Thanks , I got it. To repair my broken file all I had to do was go back and re-select/apply my animation blueprint in “anim blueprint generated class” pulldown tab as detailed here. Got the fix from the link you provided, (skipped every other step) thank you. I will use the full tutorial to get my new character working later, now that the old one is fixed again, but that was the only step I needed to fix this as is. TY, TY, TY.
EDIT: Followed the rest of the tutorial and now also I have my new character working as well. Some of the steps were different and I figured out a few things to skip a bunch of steps but all the info I needed was in there, thank you again. Everything is working here, GL to the OP on their project.