I may be able to speak with some authority on some things, the truck is not one of them. I'm a city kid, an artist, a "white collar worker." Some people in the Corps used to tease me when we did those workin' in the woods days cause I'd come out with color cordinated "work" clothes.
Cracks me up. Sorry, this whole thread brings up lost of memories... Like, those of you whove been on LEAD will remember how, as the week went on people appearance would gradually decline and we'd become, quite the malodorus, dirty bunch.
People playfully hated on me when I showed up at our final campfire in a clean, matching outfit, smelling like Grey Flannel.
Donnie Smith was said that John Lynn and I were the only two people he ever saw go on LEAD and NOT get dirty!
Anyways... It was a big, white Ford. I know enough about trucks now to know it had an extended bed and heavy duty suspension. It sat way up un the air on at least 20" wheels with big fat heavy duty knobby tires. It was probaby a late 70's model.
You guy that know more about truck specs may be able to translate that into something more coherent. I'm not saying I don't know anything about vehicles, etc. I know a good bit. I'm just not a "Ford truck man" like the commercial says. I'm the guy who makes the commerical about the Ford truck man.
I really don't think the truck was overloaded. It was big enough that the 13 people fit in the back easily. It was fifteen total w/ Kevin & I in the cab.
The trailer was built sturdy. They had taken a heavy duty truck axle and built a box on it. single axle.
Even though it was a well built trailer and all, I'd have to agree there was enough $$ in the TWI coffers to buy even a custom made transport vehicle. They could have furnished the entire LEAD program w/ "nothing but the best."
From my POV, there was this frugal attitude @ HQ that never changed once TWI got rich.
I may not know a whole lot about pickup trucks but I know enough about corporate finance to know that they could have assessed the needs at LEAD and purchased all of the best across the boad.
Way back in the day there wasn't enough money available to buy everything the ministry needed. Mrs. VPW would go to estate auctions, flea markets, etc. To get stuff like cabinets that were odd lots or overstocked items. Then Way builders would build counter-tops to fit the cabinets. That was how we originally furnished most of the offices in the OSC in 1979.
However, some who ran organizations in TWI were not corporately savvy enough to know to ASK for budget for their depts. I'm not shifting "blame" here, just calling it like I saw it. I'm hoping this illucidates the fact that Howard Allen was responsible for LEAD at the trustee level.
HA, in my opinion, turned from the old foundation of small business thinking. When money finally starts rolling in from the business, you funnel it back to the business to build the business so the business can function properly to grow to its critical mass.
I think they felt at the top that when the money started rolling in they could continue to run the ministry "on a shoestring and a prayer," attitude, being frugal and "careful" with capital expenditures. That "frugality" filled the coffers, legitimate ministry financial needs mere neglected. At least, indirectly, lives were lost.
It is this way NOW, more than ever. Anyone with any knowledge of business finance, or even balancing the family check book can tell you this:
When my two little "eatin' everything in sight" boys are not with me, I'm at least $25.00 richer that weekend because I don't have to feed them. ($25.00 = 1 trip to McDonalds, plus two days worth of snacks.) Not to mention, two days worth of clothing, water for bathing, soap, spatulas and scrubbing equipment to get the dirt from them, shampoo, hair products, brush, 20% of my rent for the extra room I need to house them; divided by 30 - multiplied by 2, a portion of electric, heat to run the playstation and computer they play on, two video games, one movie rental; AND my time spent playing with them, yelling at them (don't BREAK your brother's ARM), plus an hour of mental anguish from telling them "NO, we CAN'T eat at McDonalds EVERY meal Every day!"
Then they say, "Ok Daddy... can we eat at Burger King then?
All that goes to say, SIMILAR amount of money means less hungry ministries eatin' it up.
Wanna challenge me on it? While we were suffering from our LEAD injuries. TWI was paying lawyers to fight the IRS for tax exempt status. It came out in the fallout fron POP that TWI ran up (make a loose fist with your right hand, stick out your pinky on that hand, put the pinky to the right corner of your mouth & repeat after me....)
"Oone MILLION DOOllars... humm, humm humm."
(catch that reference soulmates!)
