“I was upside down, backward—basically, I was bounced down the river like a rubber ball.”
At another set of rapids, Horn Creek, he got sucked into a violent implosion of water that held him in a swirling maelstrom for several terrifying seconds. At the next, Hance, which was full of rocks, Stewart says, “I was upside down, backward—basically, I was bounced down the river like a rubber ball.” He was figuratively, and literally, in over his head.
Stewart decided that to even pretend he knew what he was doing would be pure suicide. From then on, he followed more experienced paddlers through the thundering waters and relied on his Eskimo roll for emergencies. “I can’t tell you how many times I was saying, ‘Guys, I’m not really good at this.’ ” The rugged outdoorsmen who had watched Stewart battle his way through figured he was just being modest.
Up until now, even after his injury, Stewart had dominated just about every competition he entered. Here in the canyon, he realized, he might have met his match.
* * *
Dwarfed by the killer rapids of Lava Falls, one of the river’s roughest stretches, Willie Stewart and his buddy Timmy O’Neill fight their way through tons of icy water.
The Colorado can be a brutal adversary. It flows at the rate of anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 cubic feet—that’s as much as 950 tons of water—every second. It has roughly 100 named, or significant, rapids and a dozen smaller ones, all more than capable of trashing Stewart and his little plastic boat. And then there is the cold. Water temperature seldom gets above the high 40s. Some stretches are so chilly, hikers and boaters are warned not to swim in them at all. The shock of immersion can cause muscle exhaustion and drowning, even a heart attack.
After about a week and a half, Stewart had made it 90 miles. “I couldn’t believe I was still alive,” he admits. “It was pure luck.” His luck was about to change.
He had been dreading the huge rapids called Crystal. Rapids in the Grand Canyon are rated one to ten in degree of difficulty, ten being the meanest. Crystal was a ten, so terrifying some who survive it have ABC—Alive Below Crystal—parties. Stewart began his attack by dodging an enormous whirlpool. Paddling frantically, he slipped past a wall of waves powerful enough to flip a boat twice the size of his, and skirted what one guide called a “raft-ripping rock.”
But he still wasn’t finished. There was a second half to navigate, a treacherous, boulder-strewn run euphemistically called the Rock Garden. To Stewart’s relief, he wove through it all without getting tipped over once.
Shortly afterward, the river took a sharp left turn where he had to negotiate a little set of white water, coincidentally called Willies Necktie. The danger here is the way the current drives boats into the crook of the turn on the right side. The way to avoid it is to stay on the left. Stewart knew that, but he dropped his guard, making a deadly mistake. He drifted right.
Before he could make the correction, his boat slammed into a boulder and flipped. Tons of rushing water pinned him against the canyon wall. He tried to do his Eskimo roll, but his right arm—the one he always used to pull himself up—was jammed against the rock. Somehow he had to get himself vertical using his prosthesis.
Stewart fought hard, pushing up again and again, each time getting a few gasps of air before being submerged. Exhausted, freezing, running out of room to breathe, he thought he had one more try left in him. Gathering his last bit of energy, he lunged for the surface. This time, his paddle blade caught just right, and he pulled himself upright.
After a little less than a minute, the current spun him around and slammed him into a rock. Before he’d even caught his breath, Stewart was underwater again.
Luckily, this time someone saw him go down. Timmy O’Neill was an experienced kayaker on his fifth Canyon run. He quickly paddled across the river to help, arriving just in time to see Stewart’s kayak pop to the surface. Several long seconds later, Stewart bobbed up. As he reached for O’Neill’s kayak, they were both sucked into a hole of churning water—“getting Maytagged,” kayakers call it.
Finally, the river spit them out, and Stewart discovered he had a new problem. His paddle, strapped to his prosthesis, was acting like an anchor, dragging him toward the next set of rapids. He had to decide: Keep the arm and drown, or cut it loose.
