by Hannah Luce
HEATHER’S STORY
Once Austin and Hannah were finally in the ambulance, one of the paramedics, a woman, called to me to “Get in here!” I jumped up into the truck, and she motioned for me to sit between Austin and Hannah. She gave me a clipboard and told me to start writing their answers to the questions she was asking.
“Names?”
“Austin Anderson.”
“Hannah Luce.”
“Do you have any allergies?”
“None.”
“No.”
“Who do you want us to call?”
“My grandpa,” Austin said, again reciting the phone number in Oklahoma.
Hannah was nodding off. She was having a lot of trouble staying with us at that point. I really thought we were losing her. “Hannah!” I said. “Think about your sister and brother. Think about how happy they will be when they know you’re okay.”
The paramedics took over, and I turned my full attention to Austin. It could only have been by the grace of God that he was still lucid. “I can’t move,” he said.
“Stay with me, Austin,” I said. “Are you with me?” He tipped his head forward a bit. “Yes,” he said.
What happened next is still so hard to talk about. I heard the paramedics saying they would have to do a procedure on both Austin and Hannah called intraosseous infusion, in which they drill an IV line through bone to the marrow to administer the necessary fluids to prevent shock. They had to go that route because they couldn’t use a standard intravenous line with such serious burns. I watched in horror as the paramedic pulled out a long, spring-loaded needle and drove it into Austin’s knee. His body jerked, and he screamed out in pain. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Giving you medicine,” the medic said. “It doesn’t feel like medicine,” Austin replied. Then it was Hannah’s turn. She, too, screamed, and when it was over, she tearfully looked into the medic’s eyes and asked him if he would hold her hand, which he did. “Can I let go now?” she asked. She had been fighting unconsciousness for so long, and she wanted permission to let her body take over. “Yes, you can let go now,” he said.
I could hardly believe it when they said that they had to inject Austin again. The first time hadn’t worked. I had to look away, but I heard him curse the paramedic, and I knew when it was over because Austin bolted upright and started pulling at his shoes. He wanted out of there. The medics tried to calm Austin, and they began asking him questions to keep him from going into shock before the medication had a chance to work. “What happened out there?” one of them asked.
“A plane crash,” Austin said, clearly agitated.
“Where was the plane headed?”
“Council Bluffs,” Austin answered.
“What’s in Council Bluffs?”
“Acquire the Fire,” Austin said.
My mouth dropped. “What did you say?” I asked. “Did you say Acquire the Fire?”
Austin nodded. “Yes.”
That’s when it really hit me, the significance of the situation. At least in Christian circles, everyone knows about the Teen Mania ministry and their Acquire the Fire Christian youth rallies. Teenagers from our area attended them when they were nearby. These were serious Christian kids I was with. I looked from one to the other and thought, “You ran into two Christian women who have been praying their guts out from the moment we met you. God knows what’s going on here. He knew about this before we did, and that’s why He put us here. I don’t understand why this happened, but He hasn’t abandoned us. He’s right here.”
As I silently marveled about my revelation, Hannah was taken to a second ambulance that had arrived. I said good-bye and told her I would be praying for her. We were waiting for a helicopter that was to airlift Austin to a trauma center in Wichita. I was sitting on the bench, next to his head, praying with him, when one of the medics said Austin needed to be intubated, and I probably didn’t want to watch. I knew that meant forcing a breathing tube down his throat, and I was thankful for the warning.
Austin couldn’t talk anymore after that. The paramedic said he was fighting the pain medication, fighting to stay awake. The medic seemed awed by Austin’s grit. I know I was.
“Austin,” I said, leaning in close. “You’re in good hands. God is with you. He has never left your side.” I was looking into his eyes and he was looking into mine. “God’s got you,” I said. “You can relax.”
His body relaxed, and I could tell he had let go. He closed his eyes. He wasn’t fighting anymore.
23
Sole Survivor
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
—1 CORINTHIANS 13:13
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)—A small airplane that crashed in southeast Kansas was carrying five people with connections to Oral Roberts University to a Christian youth rally in Iowa, a friend of three of the victims said Saturday.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported that four of the passengers died in Friday’s crash and one was badly injured. Those killed were identified Saturday as pilot Luke Sheets, 23, of Ephraim, Wis.; Austin Anderson, 27, of Ringwood, Okla.; Garrett Coble, 29, of Tulsa, Okla.; and Stephen Luth, 22, of Muscatine, Iowa.
Hannah Luce, 22, of Garden Valley, Texas, was critically injured and admitted to the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan. Luce, a recent Oral Roberts graduate, is the daughter of Ron Luce, a trustee at the school and the founder of Teen Mania Ministries, which was sponsoring this weekend’s Acquire the Fire rally in Council Bluff, Iowa.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the twin-engine Cessna 401 went down around 4:30 p.m. Friday northwest of Chanute, Kan. NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said the eight-seat plane caught fire after the crash.
“The plane lost contact with air traffic control after getting permission to descend to a lower altitude,” Knudson said. “After that, there was no further communication.”
