Players looked around and noticed someone was absent from the party. Jamey Breen, one of their classmates who was born with cerebral palsy, was wheelchair-bound at the top of the steps.

From November 20, 1846 to March 1, 1847, Irish immigrant Patrick Breen, a Donner party member, kept a diary of his ordeal in the mountains. Clinging to survival with his wife Margaret and their ...