Stephen was in a car accident at age 14 in the summer of 1974. Stephen, his father Geoffrey, a friend named Bob Wood and another man went on an ocean fishing trip.
The boat was to leave the dock about 2 a.m. and Bob was driving the group in his nice sedan. Stephen was sitting behind the driver’s seat and his father was to his right.
While sitting at a stop light, their car was struck from behind by a drunk bartender.
Stephen wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. His father instinctively threw his burly left arm across Stephen’s chest, but he was still thrown forward, crashing hard into the driver’s seat and Geoffrey’s sharp elbow was jammed into his chest. We believe this elbow to the chest caused Stephen’s heart aneurysm.
Fast forwarding to spring of 2001 at about noon on a hot day, Stephen was 40 years old and his heart condition was still undiagnosed. He had a ticking time bomb in his chest. A bomb that could have killed him at any time, all he had to do was to put himself into a situation of extreme overexertion and the aneurysm could have burst and killed him. So what happened next was very dangerous.
Stephen’s pickup truck ran out of gas in the left lane of a busy street. He could see a gas station ahead but it was across three lanes of traffic.
He saw a break in traffic and decided to try and push the truck to the station. As he was exerting the effort necessary to move a truck, he was at real risk of bursting his aneurysm.
Suddenly a man appeared on the other side of the truck. He opened the passenger door and looked at Stephen with big, bizarre, wild eyes and shouted “Ramming speed captain!”
Then the two men pushed the truck across the lanes and into the gas station.
As soon as the truck came to a stop at the pump, Stephen looked for the man to thank him, but he was gone. He just vanished into thin air.
Stephen thinks this episode is another example of divine intervention. To Stephen it feels like there is some presence protecting members of his family.
