Dad's Journey

Life comes at you and it comes at you fast and often with great fury bringing the unexpected, both pleasant and tragic. Many have experienced this and even as you read this first line your mind is taken to the experience of your own life. Life often seems unfair and the question of “why” and “will this every end?” roll through your mind in an almost tormenting way.

Such has been the case in our won life, but I’m here to tell you that there is an end to the trauma, and there is help and there is hope.

On March 26th 2005, the call came that my family had been in a serious car accident in Florida. My wife was okay, our daughter had serious facial injuries, and our son had been air-lifted to a trauma center in Jacksonville, Florida. A few hours later I arrived at the hospital about the same time as my wife, we were told that our son William was not expected to live through the night. He had experienced a traumatic brain injury and the doctors believed his brain stem had been severed. You can imagine the shock and the horror that we initially felt, and the emotions that we experienced when we first walked into that room and saw our son lying there in a coma, hooked up to 15 tubes and on life support. Just hours earlier, this healthy, athletic 15 year old young man had left home to go to his grandparent’s house for spring break, with the intent of reading the Purpose Driven Life to find out what his purpose was for being on this planet. And now he was fighting for his life. I’ll fill in more of the details later.

Now almost three years later, I’m here to tell you of the journey of faith, help, hope, and love. William not only lived, but has done everything that the doctors said he would never do, and he will graduate with his class May 31st.

There have been many components to Williams’s recovery and over the next few weeks, I will share these with you with the hope that they will help and encourage you.

William's Story

A Journey of Faith

On March 26th 2005 our two children (William and Casey) and I (Denise) were traveling to my parent’s home in Florida for spring break. In Stark, Fl. after a brief stop we pulled out into the highway and we were hit by a semi truck. Our daughter Casey suffered many facial lacerations and our son William suffered a severe head injury. When paramedics arrived, William was not breathing and did not have vital signs, he was immediately air lifted to Shands Jacksonville Trauma Center. When he arrived at the hospital he was in a complete coma. He was put on total life support and remained in a coma in critical condition for the next 15 days. During those 15 days, even though he was on full life support, we knew that it was God who was keeping him alive.