July 5, 1969 Part 2

There was a slight downward slope in the fan housing, and Daddy could see the fan turning at full speed in front of him where his leg used to be. He knew the leg was gone because when he moved it there wasn’t any weight attached to it. He also knew from his years in the military that if he did not crawl out of that hole he would bleed to death inside of it. His yells for help were being sucked up onto the roof of the mill by the monster fan along with his leg, his tools, his flashlight, and his hard hat. He made his mind up not to follow. With a four and a half year old daughter and another baby on that way, death by exhaust fan was not an option.

As he tried to undo himself from the fan belts and the small space, he saw a welcome face look up into the hole. Henry Earl, a pipe fitter, had heard an unusual racket when the fan kicked on. He knew the fan should not be running, and he knew there was trouble up in that shaft. Henry Earl was quick. He scurried up the steep ladder like a cat squirrel, and as soon as he saw Daddy sitting in that hole, he slid right back down and began hollering for help. One of the electricians on duty, Glen, knew where the control box was for the electricity leading to the fan. He grabbed a pair of insulated pliers, pried the cover to the locked power box open, and used the pliers to cut a wire that was carrying 440 volts of electricity. Cutting that wire was like a welding torch lighting up, but Glen knew what he was doing. The fan stopped turning, and Daddy and Glen both lived to tell about it.

Meanwhile Henry Earl had crawled back up to help Daddy. Everyone was trying to figure out just how to get a six foot tall, two hundred pound man with only one leg out of a 30 foot high vertical shaft when Daddy told them if they’d move out of the way he’d get himself out. He had two good arms, one good leg, and if one man would go down before him, he could get down the ladder on his own. Henry Earl used his pocket knife to cut Daddy loose from the fan belts, then headed down the ladder with Daddy coming right along after him.

This story is Watts family lore. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard it, but when my Grandaddy died, I had the opportunity to meet Henry Earl. He introduced himself to me then said, “I helped your Daddy get out of the fan the day he lost his leg. I’ve never seen anything like it. He just hopped down that ladder with one leg like it wasn’t anything.” It may not have looked like anything to Henry Earl, but Daddy said it sure did feel good when he got five feet or so from the ground and felt several hands reach up to grab him. They told him to let go, and he did. The fan had cauterized the wound when it took his leg so he wasn’t bleeding to death, but the trauma to his leg and the onset of shock had taken their toll. Reaching those waiting hands was his signal to let go and his body’s signal to let him pass out. He was out of the fan, and he was alive.

The men who were in the shop loaded him onto a gurney and took turns carrying him out of the paper mill. He was in and out of consciousness, and soon he found himself in an ambulance headed to the hospital. He was worried about Momma. She was just one month away from having me, so he had them call his mother, my Nanny, instead. In addition to a pregnant wife and thirteen puppies, his dad, my Granddaddy was in the hospital himself due to a month long case of hiccups that would not quit. Just a little more proof that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Nanny walked across the pasture to my parents’ house to deliver the news. My sister was only little at the time, but she still remembers our Nanny’s shape framed in the doorway to the house–her purple pant suit–the silver strip in her black hair as she said, “There’s been an accident.” My mother’s parents, my Granny and Papaw, lived in town, so they dropped my sister off at their grocery store on their way to the hospital.

I know what happened to Daddy truly was an accident. The man who turned on the fan had no malice against my father. He made a very foolish mistake, and several things went wrong all at once to cause the accident to happen. After learning what he had done, he suffered a massive heart attack that same day. That being said, I do NOT believe it was an accident nor was it luck or fate that bought Dr. Reynolds, a returning veteran and field surgeon, to the hospital that Saturday to find out when he needed to report for work. I do believe “. . .that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, who are the called according to His good purpose.” That includes doctors straight from Vietnam showing up at just the right time with just the right experience.

There was much discussion about how to save Daddy’s knee, but from his time in the field, Dr. Reynolds knew that Daddy wouldn’t be able to use the knee and that amputation just above it would make fitting his prosthesis easier. Dr. Reynolds had not even signed in to the hospital, but he did surgery that afternoon to finish what the fan started. Momma stayed with Daddy through the night, then she got up the next morning and took my sister to church.