Steve Sifford will spend the holidays with his family.More than a month after he almost died,
Sifford remembers his 1954 Piper Tripacer airplane clearing a set of power lines. He also
remembers hearing a helicopter overhead. The next day is a blur.
The Salisbury man, who owns
Sifford’s Exxon Servicenter & and Heating Oil in Rockwell, lost consciousness
while trying to make an emergency landing in a field in Newberry, S.C. Sifford, who has
been flying for the past three years, said he only had two miles to go to reach an
airport, but his cockpit began to fill with smoke and a fire ignited before he could land
safely.
That was Oct. 29.
Today, Sifford is home. He is
still on medication for an infection, and he faces more surgeries in his future. But for
now, he’s going to take it one day at a time.
Home Health Services has just left
his house. “They come in and change my medicine. It is really helpful, so I can be at
home.”
Though the 36-year-old can’t
provide all the details of the accident, he know his faith has gotten him through it. That
and his fiancée, Lorri Stevens.
“She’s kept me
going.”
And right by her side have been
Steve’s mother, Ruth, and his sister, Barbara.
There are a lot of little things
he appreciates now. He was pleased he could walk outside to get the mail yesterday. And he
greatly appreciates his eyesight.
“I just got my eyesight back
about a week and a half ago,” he said. Twice, surgery impaired his vision, and he
embraced the day the swelling of his eyes subsided enough that he could see glimmers of
light.
“I didn’t have sight for
about two weeks, and it made the days very long,” he said.
After the crash, Sifford was taken
to Palmetto Richland Memorial Hospital in Columbia, S.C.
“It was hard on my family to
make the trips down there to see me,” he said.
But his mother disagrees.
“You don’t really think about it when it is your son,” she said.
“It’s 140 miles. Down 85
and to 77,” Ruth Sifford said. “On those interstates you just gotta go with the
flow.”
Faith also has helped Ruth Sifford
deal with the tragedy that could have very easily taken her son’s life. “God
still reaches out to us in ways we will never understand.” But Steve’s survival
isn’t the only miracle that came out of the plane accident.
His friend, Kurt Mullis of
Rockwell, was flying behind him in another plane. The two were coming back from Georgia,
where Sifford thought mechanics had fixed the problem of smoke getting into the cockpit.
Mullis saw his friend crash and as
he flew over the wreckage, Mullis said he saw Sifford standing on the wing of the plane
waving for him to go onto the airport and land.
But Sifford was removed from the
wreckage by rescue workers. They had to cut away part of the plane to get him out.
Though there is no explanation for
what Mullis saw, Sifford said there is a reason for everything and some questions just go
unanswered.
The road to recovery will be long,
and Sifford won’t fly the single-engine plane again. It was destroyed.
“I don’t think I’ll
fly anything major. But maybe by next year, I’ll fly again,” he said. Also next
year, Sifford hopes to marry the girl who stood by him through his accident.
“Everyday is getting better,” he said.
“I can smile again,” his
mother beamed. And so can her son. |
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