KATIE’S STORY
I got a call from my husband late in the afternoon. He sounded grave, and his words were slow and calculated, which scared me. He said, “Honey, I have something very serious to tell you—Hannah’s okay, but the plane went down. She and Austin got out, but we don’t know about the other boys.” My head was spinning. Wait. What? The plane went down? My mind raced back to the day, twenty-one years earlier, when I received a similar call from a friend who’d said Ron’s plane had gone down, but he and the three others who were on board had all survived. How uncanny that the same thing had just happened to our daughter. I was trying to wrap my mind around all of it, when I heard Ron say that the lady who found Hannah and Austin on the side of the road had called him and put Hannah on the phone, but she’d spoken only a word or two. Ron said she’d sounded as if she was in shock.
We had to get a flight to Kansas as soon as possible. I threw four shirts into a bag, thinking that would probably be too much for the trip, and we jumped into the car and headed for the airport, not even knowing where we were going once we got to Kansas. Ron kept calling Heather, the woman who found Hannah. She gave him a phone number for a police officer who was on site. It was the officer who told us Garrett, Stephen, and Luke hadn’t made it. What a nightmare the day was. All we could do was weep.
We finally learned that Austin and Hannah had been taken to two different hospitals. Hannah was in Kansas City. Our friend Lou picked us up from the airport and drove us straight there. He is known for his strong prayer life, and that’s exactly what we needed at that moment. His wife brought me a pillow and a blanket. (Little did I know I’d be using them on a couch in the waiting room for weeks to come.)
When we finally saw Hannah, our hearts broke into a thousand pieces. She was swollen and unable to speak. Her anxious gaze met our desperate faces, and all I wanted to do was run to her, hold her, and make this nightmare go away.
RON’S STORY
Katie and I were shocked when we walked into the hospital room. That wasn’t our daughter lying there. It didn’t look anythin
g like Hannah. Her body was swollen to nearly twice its size, and she was hooked up to a snarl of tubes and wires. A plastic tube protruded from her mouth, and a machine was breathing for her. I just remember the beep, beep, beep of the machines. I didn’t think she was lucid, but apparently she was. Our eyes must have told a story because when she looked at us she got a look of terror on her face. She seemed to try to say something, but the intubation tube in her trachea prevented her from speaking, and she drifted in and out of consciousness after that. Looking at her, I thought it was a miracle that she was still alive.
The doctors told us it would be touch and go those first few hours and maybe even for the first few days while they assessed her burns and the damage to her lungs. I felt so helpless. There was nothing we could do to help her. I spent the night praying by her bedside. Praying thanks that Hannah’s life had been spared and praying for the families who were grieving their children.
“Thank you, Jesus, for your protection for Hannah. We don’t understand this at all. Why were the others not protected? How can we rejoice when the others suffer loss? Help us to be good parents to Hannah through all of this. We need your grace now more than ever before.”
Those first twenty-four hours were a blur. People from all over were calling and messaging. I was taking calls from every major media outlet. Everyone wanted the story. Good Morning America. The Today Show. The Associated Press. Fox. CNN. People from all over the country and around the world were sending prayers and asking what happened. What could we tell them? The only person who knew was our girl, and she couldn’t speak.
The first person I saw when I woke up was Papa. He looked so sad and so tired. I had been sleeping for a day or two, and he was camped out on a chair next to my bed. He never left my side. When I woke up, he was holding my hand.
My body felt like it was on fire. I had never experienced such excruciating pain. I pointed to the breathing tube. I wanted it out, but Papa told me that I had smoke damage and one of my lungs had collapsed. I felt so helpless and afraid. I was hooked up to all of these tubes and machines, and I couldn’t move anything. Parts of my body were covered in gauze, and it felt like a chunk was missing from my lip. I had questions, so many questions, but no way to ask them. I was trying to speak and making gurgling sounds, and Papa was trying to calm me down. A nurse brought me a piece of paper and a pencil. My right hand was bandaged, so I had to use my left hand to write. “How is everyone else?” I wrote. “How is Austin?”
RON’S STORY
Every once in a while during those first couple of days she would write notes. It was chicken scratch, but we usually managed to figure out what she was trying to tell us. She brought it up three or four times. “How is everybody? How is Austin?” We didn’t want to tell her so soon, so we’d change the subject or pretend to be tending to something else. She was going through so much physically we didn’t want to put even more stress on her. But on Day Three she wrote one word: “Austin,” followed by a big question mark. I looked into her eyes, and I knew she wouldn’t be deterred from getting her answer. She held my eyes and wouldn’t look away. The look in her eyes was one of fierce resolve.
“Austin?” My eyes teared up, and I grabbed her hand and shook my head slowly from side to side. Austin had survived only a few hours after the crash. He’d been burned over 90 percent of his body. He never had a chance. It was a miracle that he survived as long as he did, but he held on until his family and his fiancée, Elizabeth, could get there.
Hannah began to sob uncontrollably.
24
The Media
He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.
