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Chris Ippolito of West Franklin Street was one of the readers who responded when we asked you to tell us about your miracles. This is his story.
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The windshield wipers were methodically brushing back the blurring liquid assault as the fine, misty rain enveloped the car, the ice-blue Volvo sedan periodically disappearing among the cloud banks and hugging the snowcapped Canadian Rockies.
The chilly air kept both Mike Saunders and I wearing winter jackets even on this early June evening. Shifting gears, Mike negotiated the snaking road coiling venomously before him with gifted precision.
Fidgeting with camera equipment, my large, athletic form filled the passenger side.The murky sky loomed ominously dark as night’s mysterious black cloak crept up on us.
“We are about 30 minutes from Banff,” Mike excitedly exclaimed. “It’s a great place to photograph wildlife, scenics or anything else for those children’s magazines you wanted to get in.”
Running my fingers through my thick, grizzly-like beard, a smile crept over my face. “Well, even if they don’t work,” I responded, “I’m having the adventure of a lifetime with the best friend an ol’ country boy from North Carolina could ask for!”
My thick Southern drawl oozed out like molasses on a cold day.
We were on the tenth day of a three-week camping safari crisscrossing the highlights of the Banff and Jasper National parks in Alberta, Canada. This was our first big trip aimed at jump-starting both our photographic careers.
Switching on the headlight beams, Mike relaxed slightly as the lights searched through the misty gray twilight illuminating the next bit of road.
Suddenly, the lights glared across the enormous brown body of an elk bounding from out of the shadows. Knowing the brakes alone would not hold to the wet pavement, Mike quickly downshifted in an effort to slow down.
In the excitement, he shifted from fifth to first instead of fourth, sending the Volvo into an uncontrollable tailspin at over 100 kilometers an hour The unleashed blue tornado spun wildly, catapulting off the road into the inky black void of a ravine.
As I stared out into the dark, a Bible verse sedated the raging fear grasping at my throat:“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man should boast.”
“Well Lord,” I thought, “I’m coming home!”
The blue projectile flew several hundred feet before executing a strange, grotesque touch-and-go maneuver. Massive blows from every direction bludgeoned both of us as the movement mixed camera parts with body parts.
The sounds of smashing metal filled the quiet night. Churning violently, the car gathered momentum with each turn.
On the sixth revolution, two tires broke loose, wheel well and all. Freed from their cumbersome moorings, the tires bounded off in an erratic dance. Fifteen times, car twisted and turned before ending its flight with a bone-wrenching thud.
I vaguely remember looking around, stunned and in complete disbelief. The roaring Ikept hearing wasn’t imaginary; the car had come to rest a scant 10 feet from a white-capped river rushing through the valley.
I don’t know how I got the door to open — it was pushed in three inches. The roof was crushed in within inches of my shoulders.
As I clamored out of the pile of wreckage still reeling from the blows, I felt the warm, sticky fluid, smelling like steel, flowing into my eyes and blinding me. Applying direct pressure to the area, I was thankful to at least remember my emergency first aid. Crawling, staggering and praying, I inched my way back up to the road.
Mike huddling around me couldn’t stop my system from going into shock. It was frustrating knowing he couldn’t carry me and he didn’t dare leave me to go for help.
Minutes were dragging by like hours as the cold, misty rain wrapped around us like a death shroud. My laborious breath became more shallow with every frosty puff.
One of us had to make it and since Mike had a family, I felt it should be him. “Go” was all I could rasp out. But Mike would have none of it.
Wondering if I would slowly bleed to death, I watched two fireflies dancing in the distance. Their playful banter kept appearing and disappearing until suddenly I found myself bathing in the glow of headlights.
Brushing back the thick blood long enough to see for a moment, I found myself staring at a powder blue ’65 Rambler. I never saw the man and woman, but I could hear their voices as they gingerly loaded me into the back seat.
Roaring down the mountain, they raced through the valley with the shadow of death looming larger with each passing mile. Arriving in the sleepy resort village of Banff, the Rambler came to a halt in front of the tiny hospital.