Frantic, he clawed at the tight straps, finally getting them free. Then he felt the current drag everything away. “My arm,” he gasped. It was gone.
“I was devastated,” Stewart recalls. Here he was at the 100-mile mark, less than halfway, and for all practical purposes the trip was over. How much more can you take before your luck runs out? he’d wondered. Now he had his answer.
Eerily, just the day before, his wife Lynnsey had asked him to quit. An athlete and Ironman competitor herself, she had joined the group for the first half of the trip, riding on one of the support rafts. She had to return to her job as a physician at Loma Linda, and as she turned to say good-bye to her husband, she urged, “Don’t go back. You’re going to die down there.”
Stewart was jolted by her plea. “She’s seen me do a lot of dumb things,” he says, “so maybe she was right.” Then he remembered the other arm. As an afterthought, he had tucked the prototype into a bag, thinking it might come in handy for parts.
For the next couple of days, Stewart worked on it, rigging a makeshift shoulder harness from duct tape and spare straps. He spent a day on the river, fussing and adjusting and tinkering, fully aware that he had to get it right. Finally, he decided to try it out at the next big stretch of rapids.
He remembers the moment well, as he headed toward the roaring water: “I felt like I was paddling to my suicide.”
To Stewart’s relief, the arm held. And so, every morning for the next 127 miles, he would strap it on and set out to battle the Colorado, with Timmy O’Neill guiding him through the killer rapids. The trip became an ongoing workshop in adaptation. Stewart learned that to get a tighter fit, he could slip the prosthesis over a waterproof shirt called a “dry top.” When one of the straps pulled free, he drilled holes through it with a Swiss Army knife and used string and duct tape to reattach it.
The arm, like its owner, took a beating but never quit. When Michael Davidson heard that the prototype worked beyond expectations, he refused to take credit. “It’s a tribute to the guy who wore it,” he says. “Willie probably could have made it with a broom handle.”
On the very last day of the trip, Stewart paddled off by himself, not truly believing he had made it. He’d been beaten up, suffocated in water cold enough to kill, come close to drowning at least twice, was terrified almost every day, and lost an arm.
“Right up to the very last 20 seconds, it was stressful,” he admits. “And, boy, was it fun.”
Originally published in the April 2007 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.
Willie Stewart lives in Boise, Idaho, and still competes in triathlons. He was named to the Disabled Snow Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.
PHOTO OF LASTING INTEREST
Splish Splash
Even tigers need to beat the heat. Fortunately, eight-year-old Akasha has a backyard pool—her yard being located at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California. Tigers are actually the rare large felines that like to swim (those scaredy-cat lions generally avoid the water). In this 2012 photograph, when her trainer supplies a fleshy incentive, Akasha dives with her ears tucked, teeth bared, and wide-open eyes on the prize. Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Humor Hall of Fame
Cartoon by Jim Benton
When a man placed a package of cookies on my supermarket checkout counter, one end opened and the cookies tumbled out. “That was the last package!” he said. “It’s all right. We can give you a store credit,” I assured him. “No, I’ll take these,” he said, picking up the stray treats. “I promised my donkey cookies, and I can’t go home without them.”
—JOHN FLYNN MARSHALL, NORTH CAROLINA
My collection of vintage kitchen utensils inc
ludes one whose intended purpose was always a mystery. It looks like a cross between a metal slotted spoon and a spatula, so I use it as both. When not in use, it is prominently displayed in a decorative ceramic utensil caddy in my kitchen. The mystery of the spoon/spatula was recently solved when I found one in its original packaging at a rummage sale. It’s a pooper-scooper.
—PATTY BROZO GREEN VALLEY, ARIZONA
Not a Moment to Spare
by Kevin Harter
Eleven children face death by fire… and their rescuers have run out of options.
When he heard the school bus coming down South Curtis Road around 11 a.m., 49-year-old Wayne Barrett headed out the door. By staggering their work schedules, he or his wife always managed to be home for their five-year-old son, Spencer. Now, on the cold morning of March 6, 1996, the yellow bus loaded with kindergartners from the rural Winn Elementary School near Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, pulled into their driveway. With a wave to his friends, Spencer jumped into his father’s arms.