—LEO TOLSTOY, WAR AND PEACE
RON’S STORY
On Sunday, two days after the crash, I held a press conference in the lobby of the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City. Hannah was still in the burn intensive care unit three floors up, and she was a very sick girl. She was in tough shape, having suffered third-degree burns over the whole right side of her body, as well as her bottom, and her lungs were singed. But Hannah was a fighter. The doctors said they were stunned she hadn’t suffered internal or brain injuries or broken any bones in the crash. She was in critical but stable condition and, barring a life-threatening infection, which was always a possibility with burn patients, her chances for survival were encouraging. The doctors were fantastic. They were trying to provide us with hope, yet at the same time we were well aware of the seriousness of her injuries. A man in the bed next to her had less severe burns but died from the kind of infection the doctors had warned us about. Katie and I were in her room every minute, watching everything the medical team did, and questioning all of it. Hannah had survived the plane crash with a miracle. There was no way I was going to let a distracted nurse or technician push a wrong button or inject the wrong medicine.
For two days, the media had been waiting outside the hospital for some word on Hannah’s condition. All of the major stations were there, as well as the local media. We’d been following the news stories in the newspapers and on TV. All of the reports said Austin pulled Hannah from the plane. All of the papers had headlines about the hero Marine who’d saved our Hannah’s life.
From national news channels to newspaper headlines, everyone took the hero angle. “Former Marine Dies Saving Friend From Plane Crash,” one said. “A Final Act of Valor,” another said. The New York Daily News wrote, “Austin Anderson, a 27-year-old former Marine who had served two tours in Iraq, suffered burns over 90% of his body in the crash but managed to pull Luce from the wreckage, authorities said. The pair then walked to a nearby road for help.”
Katie and I couldn’t find anyone “official” to substantiate the story. The news reports didn’t quote authorities, only a couple of kids from ORU. One girl, who said she was a friend of Austin’s, told a reporter, “[Austin] got out, but he went to get Hannah as well, and that’s how his lungs got burned.” Another girl, who identified herself as a friend from ORU as well, told a TV station the same story, that Austin had pulled Hannah from the fiery plane, sacrificing his own life. When the reporter asked how she knew, the girl said that Hannah had written it on a piece of paper to us in the hospital. Katie and I knew that wasn’t true. Hannah hadn’t written anything about Austin other than her brief note with his name and a question mark.
I knew that Austin’s role in saving Hannah would be a major focus at the news conference, and I wasn’t sure how I’d handle it because I really didn’t know at that point what the truth was. Hannah was the only person alive who knew what happened, and she hadn’t told us anything about the crash.
I went downstairs to face an onslaught of reporters and gave them an update on Hannah’s condition. I said that while she was still in serious condition, burned over nearly 30 percent of her body and in a tremendous amount of pain, we were cautiously optimistic about her recovery. I told them she was scheduled for her first skin graft surgery the following morning.
One of the reporters asked how I found out about the crash. I answered, “The way I discovered about my daughter and the plane accident was probably the most unscripted way you could imagine. One of the women who found Hannah and Austin after the crash called me. I asked her, ‘Where’s the plane?’ And she said, ‘It’s off in the distance, and there are flames, there’s smoke.’ ”
Someone else asked what I knew about the boys on the plane. I told them that all four were extraordinary young men who were committed to their Christian faith. “There could be no prouder parents than the parents of the four remarkable young men who were killed,” I said.
Then, the inevitable question was asked. What did I think about the young Marine, Austin Anderson, the hero who had given his life to save my firstborn?
I took a deep breath and shook my head. I said that we’d asked Hannah about the reports we’d heard about Austin saving her, and she’d teared up but hadn’t been able to answer. Then I said, “I know Austin, he’s that kind of guy. He served two t
ours in Iraq, and he was willing to give his life for his country. He was willing to give his life for a friend. He was always willing to go that extra mile.”
I knew that much was true.
25
First Words
Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
—JAMES 5:14
RON’S STORY
Katie and I were swamped with phone calls and messages from well-wishers that first weekend. Churches around the world were praying for Hannah’s recovery. On Monday, we wrote our first dispatch from the hospital. The doctors had reassured us by then that Hannah had a long way to go to heal, but she was no longer in a life-threatening situation and had been downgraded to serious but stable condition. Here’s what we wrote:
Dear Family and Friends,
As you may have seen or heard in the news media over the weekend, this last Friday afternoon a small plane carrying five passengers crashed in rural southeastern Kansas en route to an Acquire the Fire event in Council Bluffs, Iowa. So it is with a heavy heart that I stop for a moment to write this quick note—to update you on the situation and ask for your prayers.
As you would expect, the last couple of days have been a blur of shock and sadness and concern. But I know that reports of this tragedy have been all over the news and that as a friend of this ministry you would be profoundly concerned. So I wanted to get a quick note to you now to share our hearts and to help you know how to pray in the days ahead.
There is much we don’t yet know. But we do know that when the plane went down, three of the five on board died at the scene. These were (pilot) Luke Sheets, Garrett Coble, and Stephen Luth. Hannah and the fifth passenger, Austin Anderson, a Marine who had served two tours of duty in Iraq, were able to escape from the burning plane and walk to a nearby roadway to get help.