Fifty Years ago
Fifty years ago today, I was in an accident that changed my life forever. It doesn't seem possible that fifty years have pasted into history. I have put to words most of what happened that fateful night. I always have said that a part of me died on that night under that bridge and I became a different person. Of course I have the same body but mentally I was completely changed and my outlook of life was completely changed forever. I will turn seventy this year and Valerie would have turned fifty this past August if she would have surived that night. This past May, Pat and Vanessa turned 48 and 46, so that makes one realize his mortality. I have been blessed all these years and also have said that I am living on borrowed time. I intentionally blocked alot of what happened that night just to remain sane and go on. Of course everything that happened that night is and will always be ingraved in my mind forever and I think about it everyday. This is where it takes dicipline to live on all these years as I was told that night of a purpose for me staying here on this earth.
Here is a copy of what I have written about that night.
We boarded the train for home and settled in learning to sleep to the clickity clack of the train track. We arrived in Kearney late in the evening and when we went to get our car, that we had left with a friend. They tried to get us to stay the night but I told them that I had to be at work the next morning. So we set off around 10:00 PM on the 100 mile trip home.
We went through Smith Center Kansas which was about 20 miles from home. I had been having trouble falling asleep at the wheel but thought I could make it home. It was around 1:00 in the morning and Ruth and Valerie were both asleep. I guess I was asleep too because I woke up to Ruth yelling “Look Out” Then there was this big crunch and I was knock out and didn’t even know what I had hit until I came too later. I didn’t feel anything yet but as I came too I yelled for Ruth and Valerie. I could see the stars and hear the popping of metal. I tried to stand up and found out that my leg wouldn’t hold me and that I didn’t have any control of it. I took the weight off of it and stood on my other leg that wasn’t broken. I then realized that I had hit a bridge and the car went across a creek bed landed on its top smashing the top down to the seats and then landing back on the wheels. I was standing in the car up through where the wind shield used to be. I tried to get out of the car but my leg wouldn’t come out as my femur was broken. I had to lift my leg out of the car and tumbled down to the ground. I was still looking for Ruth and Valerie when to my horror there was Ruth under the car all except her feet. I lost it and tried to lift the car off her and then tried to pull her out, but I knew she was dead. Then I saw the lifeless body of Valerie about 10 feet from the car and she had a big gash in her head and I knew she was gone too. By then I started to feel some pain set in. I prayed for god to take me too if it was his will as I couldn’t understand why this had happened to us. As I lay there on the ground and realized that I was bleeding real bad on my hand from cutting it when I got out of the car. I also had several broken ribs and a broken collar bone. I then tried to crawl up out of the ravine by using my one good leg and one good arm. I pulled myself about 15 feet from the car but couldn’t get any farther. I listened to the frogs croaking and the other night sounds and every once in a while I would hear a car coming, as it got closer I would yell “ help, help ” and of course they couldn’t hear me. This happened several times during the night until day break when I heard a car stop. I heard a door open but didn’t see anyone as I yell for help. I then heard the door slam shut and the car sped away. I thought, oh no they didn’t hear me. About an hour later help arrived and they came down to help me. I asked them if they could cover up my family as they were both dead. I told them where I was hurt and that I knew that when they lifted me onto the gurney it was going to hurt. I yelled out in pain and then they carried me up to the ambulance. I asked them to call my father-in-law and let him know what had happened. They took me to the Smith Center Hospital, put my leg in a splint and sewed up my cuts on my hand, arm and leg. By then my father-in-law arrived and came in to see me. I cried and told him I was sorry for what had happened.
The doctors decided to send me to the hospital in Hays Kansas as they weren’t equipped to operate on my leg. I was pretty well out of it from the morphine they put me on. After the long trip I was admitted to St Anthony hospital and taken into surgery to put a steel rod in the middle of my leg bone. They found that I had one lung collapsed so they couldn’t put the rod in and instead put in a steel pin through the bone just below my knee so they could put my leg in traction. So when I woke up there I was with this traction bar overhead with rope through pulleys and weights holding my leg bone apart. The doctor came in the next day and explained that they would gradually remove part of the weigh letting the broken bone move together. After that was done the doctor said that the bone was lined up perfectly and that they decided not to put in the rod and just let it heal with me in traction. When they told me when the funeral was going to be, I asked to go but of course wasn’t able to. I had said my goodbyes out there in that creek bed. They were buried in a casket together and later on I put on their grave marker, together in birth, together in life, and together in death.
After five months in the Hospital they put me in a body cast for another five months. When I went back to the Doctor to remove the cast I looked at this shriveled up leg and had to walk with crutches for quite a while. I was married at 17, a father at 18, and a widower at 19. I look back today and wonder how I managed to make it through all that but with Gods help I made it.
