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My dad called me Sunday, January 16, 2000. I had not seen him for about two weeks which was very unusual for us. We normally visited each other at least twice a week. But I was on the fire brigade at the time and had pulled 27 days straight without a day off. He told me he had just cooked a big pot of beef stew (he called it bear stew, I think because he put everything but a bear in it) and that my mom and sister were gone all day and he needed me to come help him eat it. I had just got off work and was dog tired so I told him I'd be over Monday evening to get a bowl and hang out with him. He laughed and said it would all be gone by then. We talked a few minutes more, shooting the breeze and catching up. When I hung up, I had no idea it would be the last time I talked to him.
Monday afternoon, January 17, my supervisor at work comes to tell me my brother is on the phone. We joke and kid a little on the way to his office, but inside I'm as cold as ice. My family never calls me at work. When I say hello, my brother starts small-talking a little (I hadn't seen him in a few weeks either), so I calm down. It's not the emergency I was scared of after all, I think. But then he drops the bomb. I need to come to the hospital, Dad has been ran over by a fork lift. I'm out the door and in my car in seconds.
When I get to the hospital, Dad has already come out of emergency surgery. He has a tube in his throat so he can't talk. He holds my hand as he's being wheeled out to the waiting helicopter to be flown to the Wake Forest medical center in Winston-Salem, NC. As we watch him being lifted into the air, I finally learn what happened:
My dad ran a logging operation. He and my brother had just moved all the equipment into a new boundary of timber over the weekend and they were all set to start on it this Monday morning. Two things out of the ordinary happened this day. My nephew was sick and had to go to the doctor and the log truck needed a new set of tires. So, while my dad and his two employees went to the log yard to start, my brother took my nephew with him in the log truck to get the new tires. His wife was going to follow them to the log yard afterwards when they dropped off the truck with Dad.
At the log yard, Dad cranked the fork lift so it could warm up while the timber cutter went into the woods to start dropping the first trees. The logger cranked the skidder and let it warm while he and Dad got the other chainsaws and tools out of the pick-up.
While the logger went for the first load of logs, Dad went about his usual ritual of sharpening the saws on the tailgate. The fork lift was cold-natured and took a while to warm up. When the logger returned with the first load, he climbed down to unhook them as Dad put his saw on the fork lift. When the logger got back on the skidder and started away, it happened:
Dad stepped up on the first rung of the lift and it jumped into reverse. The big front tire grabbed his right leg and pulled him underneath. With the ground frozen, it crushed his pelvis and leg then dragged him backwards about 20 feet until it hit a tree. He was a very strong and tough man and he never passed out. The skidder was heading into the woods, about 50 feet away, and was turned away from Dad. He yelled and waved his hat but to no avail. The driver had no way of hearing over the motor and kept going. Dad lay there for 20 minutes before the other two men returned. What could have gone through his mind that whole time? I think about it every single day of my life. Twenty minutes alone in that kind of pain and never passing out. That is a man. I die inside every day for him thinking about that.
When the other two found him, one ran down the logging road to the landowner's house about a quarter-mile away. On the way, he met my brother and nephew coming up in the log truck with my sister-in-law following in her pick-up. He told them what happened, then continued down the hill to call the paramedics. My nephew was the first one out of the truck and beside my dad. Dad had been hurt a few times over the years: a broken foot that he walked on and drove the log truck for two days before it swelled up so bad he had to go to the doctor, a finger cut off by an air compressor pulley (after that, he'd flip you off with his right hand and and say "I'll give you half a finger!"), an arm cut up bad by a chain saw (he watched the doctor tie all his ligaments together and sew it up), triple by-pass surgery (back at work in a few weeks). He was tough. So the first thing out of my nephew's mouth was, "Are you gonna be ok, Pa Pa?". Dad said, "Not this time, little buddy." When my brother asked what all hurt, Dad pointed at his leg (it was sticking out and twisted at a crazy angle), his hips, and his ribs. His ribs hurt the most. "Mike, I'm broke all to pieces", he told my brother. The paramedics told me later they held up their fingers in the back of the ambulance and asked him how many fingers. He guessed three. Five minutes later he had to know "Well am I right?!" They said all the way down the hill they bounced like crazy and knew he was hurting. But he never passed out. The doctors that performed emergency surgery knew my dad well. They told us the main problem was his pelvis. He had a "bat-wing" fracture. It had been crushed, split in the middle, and had spread out inside him like a set of bat-wing doors, damaging a lot of tissue and organs. They told us he was a fighter and was going to pull through. They knew my dad. He was tough.
When we got to Winston, Dad had been there over an hour. It's over an hour drive for us by car. We went in to see him but he still couldn't talk because of the tube. But he was writing in the air trying to tell us something. He was mad at the nurses because they wouldn't wet his lips I think. He held my hand tightly the few minutes I was in there, but the nurses told us we had to leave while they gave him some morphine and tried to get a catheter or something in his leg. They assured us he would be awake very soon and we could talk to him. But Dad wouldn't stop looking into my eyes or let go of my hand. I tried to stay, but I was being rushed out of the room and had to pull my hand loose. "I'll be back, Dad. They have to help you now. I'll be back." I'll never forget his eyes as I backed out through the curtain.
He was never awake again. But he didn't pass out; they put him out with all that morphine. He fought for life for 14 days. He died January 30th, 2000.
That, my friends, was a Man.