Photo by Cydney Scott. Okay, raise your foot off the ground and step down. Feel the impact in your toes. Now repeat, and try to stay in a straight line. For Ethan, graduating alongside his classmates is no small feat. And walking across any stage is nothing short of miraculous: in , Ethan, now 23, was left paralyzed from the neck down after a wave flipped him onto his neck during his junior year spring break.
His mom, Terri Yahia, is an attorney in the Boston area. His father died last year during the pandemic, but his mother, Nora, still spends half the year with the Wangs and the other half with her daughter in southern California. One perk of having a live-in grandma?
The three were always close, and athletic: altogether, the brothers have tried just about every sport in existence—lacrosse, soccer, basketball, baseball, plus plenty of surfing and skiing, and a stint rowing for Ethan—as well as every popular video game from the past two decades. Then came college. By junior year, Ethan had a steady life at BU. When he decided he wanted to study abroad his second semester, the only question was, where?
Ultimately, he landed on Sydney, Australia. He arrived in January He did plenty of surfing while he was there, including once riding tofoot waves after a cyclone hit the region. When spring break came, he and seven of his Study Abroad program friends jetted off to Bali.
There, they rented a villa near the beach, which came with its own private chef and chauffeur. On March 3, their second day in Bali, the group went to the beach. As Ethan tells it, he was in the water when he decided to body surf an approaching wave.
