90 Minutes in Heaven_ A True Story of Death & Life - Don Piper [4]
I was relieved that we had been able to leave early. It was only a few minutes after 11:00, so I could get back to the church by 2:00. The senior minister had led a group to the Holy Land and left me responsible for our midweek service at South Park Church. He had also asked me to preach for the next two Sundays. That night was a prayer meeting, which required little preparation, but I needed to work on my sermon for the following Sunday morning.
Before I left Alvin, I had written a draft for the first sermon titled “I Believe in a Great God.” As I drove, I planned to glance over the sermon and evaluate what I had written so far.
Many times since then I’ve thought about my decision to take the Gulf Freeway. It’s amazing how we pay no attention to simple decisions at the time they’re made. Yet I would remind myself that even the smallest decisions often hold significant consequences. This was one of those choices.
I pulled out of Trinity Pines, turned right, and headed down Texas Highway 19. That would take me to Huntsville and intersect with I-45, leading to Houston. I didn’t have to drive far before I reached Lake Livingston, a man-made lake, created by damming the Trinity River. What was once a riverbed is now a large, beautiful lake. Spanning Lake Livingston is a two-lane highway whose roadbed has been built up above the level of the lake. The road has no shoulders, making it extremely narrow. I would have to drive across a long expanse of water on that narrow road until I reached the other side. I had no premonitions about the trip, although I was aware of the road’s lack of shoulders.
At the end of the highway across the lake is the original bridge over the Trinity River. Immediately after the bridge, the road rises sharply, climbing the bluff above the Trinity’s riverbed. This sharp upturn makes visibility a problem for drivers in both directions.
This was my first time to see the bridge, and it looked curiously out of place. I have no idea of the span, but the bridge is quite long. It’s an old bridge with a massive, rusty steel superstructure. Other than the immediate road ahead, I could see little, and I certainly didn’t glimpse any other traffic. It was a dangerous bridge, and as I would learn later, several accidents had occurred on it. (Although no longer used, the bridge is still there. The state built another one beside it.)
I drove at about fifty miles an hour because it was, for me, uncharted territory. I braced my shoulders against the chill inside the car. The wind made the morning seem even colder than it was. The steady rain had turned into a cloudburst. I would be happy to finally reach Alvin again. About 11:45 a.m., just before I cleared the east end of the bridge, an eighteen-wheeler driven by an inmate, a trusty at the Texas Department of Corrections, weaved across the center line and hit my car head-on. The truck sandwiched my small car between the bridge railing and the driver’s side of the truck. All those wheels went right on top of my car and smashed it.
I remember parts of the accident, but most of my information came from the accident report and people at the scene.
From the description I’ve received from witnesses, the truck then veered off to the other side of the narrow bridge and sideswiped two other cars. They were in front of the truck and had already passed me going in the opposite direction. The police record says that the truck was driving fast—at least sixty miles an hour—when it struck my car. The inexperienced driver finally brought the truck to a stop almost at the end of the bridge.
A young Vietnamese man was in one vehicle that was hit, and an elderly Caucasian man was in the other. Although shaken up, both drivers suffered only minor cuts and bruises. They refused help, so the paramedics transported neither man to the hospital.
Because of the truck’s speed, the accident report states that the impact was about 110 miles an hour. That