Earl Burton also lost, in a stock investment... humm..."Oone MILLION DOOllars...
As far as standing up, talking back. People did that a lot, especially after POP. People got "mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!"
Of my personal pet peeves was the whole money thing. The "need based salary" was a thing of the past. We were long past the days when the ministry didn't have two nickles to rub together.
I for one, was VERY thankful to EVERY SINGLE BELIEVER who ever came to visit HQ. I spent my Sunday afternoons on call to conduct tours of the grounds and was HAPPY to spend any WHOLE afternoon showing guests around the whole grounds, Way Cultural Center in New Bremen, I'd tour people till they said, "No MAS!" (another refernece )
Whe the IRS came after TWI and threatened to, then TOOK the tax exempt status, my thinking was...
FINE. Let em have it! I'd say if I GOD can meet my needs, He'll meet the ministry needs too. The IRS can KISS us where the sun don't shine, as far as I'm concerned. Lots of folks felt that way too.
WE don't work there anymore. WE were purged. WE were marked and told AVOID them.
By comparison. I now attend and am very active in one of the largest, most active and progressive churches in the Dayton area. On an average weekend we bring in about $68,000.00 in tithes & offerings.
How do I know that? I read the weekly church bulletin the ushers hand out to EVERY person (other than kids) who walks into the sanctuary for one of the FOUR services we do each weekend.
It has an itemized section that tells us how much money was bugeted YTD for that week in categories; how much came in YTD for that week. EVERY person, even a visitor, stranger off the street who can read can see how much money we have, whether we are behind or ahead of budget.
Our "leadership," the senior pastor and the church board, addressed a problem the ministry was having with a traffic jam of people coming to & from each service. Somebody figured it would be a good idea to widen the end of our driveway and add a turn lane.
The called a special "members meeting" did a formal presentation and open mike discussion on the matter then we, the church members VOTED whether to do it or not. The vote was yes.
The people who own the land adjacent to the church at the end of the driveway were selling. We voted to basically empty the church's reserve cash fund and write a check for $250,000. to buy the property. We also VOTED to start a building fund to pay for the plans and cost to redo the driveway. I can see how the fund is doing every week when I come to church.
We ALSO have a yearly thing we do at the end of our fiscal year. We started it about 3 years ago and call it "Takin' it to the Streets." (Ye we use the Doobie Bros song...)
"You, Oh you; keep telling me the things you're gonna do for me... Well I aint blind and I don't like what I think I see ... Takin' it to the streets...." are the lyrics.
The board decided, since we had money left over at the end of our fiscal year (NON profit status, I might add) that we should take 20 THOUSAND DOOOLLARS and GIVE it AWAY. The first year the board members stood up at the front of the sanctuary and gave envelopes with $20.00 per adult, $10.00 per teen and $5.00 per child to anyone who went up there to get it.
The only stipulations were:
1. Use it to DO something for somebody in the community.
2. Fill out the card in the envelope and let us know what you did so we can "share" the blessings with our church family.
3. Tell whomever you give it to them that this is a small blessing from God that our church wanted you to have.
That first day we did that was one of the spiritually hottest days I've ever seen there. People really got jiggy with it. My family had $45.00. Some guy asked me on the street if I had a buck or two cause he was tryin to get to work. I said sure & gave him $40. The kids asked me if I they couls use their money to get the kids in the neighborhood some stuff from the icecream truck.
Now I'm the coolest Dad on the block.
This past year we switched up and gave $100 to each small group (our version of the twig). People were pooling their funds anyway we found out, sooo.... One small group I'm part of took out $100. and paid the $$$ to keep the girl next door to one of our members from having their utilities turned off. We threw in some extra and bought her a basket of some girly stuff. We also made sure we got her on the list to receive a "Thansgiving Basket" (last year we put together [from donations from out people] one THOUSAND 2 HUNDRED Thansgiving dinners, w/turkey & all the trimmings and fed 1200 FAMILIES who needed help).
My Karate class is classified as an official small group, as part of our outreach ministries. We took our $100 and decided to do an appreciation dinner and Karate demonstration for the local firefighters and paramedics that serve in the area our church is located in. We held it in our gym and used our big industrial kitchen to cook it & some kitchen staff helped, etc.