Firm shoulders under each arm lifted me and carried me into the lobby. Listening to voices buzzing around me, I opened my blood-soaked eyes as the pungent hospital odors assaulted my nostrils.
Gazing around, I lazily observed a vision of angelic stature in white walking slowly toward me in surrealistic motion.
“Well, I must be alive,” I thought to myself, “Why would God want to know when I had my last tetanus shot?”
Slipping back into semi-consciousness, I felt purposeful hands tugging at my body. I dreamed a thousand distorted laughing faces were leering at me.
While others began sticking a score of needles into my scalp, a petite nurse ushered Mike out. When Mike asked her if Iwould make it, she simply stated, “I don’t know, because your friend looks like a peeled-back tomato right now.”
The days at the hospital turned into weeks. My head swelled up to nearly the size of a basketball. The doctor was a cheerful fellow who informed me Imay have brain damage and might never walk normally again.
I informed him that my brain had always been damaged and I would not only walk, I would send him a picture of me with a gold medal around my neck.
As the weeks turned into a month, my 215-pound frame melted away to a 169-pound disfigured Frankenstein from a B-grade horror movie. Lying awake into the wee hours of the night feeling sorry for myself became my only recreation.
Maybe it was because of the fluids they put in my IV bag, but one night I swear I saw Dr. Mark Cambron standing in front of me.I had not seen or thought of my theology professor from Florida Bible College in over a decade.
But there he was, that impish scallion, with his eyes twinkling away behind the glasses and that Cheshire cat’s smile of his.
He was holding up his right hand and wiggling his pinkie finger. “As long as you can wiggle your little finger, you’re gonna be all right. Amen!” he exclaimed with a boyish chuckle, just like he used to do in class.
“I can wiggle my whole arm, Dr. Cambron,” I retorted sarcastically. “It’s my legs that are not working.”
Dr. Cambron’s twinkling eyes shined knowingly as he kept wiggling his pinkie finger at me. Shuffling toward the door, the kindly old man quietly began humming an old hymn as I tried to give chase.
Walking like a drunk in a hurricane, I peered down the empty hallway with the thumping intravenous rig following me like a nosy stick man.
A nurse, bathed in garish light, made notations at the end of the hall, but the place was empty otherwise. Only then did Irealize that I was walking on my own. Looking at my little finger, I began wiggling it and laughing like a candidate for a padded room.
The late afternoon sun streaming through the hall window looked thick enough to chew, but it was a welcome sight after three weeks of rain. “Shouldn’t we tell him to rest or something?” asked the newly arriving nurse.
“I tried that,” explained the tired nurse transferring papers for the end of the shift.
“Should we call the doctor?” she continued.
“Tried that, too,” came the monotone answer. Using the intravenous machine for one crutch and the hospital rail for another, I shuffled by them. Perspiration began beading on my forehead as I moved at the pace of a herd of turtles.
“What can we do?” asked the inquisitive nurse taking her on-duty position.
The flat monotone voice drifted down the hallway, “I don’t know, but if he tells me he can wiggle his little finger one more time, I’m going to trip that crazy American.”
Adjusting his glasses, the doctor conferred with a nurse while peering at a clipboard. Twirling a cane like a baton, I sat nervously awaiting the verdict.
It was now October, and I was in Edmonton champing at the bit to return to North Carolina. I still had problems with memory, and Iflopped on the floor like a flounder when my nervous system became tired, but the doctors were amazed at the recovery.
They finally relented to release me, so four months after the accident, Mike drove me to the Edmonton airport armed with a doctor’s release, a plane ticket and a cane.
After my release from Banff, Mike Saunders and I looked for the ’65 Rambler for two days, but it was nowhere to be found. Two people I never saw saved my life. Another person I had not seen in 10 years gave me the will to revive it.
Two years after returning to North Carolina, I competed in the 1989 U.S. National Tug of War Championships, wining a bronze medal with the Challengers team. Not satisfied, I returned in 1990 to win a gold medal with Rudi’s Boys.
And I sent the doctor a personally autographed 8-by-10 for his office.
I also returned to ice-climb and photograph in the Canadian Rockies more than a dozen times.
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Chris Ippolito