March 12, 1993
This past Tuesday, I bet I was not the only person who looked at the 5-day forecast for our region of the country and felt perplexed when I saw that we should expect a sunny day with temperatures above 60-degrees on Friday – and a snowstorm on Saturday. Until I noticed Saturday’s date…
Later that day, as my best friend and I chatted back and forth about the wild weather forecast, I mentioned that I suppose by now, a March 12 snowstorm shouldn’t surprise me: How that date will forever live in my mind thanks to the helicopter ride my brother took on that very night, now 29-years ago – on the eve of the Blizzard of ’93.
It stunned me to realize she had no idea what I was talking about. My best friend for more than a decade… I feel like we talk about everything in our lives. But apparently not this. What a Real-Life reminder of how many seasons of life we really do live. And of how things so prominent, even life-altering, in one often really do fade as we enter the next…
The evening of Friday, March 12, 1993, found me home from college for the weekend.
I don’t know what image you might have of me and the crazy college life I must have lived in those days, just over two-months shy of my 21st birthday, but let me give you the real one: I was at my parents’ house, on the treadmill, and probably preparing to show up for work at one of my two jobs the following morning.
Then, the phone rang.
In 1993, my parents’ farmhouse only had two of those: One on the kitchen wall. One in the upstairs hallway. My dad answered the one in the kitchen – just around the corner from me on the treadmill, and within my line of vision so that I could see his face go instantly white. Next, I remember him handing the phone to me…
I don’t remember exactly who was on the other end. Maybe emergency medical personnel? Or was it a representative of the mountain resort where my 17-year-old brother had gone that night with his high school ski club? I guess understanding who exactly was telling me what I was hearing mattered far less than what they were telling – and asking - me. My brother had been critically injured in a ski accident. A rescue crew was in the process of getting him off the mountain. They would need to airlift him to a trauma center. However, because of the approaching storm, the obvious choice – Pittsburgh – was out of the question. Where did we want them to take him instead? Although I don’t clearly remember those moments, I know my 20-year-old self must have somehow looked to my stunned parents for approval when I said to take him to the best place possible. We would get there.
The person on the other end suggested Johnstown, PA. We agreed. …Just far enough east to hopefully allow the helicopter some extra time to outrun the storm…
In 1993, my next move looked exactly like my next move would look today:
I called the young man who, just under two-years later, would become my husband. Even then, I couldn’t have begun to face this without him. We’d stop on the way and pick him up. Somehow, my mom and dad, my little 7-year-old brother and I scrambled to the car and, scribbled directions per whoever I’d talked to on the phone in-hand, set out in that direction. When we made our stop, my now-husband took over the wheel, and my now-mother-in-law handed our family a bag she had thought to hurriedly pack… Some toothbrushes and toiletries. Some cash. Some snacks. Every last-minute thing she thought to grab, knowing that given the gravity of the situation combined with the impending weather, we’d likely not come home any time soon. (…Many years later, I would recall that night as I hurriedly packed a bag to help her get though a hospital waiting room stay she hadn’t asked for or planned…)
Only two phones in the house, and – as difficult as it is to imagine in today’s world - none anywhere else.
For us, not even the “bag phone” that would come along a short time later – “for emergencies only.” Had we owned one then – this surely would have qualified. That meant all we could do was follow our handwritten directions, watch the clock knowing approximately how long it should take the helicopter to reach the hospital, and keep our eyes open for a place to make a call and check on him…
I still remember the phone booth at the top of a mountain roughly an hour away from our destination. Although long gone now, we have passed by the spot where it stood in 1993 several times in the years since. I can never keep from saying, “That’s where we stopped to make the phone call…”
Recalling this entire situation now, through the lens of parenthood myself, two things strike me: First and foremost, I cannot fathom – and hope to never know - the shock and the fear my parents must have felt. Secondly, at 20 and 22, I also realize just what kids my husband and I still were as we tried to navigate this ordeal on their behalf. (I was the same age our son is today…)
In one more move toward trying to handle what my parents, in that moment, couldn’t – I found myself making that phone call.