That only covers some of what we do from October to the end of November.
Did I mention that our gym is open Friday evenings for anyone who wants to come shoot some hoop? AND what about how we use our gym as a home court for some local home schooled girls' volleyabll team?
NO. they are not part of the "HOUSEHOLD" of our church. They are not all members of oour church. Heck, I met a guy & his daughter in the gym last night who doesn't even ATTEND our church. I think he said he was Russian Orthodox (whatever THAT is???).
Oh yeah. We have to do our STS FOUR times each weekend (one Saturday, three times in a row on Sunday morning) because our sanctuary, which seats as many as your "Prevailing Word(?) Auditorium can't fit THREE TIMES IT'S SEATING CAPACITY.
If Craig had shown a lot of concern for who was hurt and how much et al. I would have written about that in my journal. I was pretty impressed by the fact that Craig himself had come to get us with Ambassador One and I surely would have written some wayspeak about "how wonderful it was that the President of the Way would have taken so much of his precious time to shower us with so much of God's abundant love for us.
I didn't write that cause it just wasn't there.
On the bus to the airport, I mentioned to him. "You did that on purpose, right?" He knew I was talking about distracting us when we drove by the crash site. He just said, "It was probably for the best."
I was angry about that.
I think your point is well taken that in that case to focus should have overtly been on the victims of the crash. As Dr. Phil puts it, the whole world should have stopped and al focus should have turned to making SURE we were OK.
We were future leaders in God's ministry, is what they should have tough about according to their own retoric. We should have ALL who stopped everything and ALL went to visit each person who was in the hospital, and held some sort of prayer vigil right there.
I should have been obvious that that accident was a spiritual attack on the entire ministry. IF they actually believed their own propaganda.
BUT. History now tells us that Craig Martindale, at the time he sat across the table from me; the self appointed Man of God for the world saw me as a .... up. (excuse my language, emphasis supplied)
Think about it. I was sitting there eating granola with both my hips and one shoulder dislocated. My spine was almost six inches shorter than it was the day before when I got out of bed. I had nerve damage, soft tissue damage, etc. and I didn't even know it. I was so concerned about the screaming and crying I heard that I hardly considered how much I couls have been hurt even though I knew I had broken the windshield with my head.
He, who had stepped into the shoes of "The Teacher"... did he talk about great healings, battles, victories over the enemy of God's people in the Bible?
He talked about how principle being lived made people impressed with our campuses.
CRAIG, himself swept it under the rug.
We, who were in the accident, weren't thinking about liability. Not that I knew of. But then again, "not knowing of" has become the legacy of LEAD 104. Back then people didn't sue as much as they do today.
A few people told me I should sue to get enough money to be sure my medical was paid, at least, for the rest of my life. Actually, it was my las chiropractor, who p'shawed about the amount of $$$$$ the insurance settlement offered. He said I could have easily got much more.
I had no idea that day sitting w/ Craig how badly I was hurt. I probably STILL haven't fully grasped how much that took out of my life.
The real answer to your question Ala was right there in front of us all. I didn't fully grasp that until the other day when I was rereading the account of it from my journal to post it.
He didn't even eat breakfast with us.
We were having granola cereal and bananas with hot cider. He, after making sure he told us how his coming was "a special gesture from the Board of Trustees" rambled on about some stuff we really could give a rat's patootie about. How could we really care about the Kansas Board of Regent's when we had witnessed and been a part of our Corps FAMILY smashing into a WALL at about 45-50MPH!
He left us eating granola to eat a breakfast "so big it could choke a horse."
Dorothy Owens used to teach in Christian Ettiquette class...
"What you DO speaks so loud I can't hear what you SAY."
I have never, no not once; NEVER, not even for an instant even through my own guilt, pain or nightmares. NO not even once have I EVER blamed Kevin Smith for the crash that day.
It was an ACCIDENT.
Kevin Smith did NOT crash that truck.
He/we were NOT being reckless.
The wreck happened AFTER he put the paper down. He wasn't distracted by the paper or not driving with his eyes not on the road. His driving was no more distracted by holding that paper than it is by anyone drinking a cup of coffee while driving.