“I’ll just get the mail,” Barrett said, shooing his son into the house. He walked down the driveway, then crossed the road to his mailbox. Several yards away from the road stood a 50-foot-tall utility pole, and hidden in the knee-deep snow-bank at its base was a metal guy wire that steadied the old wooden structure.
The bus started backing out of the driveway. Then it stopped, as 65-year-old substitute driver Richard Childs scanned the roster to see which child would be dropped off next. “Is Kory Kenny aboard?” he asked.
“Yes,” chimed in several youngsters, referring to the freckled-nosed boy in the first seat across from Childs. Seated a few rows behind Childs was Megan Martinez. Two seats over from Megan sat Dennis James Sexton, known to all as D.J., whose twin sister, Nikki, was across the aisle. There were 11 kids in all.
As the bus slowly resumed moving, the sound of shattering wood ripped the air. Barrett looked up to see the bus’s bumper pushing at the guy wire. The wooden pole snapped. One of the power lines hung harmlessly off to the side. The other snaked over the bus’s emergency hatch on the roof. It carried 46,000 volts.
Inside the bus, however, the noise of the ripping wood was muffled by the chatter of children, static on the bus radio and the blowing heater. Childs moved his foot to accelerate.
“Stop!” Barrett shouted, frantically waving his hands to alert Childs. “There’s a live wire. Don’t get off the bus! I’ll call 911.”
Childs reached for his two-way radio to alert school officials. Then, to reassure the children, he said, “We’ve just got to stop for a moment. Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Barrett sprinted toward his house, remembering what he’d learned years before as a fireman. The kids should be fine as long as they stayed put and didn’t touch the bus and the ground at the same time, or anyone who was touching the ground. But any child stepping off the bus risked electrocution.
Barrett raced inside and called 911. He spat out his address, saying, “The school bus just snagged a power line. Call the power company and get somebody out here.”
Barrett told his son to stay inside, then ran out again. The rear tires, he saw, were smoking. Sparks were jumping off the roof—the result of electricity being conducted across the rear axle.
Inside the bus the frightened faces of the children were pressed against the windows. Next to Megan, her best friend, Austin Fisher, began to sob.
Barrett quickly explained the situation to Childs. Nobody could safely touch the vehicle and ground at the same time, he said.
But as they talked, Childs noticed smoke building in the air vents and seeping through the floorboards. The bus’s wiring and insulation were smoldering. Meanwhile, the current began menacing the bus with a loud buzzing.
Childs had an idea. Hoping to slip the bus out from under the line, he eased his foot onto the gas pedal to move the bus forward. But he heard a metallic screech and felt a growing tension on the bus, like a giant rubber band pulled so taut it might snap. The power line had hooked firmly on to the emergency hatch.
Childs stopped, realizing that he risked pulling down the electrical line, which might bring down more poles and further ensnarl the bus. Better to stay put, he thought.
Now Barrett noticed flames leaping from the bus’s rear tires. Once more he sprinted for his phone and dialed 911. Firefighters were on the way, he was told. But in the rural area it was unclear how long it would take for the power company, Consumers Energy, to cut the line.
Barrett rushed outside, remaining about six feet away from the bus. He knew Childs couldn’t have seen the guy wire with the snow piled up. All those years, he thought. It was an accident waiting to happen.
* * *
The children saw smoke rising in the back of the bus, and some noticed that the seat frames were getting hot. Megan squeezed her stuffed toy bird, Flint. Then seeing tears streaming down Austin’s cheeks, she reached for her hand.
“I’m scared,” Austin stammered.
“We’ll be okay,” Megan said, repeating what Childs had told them. “Spencer’s dad will help us too.” Then the girls began coughing.
