what I got to do in life," he says. "I didn't have to find the Wizard of Oz. God doesn't look at people by what grade they got, but by what they can do."

Bergener -- whose story was recently detailed on MormonTimes.com, a Web site published by the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah, for and about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- finds further inspiration in a particular parable.

In The Parable of the Talents, a master who was preparing for a long journey called together his servants, giving one five talents' worth of money; another, two talents; and another, one -- each according to his ability.

When he returned, he rewarded two of the servants for growing their allotments and punished the third for burying the money in the ground.

"My thing is as long as I'm not pushing daisies, I have to be learning something," Bergener says. "If we're not improving ourselves, what value are we?"

Bergener met and married Mary-Lynne Prothero from Naches, built her a house in Zillah and helped her raise four children, two sons and two daughters.

And while he didn't go to college, he furthered his education by taking adult literacy classes, which helped prepare him for studying for a pilot's license. And he grew his business from a start-up in the early 1980s to a company that now employees about 30 employees. He's also advised state lawmakers and committees on transportation regulations.

He previously served as a high councilor in the Yakima stake for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He currently leads the ward's Boy Scout troop.

As a youngster, "I thought I was cursed, but now I feel in a way (the accident) was a blessing," he says. "I've learned the importance of hard work and not giving up."

Like the Scarecrow, who shows his smarts through the course of his quest to see the wizard, Bergener continues to persist, but also recognizes his own limitations.

"I don't have problems," he says. "I only have challenges. And challenges make you a better person."

* Adriana Janovich can be reached at 509-577-7653 or ajanovich@yakimaherald.com.