It was windy, gusty. There wasn't a steady wind. it was unpredictable. We had now way of knowing IF another gust would follow and if so, WHEN. The road was narrow with a high shoulder.
Of course in hindsight he should have been MORE careful. He was being careful not to drive much over 50mph which is pretty darn SLOW You can't steer that drastically pulling a trailer and it inched close to the side of the road.
When the front wheel hit the edge of the road, he did everything RIGHT. He didn't fight what was going on, he CARFEFULLY pulled the truck gently to the right & let it stabilize before he pulled it back onto the road.
There was no traffic for miles up the road so he pulled into the middle of the road. The trailer bounced wildly and he did the right moves to correct the fishtailing. Hitting the brakes hard would have been the WRONG thing as the trailer was not tracking with the truck.
Had the ravine not been there we would NOT have crashed at all when we went off the road to the left. It would have been a few intense, bouncy seconds. I wasn't busy driving and I didn't see the ravine either until the last second when it was impossible to avoid.
The crash just wasn't his fault. He wasn't pressured by the evil policies of the evil trustees to do the evaluations. Mine was late because Kevin took extra time with some folks who needed his time to HELP them.
I just wanted to go on record and say, for whatever the word of the guy who watched Kevin do everything possible to SAVE lives that day.
Hey, HCW or any others who may want your L.E.A.D. story in a PDF document (without any comments), I took the liberty. Click here to download it. In this format you can share it on any computer or email it to others.
Recommended Posts
HCW
About the truck...
I may be able to speak with some authority on some things, the truck is not one of them. I'm a city kid, an artist, a "white collar worker." Some people in the Corps used to tease me when we did those workin' in the woods days cause I'd come out with color cordinated "work" clothes.
Cracks me up. Sorry, this whole thread brings up lost of memories... Like, those of you whove been on LEAD will remember how, as the week went on people appearance would gradually decline and we'd become, quite the malodorus, dirty bunch.
People playfully hated on me when I showed up at our final campfire in a clean, matching outfit, smelling like Grey Flannel.
Donnie Smith was said that John Lynn and I were the only two people he ever saw go on LEAD and NOT get dirty!
Anyways... It was a big, white Ford. I know enough about trucks now to know it had an extended bed and heavy duty suspension. It sat way up un the air on at least 20" wheels with big fat heavy duty knobby tires. It was probaby a late 70's model.
You guy that know more about truck specs may be able to translate that into something more coherent. I'm not saying I don't know anything about vehicles, etc. I know a good bit. I'm just not a "Ford truck man" like the commercial says. I'm the guy who makes the commerical about the Ford truck man.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
HCW
oops. forgot to add.
I really don't think the truck was overloaded. It was big enough that the 13 people fit in the back easily. It was fifteen total w/ Kevin & I in the cab.
The trailer was built sturdy. They had taken a heavy duty truck axle and built a box on it. single axle.
Even though it was a well built trailer and all, I'd have to agree there was enough $$ in the TWI coffers to buy even a custom made transport vehicle. They could have furnished the entire LEAD program w/ "nothing but the best."
From my POV, there was this frugal attitude @ HQ that never changed once TWI got rich.
I may not know a whole lot about pickup trucks but I know enough about corporate finance to know that they could have assessed the needs at LEAD and purchased all of the best across the boad.
Way back in the day there wasn't enough money available to buy everything the ministry needed. Mrs. VPW would go to estate auctions, flea markets, etc. To get stuff like cabinets that were odd lots or overstocked items. Then Way builders would build counter-tops to fit the cabinets. That was how we originally furnished most of the offices in the OSC in 1979.
However, some who ran organizations in TWI were not corporately savvy enough to know to ASK for budget for their depts. I'm not shifting "blame" here, just calling it like I saw it. I'm hoping this illucidates the fact that Howard Allen was responsible for LEAD at the trustee level.
HA, in my opinion, turned from the old foundation of small business thinking. When money finally starts rolling in from the business, you funnel it back to the business to build the business so the business can function properly to grow to its critical mass.