For about ten minutes now, electricity had coursed through the bus. Flames started to swirl from the rear tires.
Childs thought about the location of the bus’s fuel tanks—fortunately up front. Diesel has a high ignition point, so he knew an explosion wasn’t imminent. In the meantime, however, the smoke was building up inside and the kids were coughing more. It was time to act.
Childs opened the bus door. “We’ve got to get the kids off,” he called to Barrett.
“Yes,” Barrett yelled back. “Right now.” Their eyes locked. The men feared that death by smoke inhalation or fire could be just minutes away. They had only one option—but it involved a deadly gamble. Childs would throw each youngster through the narrow bus door toward Barrett.
“Get up,” Childs told the school kids. “Leave everything. Line up single file behind me.” He instructed them on the importance of not touching anything. They had to go out face first with their arms tucked in, not brushing the door on the way out. If a child fell to the ground, then reached back to grab the door or another child on the bus, he could be electrocuted.
Childs wanted to catapult each youngster at least five feet from the front door, a difficult task from inside the tight entrance of the bus. “You’ll all be safe,” Childs promised. Barrett would quickly collect each child.
Kory, standing nearest Childs, would go first. The six-foot, 187-pound bus driver hooked the 45-pound boy under the arms. Almost as if coaching himself on what to do, he said to himself, “Grab them under the arms and give it all you’ve got.”
Childs tossed Kory out the door with a great heave. The boy hit the snow about five feet out and continued to roll. Barrett yanked Kory to his feet and pushed him toward the porch. “Run to the house,” he said.
Next in line was Austin, her blue eyes filled with fright. Childs slung her out the door. Megan watched as her friend landed in the snow and was picked up by Barrett. She tried to stuff her toy bird, Flint, into her backpack. But the zipper had broken, and Flint kept falling out.
Reaching firmly for Megan, Childs got a good grip and sent her sailing out of the bus. But Flint dropped to the floor near the door. As Barrett grabbed for Megan, she took a step toward the vehicle to retrieve her toy.
“No!” Childs yelled as Barrett seized Megan. “I’ll get your bird later,” Barrett promised. “Now run for the porch.”
As Childs turned for the next child, Nikki Sexton tried to move past him toward the steps, attempting to grab her friend’s stuffed bird. “No!” the kids yelled.
Childs grabbed Nikki, and out the door she went. Three more girls flew out on the heels of each other. Four children remained.
Sirens now pierced the air. From the north a blue Michigan State Police cruiser roared down the road, while from the south a motorcade of firefighters arrived on the scene. They could see flames and thick black smoke
, while the electricity from the hot wire caused a crackle of bright blue-white sparks.
On the bus, D.J., next in line, was beginning to rock like a sprinter preparing to race. Suddenly he bolted toward the door. “I can do it myself,” he said. “I can jump.”
Childs admired the young boy’s courage. “You can jump another time,” he said as he grasped the child under the shoulders. Out the door went number eight.
Childs tossed out two more girls. Finally there was Kory’s cousin, ponytailed Kayla Kenny. Childs picked her up and heaved her into the snowbank. It appeared that the last child was safe.
Still worried that he might have missed someone, Childs searched the bus, calling out for children. Choking on the thick, rubbery-smelling smoke, he patted the seats and felt around on the hot floor. He found only books, toys and snow pants.
Returning to the front door, he planted his work boots and pushed hard off the top step, landing breathless in the snowbank next to Barrett. Within several minutes utility workers shut off the power. The fires were extinguished before anyone was hurt.
Three weeks later, in front of the kindergartners at Winn Elementary, Consumers Energy presented Richard Childs and Wayne Barrett with an award for saving the children’s lives. Tribute of a different sort for Barrett came some months after the mishap. He was sitting in a booth at a local restaurant and heard a small voice call out. “That’s one of the men who saved me,” said Megan Martinez, pointing out Barrett to her parents. Smiling, she added, “He’s my hero.”
The Best of Reader's Digest Page 2