Easter Sunday 1995

May 10, 1995, Larry was found laying on the trail close to Laurel Falls, Tennessee.  He was more dead than alive.  It appeared that his skull was crushed by a rock slide.  It took a rescue squad an hour to bring him down off the mountain.  A four minute helicopter ride took him to the Johnson City Medical Center.  He was in surgery for almost six hours. The doctors removed as much of the dirt and crushed skull fragments as they could, but they had to remove a small part of his brain to get it all out.  He was in a coma and was given a 10% chance to live. The left side of his body was paralyzed.

After two weeks, Larry started to emerge from a coma.  I was advised that he probably would never be able to talk and walk; he belonged in a nursing home.  I refused to accept that diagnosis.  One of the doctors told me that his best chance for recovery was to get him around family.  We lived in Maryland with no other family there.  I hired an areo-evac plane and flew him to Jackson, Mississippi.  Larry grew up in Mississippi and had a huge family there.

I moved to Jackson to be with Larry.  His family was constantly visiting with him.  He learned to walk and talk, but it was still not known how  much of his memory he would regain.

Trail Days in Damascus Virginia 1996

Today Larry has approximately 90% of his memory back.  He has two months of post traumatic amnesia which he will never regain.  He suffers from short term memory loss, but is able to function fairly good on his own.

During the two months he was in the hospital, he had hundreds of people praying for him from not only the church but also from the hikers on the trail.

As an update, five years have past since Larry's injury. He is walking 10 miles a day and most of his skills have returned. His short term memory is his biggest problem.

Larry gets a titanium plate to cover his missing skull, July 1996