I think they felt at the top that when the money started rolling in they could continue to run the ministry "on a shoestring and a prayer," attitude, being frugal and "careful" with capital expenditures. That "frugality" filled the coffers, legitimate ministry financial needs mere neglected. At least, indirectly, lives were lost.
It is this way NOW, more than ever. Anyone with any knowledge of business finance, or even balancing the family check book can tell you this:
When my two little "eatin' everything in sight" boys are not with me, I'm at least $25.00 richer that weekend because I don't have to feed them. ($25.00 = 1 trip to McDonalds, plus two days worth of snacks.) Not to mention, two days worth of clothing, water for bathing, soap, spatulas and scrubbing equipment
to get the dirt from them, shampoo, hair products, brush, 20% of my rent for the extra room I need to house them; divided by 30 - multiplied by 2, a portion of electric, heat to run the playstation and computer they play on, two video games, one movie rental; AND my time spent playing with them, yelling at them (don't BREAK your brother's ARM), plus an hour of mental anguish from telling them "NO, we CAN'T eat at McDonalds EVERY meal Every day!"
Then they say, "Ok Daddy... can we eat at Burger King then?
All that goes to say, SIMILAR amount of money means less hungry ministries eatin' it up.
Wanna challenge me on it? While we were suffering from our LEAD injuries. TWI was paying lawyers to fight the IRS for tax exempt status. It came out in the fallout fron POP that TWI ran up (make a loose fist with your right hand, stick out your pinky on that hand, put the pinky to the right corner of your mouth & repeat after me....)
"Oone MILLION DOOllars... humm, humm humm."
(catch that reference soulmates!)
Earl Burton also lost, in a stock investment... humm..."Oone MILLION DOOllars...
Coulda bought a truck.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
HCW
As far as standing up, talking back. People did that a lot, especially after POP. People got "mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!"
Of my personal pet peeves was the whole money thing. The "need based salary" was a thing of the past. We were long past the days when the ministry didn't have two nickles to rub together.
I for one, was VERY thankful to EVERY SINGLE BELIEVER who ever came to visit HQ. I spent my Sunday afternoons on call to conduct tours of the grounds and was HAPPY to spend any WHOLE afternoon showing guests around the whole grounds, Way Cultural Center in New Bremen, I'd tour people till they said, "No MAS!" (another refernece
)
Whe the IRS came after TWI and threatened to, then TOOK the tax exempt status, my thinking was...
FINE. Let em have it! I'd say if I GOD can meet my needs, He'll meet the ministry needs too. The IRS can KISS us where the sun don't shine, as far as I'm concerned. Lots of folks felt that way too.
WE don't work there anymore. WE were purged. WE were marked and told AVOID them.
By comparison. I now attend and am very active in one of the largest, most active and progressive churches in the Dayton area. On an average weekend we bring in about $68,000.00 in tithes & offerings.
How do I know that? I read the weekly church bulletin the ushers hand out to EVERY person (other than kids) who walks into the sanctuary for one of the FOUR services we do each weekend.
It has an itemized section that tells us how much money was bugeted YTD for that week in categories; how much came in YTD for that week. EVERY person, even a visitor, stranger off the street who can read can see how much money we have, whether we are behind or ahead of budget.
Our "leadership," the senior pastor and the church board, addressed a problem the ministry was having with a traffic jam of people coming to & from each service. Somebody figured it would be a good idea to widen the end of our driveway and add a turn lane.
The called a special "members meeting" did a formal presentation and open mike discussion on the matter then we, the church members VOTED whether to do it or not. The vote was yes.
The people who own the land adjacent to the church at the end of the driveway were selling. We voted to basically empty the church's reserve cash fund and write a check for $250,000. to buy the property. We also VOTED to start a building fund to pay for the plans and cost to redo the driveway. I can see how the fund is doing every week when I come to church.
We ALSO have a yearly thing we do at the end of our fiscal year. We started it about 3 years ago and call it "Takin' it to the Streets." (Ye we use the Doobie Bros song...)
"You, Oh you; keep telling me the things you're gonna do for me... Well I aint blind and I don't like what I think I see ... Takin' it to the streets...." are the lyrics.