In those days, you called a main hospital phone number, and in each step of the process of transferring the call to the intended department, explained your intentions over and over again. How many times did I say, “I’m calling to check on the condition of my brother…?” Then go on to say and spell his not-uncomplicated name, and explain the circumstances surrounding his expected arrival. Each time, I remember bracing for what answer might come. Had he not survived, would they even tell me over the phone? I eventually received confirmation that he had arrived in critical condition, and that we should come directly to the Intensive Care Unit upon arrival.
Whether thanks to the passage of 29-years, the adrenaline our bodies wondrously generate to carry us through traumatic situations somewhat on autopilot, or a combination of both – most details of our eventual arrival have blurred away. Most have – but I do remember, as clearly as if it all happened yesterday – these: Upon entering the hospital, we raced down a long walkway with windows on both sides. That’s when I saw the snow, just at that very moment, beginning to fly all around us… Next, I remember being admitted through set after set of heavy metal doors, traveling deep into the heart of the Intensive Care Unit, eventually reaching the door that would open and show us my brother.
To this day, I know that none of us could ever accurately enough describe what we saw. I also know that none of us will ever forget it.
…A lifelong daredevil and adrenaline junkie, he had been careening off the mountain, fully tucked, when a less-experienced skier cut in front of him. His split-second reflex to avoid that collision propelled him directly into a tree. Many years before helmets had become commonplace for skiers, he took the entire impact with his face and head. I still remember only one slight scratch in his collarbone area. The only mark anywhere on his body other than his face.
But, oh, his face… A stomach-turning combination of swollen beyond recognition – no features even visible – yet somehow just clearly “enough” identifiable as “him.” Looking back, I think that felt even more heartbreaking to me. Maybe it would have been easier to think it was not really even him… But it was, and he was also conscious. By moving his hands, he let us know he knew we were there. Doctors would later say that either a miracle or the physical strength of his neck thanks to his athleticism (I think both) saved him from any spinal cord damage at all. But in his face, he had broken every bone except one.
Outside, the storm raged. Snow measured in feet, not inches, fell over the next 24-hours.
Nights blurred into days and back into nights again. Nobody was getting into or out of the hospital. With only the clothes on our backs (me, for some reason having thrown on a pair of my brother’s Levi’s 550 jeans and one of his thermal long underwear shirts), we camped out in the ICU waiting room with a couple of other families whose loved ones had also made it in prior to the storm’s onset.
Eventually, the hospital graciously offered us a room where we could shower and nap. ICU rules dictated that only one of us could visit my brother at a time, and only for a few minutes. Somehow, it became my routine to go first in the morning. I’d muster all my courage to go see him, then crash back in the room to regain the composure and the stomach to get through the rest of the day.
We spent the entire next week in that hospital, never stepping foot outside but hearing reports of the still impenetrable snow. Mercifully, my brother’s condition stabilized, and he began the long, slow process of healing.
My husband and I were the first of our group to eventually leave - a week later.
We made it home just in time to pack bags and set off on a road trip to New Jersey for one of two professional football tryouts he would have that spring.
…It turns out, I’d never told my best friend that part of our story, either. Maybe I’ll tell that whole thing someday, but in this story today, it marked the beginning of our lives moving on, and my brother’s drastically changing for a long recovery. More weeks in the hospital. Surgeries and procedures. A jaw wired shut and nourishment through a straw for way longer than any active 17-year-old young man is ever suited… Not the way anyone had ever imagined the end of his senior year of high school looking – but one that made us all the more aware of how blessed he was to see it at all. How blessed we all were to still have him.
The following June, I remember our cousin, Emily Rodavich, offering the prayer prior to dinner at our mutual cousin’s wedding. Thanking God for the many blessings of that day, she also added, “…and the blessed gift of healing from injury…” I’ve watched that wedding video many times. Every time, I’ve seen my closed-eyes open, and with head still bowed, glance in the direction of my brother at that moment…
To see him today – especially knowing all that he would go on to accomplish in his life – is nothing short of a miracle.
If you look just closely enough at his handsome face, you’ll see that his nose is a little crooked. It wasn’t always that way. And if you had told me on that night 29-years-ago that would someday be the only visible sign that anything had happened, I simply couldn’t have believed it.
The only visible sign, yes, but the experience marked us all – forever. In so many ways.