The board decided, since we had money left over at the end of our fiscal year (NON profit status, I might add) that we should take 20 THOUSAND DOOOLLARS and GIVE it AWAY. The first year the board members stood up at the front of the sanctuary and gave envelopes with $20.00 per adult, $10.00 per teen and $5.00 per child to anyone who went up there to get it.
The only stipulations were:
1. Use it to DO something for somebody in the community.
2. Fill out the card in the envelope and let us know what you did so we can "share" the blessings with our church family.
3. Tell whomever you give it to them that this is a small blessing from God that our church wanted you to have.
That first day we did that was one of the spiritually hottest days I've ever seen there. People really got jiggy with it. My family had $45.00. Some guy asked me on the street if I had a buck or two cause he was tryin to get to work. I said sure & gave him $40. The kids asked me if I they couls use their money to get the kids in the neighborhood some stuff from the icecream truck.
Now I'm the coolest Dad on the block.
This past year we switched up and gave $100 to each small group (our version of the twig). People were pooling their funds anyway we found out, sooo.... One small group I'm part of took out $100. and paid the $$$ to keep the girl next door to one of our members from having their utilities turned off. We threw in some extra and bought her a basket of some girly stuff. We also made sure we got her on the list to receive a "Thansgiving Basket" (last year we put together [from donations from out people] one THOUSAND 2 HUNDRED Thansgiving dinners, w/turkey & all the trimmings and fed 1200 FAMILIES who needed help).
My Karate class is classified as an official small group, as part of our outreach ministries. We took our $100 and decided to do an appreciation dinner and Karate demonstration for the local firefighters and paramedics that serve in the area our church is located in. We held it in our gym and used our big industrial kitchen to cook it & some kitchen staff helped, etc.
That only covers some of what we do from October to the end of November.
Did I mention that our gym is open Friday evenings for anyone who wants to come shoot some hoop? AND what about how we use our gym as a home court for some local home schooled girls' volleyabll team?
NO. they are not part of the "HOUSEHOLD" of our church. They are not all members of oour church. Heck, I met a guy & his daughter in the gym last night who doesn't even ATTEND our church. I think he said he was Russian Orthodox (whatever THAT is???).
Oh yeah. We have to do our STS FOUR times each weekend (one Saturday, three times in a row on Sunday morning) because our sanctuary, which seats as many as your "Prevailing Word(?) Auditorium can't fit THREE TIMES IT'S SEATING CAPACITY.
Catch my drift?
Link to comment
Share on other sites
HCW
You know Ala;
If Craig had shown a lot of concern for who was hurt and how much et al. I would have written about that in my journal. I was pretty impressed by the fact that Craig himself had come to get us with Ambassador One and I surely would have written some wayspeak about "how wonderful it was that the President of the Way would have taken so much of his precious time to shower us with so much of God's abundant love for us.
I didn't write that cause it just wasn't there.
On the bus to the airport, I mentioned to him. "You did that on purpose, right?" He knew I was talking about distracting us when we drove by the crash site. He just said, "It was probably for the best."
I was angry about that.
I think your point is well taken that in that case to focus should have overtly been on the victims of the crash. As Dr. Phil puts it, the whole world should have stopped and al focus should have turned to making SURE we were OK.
We were future leaders in God's ministry, is what they should have tough about according to their own retoric. We should have ALL who stopped everything and ALL went to visit each person who was in the hospital, and held some sort of prayer vigil right there.
I should have been obvious that that accident was a spiritual attack on the entire ministry. IF they actually believed their own propaganda.
BUT. History now tells us that Craig Martindale, at the time he sat across the table from me; the self appointed Man of God for the world saw me as a .... up. (excuse my language, emphasis supplied)
Think about it. I was sitting there eating granola with both my hips and one shoulder dislocated. My spine was almost six inches shorter than it was the day before when I got out of bed. I had nerve damage, soft tissue damage, etc. and I didn't even know it. I was so concerned about the screaming and crying I heard that I hardly considered how much I couls have been hurt even though I knew I had broken the windshield with my head.
He, who had stepped into the shoes of "The Teacher"... did he talk about great healings, battles, victories over the enemy of God's people in the Bible?
He talked about how principle being lived made people impressed with our campuses.
CRAIG, himself swept it under the rug.
We, who were in the accident, weren't thinking about liability. Not that I knew of. But then again, "not knowing of" has become the legacy of LEAD 104. Back then people didn't sue as much as they do today.
A few people told me I should sue to get enough money to be sure my medical was paid, at least, for the rest of my life. Actually, it was my las chiropractor, who p'shawed about the amount of $$$$$ the insurance settlement offered. He said I could have easily got much more.
I had no idea that day sitting w/ Craig how badly I was hurt. I probably STILL haven't fully grasped how much that took out of my life.
The real answer to your question Ala was right there in front of us all. I didn't fully grasp that until the other day when I was rereading the account of it from my journal to post it.
He didn't even eat breakfast with us.
We were having granola cereal and bananas with hot cider. He, after making sure he told us how his coming was "a special gesture from the Board of Trustees" rambled on about some stuff we really could give a rat's patootie about. How could we really care about the Kansas Board of Regent's when we had witnessed and been a part of our Corps FAMILY smashing into a WALL at about 45-50MPH!
He left us eating granola to eat a breakfast "so big it could choke a horse."
Dorothy Owens used to teach in Christian Ettiquette class...
"What you DO speaks so loud I can't hear what you SAY."
Link to comment
Share on other sites
HCW
I have never, no not once; NEVER, not even for an instant even through my own guilt, pain or nightmares. NO not even once have I EVER blamed Kevin Smith for the crash that day.
It was an ACCIDENT.
Kevin Smith did NOT crash that truck.
He/we were NOT being reckless.
The wreck happened AFTER he put the paper down. He wasn't distracted by the paper or not driving with his eyes not on the road. His driving was no more distracted by holding that paper than it is by anyone drinking a cup of coffee while driving.
It was windy, gusty. There wasn't a steady wind. it was unpredictable. We had now way of knowing IF another gust would follow and if so, WHEN. The road was narrow with a high shoulder.
Of course in hindsight he should have been MORE careful. He was being careful not to drive much over 50mph which is pretty darn SLOW You can't steer that drastically pulling a trailer and it inched close to the side of the road.
When the front wheel hit the edge of the road, he did everything RIGHT. He didn't fight what was going on, he CARFEFULLY pulled the truck gently to the right & let it stabilize before he pulled it back onto the road.
There was no traffic for miles up the road so he pulled into the middle of the road. The trailer bounced wildly and he did the right moves to correct the fishtailing. Hitting the brakes hard would have been the WRONG thing as the trailer was not tracking with the truck.
Had the ravine not been there we would NOT have crashed at all when we went off the road to the left. It would have been a few intense, bouncy seconds. I wasn't busy driving and I didn't see the ravine either until the last second when it was impossible to avoid.
The crash just wasn't his fault. He wasn't pressured by the evil policies of the evil trustees to do the evaluations. Mine was late because Kevin took extra time with some folks who needed his time to HELP them.
I just wanted to go on record and say, for whatever the word of the guy who watched Kevin do everything possible to SAVE lives that day.
Kevin. It was absolutely NOT your fault.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dmiller
THIS is how I would have liked to have read the story in the first place.
:)--> 
:)-->
Whoever put this together in this format, thank you!
And HCW -- thank you, sir, for telling the story.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
igotout
Hey, HCW or any others who may want your L.E.A.D. story in a PDF document (without any comments), I took the liberty. Click here to download it. In this format you can share it on any computer or email it to others.
LEAD ACCIDENT STORY
Thanks,
John R.
Tampa, FL
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dot Matrix
Howard:
This message is from your friend Paula -- I have thought of you through the years and wanted you to know how much I missed you.
I recall how they treated you at the campus we shared and it always bothered me that they were so cold.
I am sending you a hug. Love you always!
Leave me a private message here or at LES if you want to talk to her; I will hook you up.
Edited by Dot MatrixLink to comment
Share on other sites
Dot Matrix
Paula also said she KNEW the day Craig said all the crap at Emporia that she would not be staying in the mnistry -- it was CRAP. He was crap.
She sends you love.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.