The Hands of God: A Real Survivor Story

This is a true story. Seven years passed before I could write about it.

A dear friend with an old story was in town. I first met Charlie almost 26 years ago. He and a fellow pilot were in the crumpled cockpit of a Cessna airplane. Twenty minutes earlier I had watched the airplane soar through a canyon at Nelson’s Landing, Nevada, then I watched in horrified fascination as it fell down, down, down out of the clear blue sky. This is a true story. Seven years passed before I could write about it. It has never been published until now.

The Hands of God

Here he comes. It’s Charlie in his new car. His second car since he rolled his SUV on Mother’s Day, 2001. No one knows why the vehicle rolled, and Charlie doesn’t remember so he can’t tell us. Any more than he can tell us what happened when the airplane he and a fellow pilot were in went down near Nelson’s Landing, Nevada, on a hot, merciless, windy afternoon. When the state troopers notified Charlie’s mom, Joyce Stone, about the SUV accident, the first words out of her mouth were, “Is his face okay? Are his legs okay?” His new face. His reconstructed legs.

I first met Charlie Stone on August 10, 1999, after a friend and I had finished rafting. The 23-year-old pilot and I didn’t speak to each other. He was unconscious at the time and so was his fellow pilot, (Errol) Brent Broussard, age 51. Half an hour earlier, I’d watched in awe and amazement as a private airplane winged its way through the box canyon where my car was parked. The plane swept up, up and away--only to waggle high in the air before banking to the left and hurtling straight down to disappear behind a hill. A slight puff of dust was the only thing that made me believe my eyes—the plane had crashed.

My rafting buddy was preoccupied with getting his raft deflated and missed seeing the plane go down. When I told him what I’d seen, he said I must have imagined it. His initial disbelief was, I think, due to the fact that we’d just witnessed the airplane maneuvering wingtip to wingtip through the small canyon. First we heard the drone of the engine, which grew louder and louder. Then the Cessna suddenly came sweeping larger than life around the corner of the bluff, through the canyon walls, and over our heads. I could see right into the cockpit. For a moment I thought the plane was going to land on the strip of dirt road behind us.

“Now, that pilot’s a hot dog!” The admiration in my friend’s voice was evident. He resumed deflating the raft and I followed the airplane with my eyes and consequently saw the tragedy unfold. Within minutes we abandoned the raft and set off in my car along a winding, bumpy dirt road. There was no smoke from the craft, nothing to guide us, just my recollection of the hill where I’d seen the plane disappear.

I remember silently pleading and praying to God, “Oh, please don’t let them be hurt, please don’t let them be conscious if they are hurt. Please, God, please make this not be real!” But it was real. We rounded a corner and there, sandwiched inside a dimple in the hill, was the blue and white 1968 Cessna. God surely must have heard my prayers because even though both pilots suffered catastrophic injuries, mercifully, they remained unconscious throughout the entire ordeal.

The area we were in didn’t support cell phones, and after making sure both men were still alive, my friend stayed with the victims and I drove like a madwomen to a trailer park a few miles down the road. An elderly couple let me use the phone to call for help, then I raced back to the crash site. Neither man was ever conscious, yet, once they were freed from the wreckage and placed side by side on the ground, Brent fumbled, then grasped Charlie’s outstretched hand.

Brent Broussard quietly passed away about forty-five minutes after the crash, but he and Charlie were still holding hands when the rescue personnel finally arrived. We had waited three endlessly frustrating hours before they found us. When the Calvary finally did arrive they showed up in droves. There were helicopters, airplanes, and emergency vehicles everywhere.

Charlie remained unconscious and had no idea Brent had died. Earlier, my rafting buddy had checked the plane’s logbook and he’d gotten the impression we were with a father and his son. As three paramedics started to put Charlie on a stretcher, he suddenly began fighting like a madman to not let go of Brent’s hand.

At the sight of Charlie’s valiant struggle to not leave his “father” behind, all my emotional reserve fled as swiftly as the puff of dust that had marked the crash of the airplane. “Oh, God, oh my God, he won’t let go of his father!” Sobbing, I was led to an emergency vehicle and there I could finally use the radio to make a call to explain why I had failed to pick my son up from school.

Charlie was airlifted to University Medical Center, Las Vegas, where he spent a month in the Trauma Center. He’d sustained massive injuries; two crushed legs, emaciated eye sockets, multiple facial injuries and extensive head injuries. His heart was unstable when he arrived and his doctors didn’t give him much hope. That is, not until Charlie’s personal Calvary arrived—his devoutly Catholic family.

It was never this writer’s intent to become involved with the family of the young pilot that fate had so arbitrarily and disastrously dropped into my life. The emergency crew had taken witness statements that day and we were advised it would be best to leave Charlie Stone in the hands of the doctors and his family. I, however, couldn’t stop thinking about Charlie. I called anonymously each day to check on him.

One day, when the nurse transferred me to security, I assumed Charlie had lost the battle. When a male voice answered, I blurted out that I’d actually seen the plane go down and my friend and I were the ones who were first on the scene. “He died, didn’t he?” I asked, tearfully. There was a pause, then the man said, “Please, don’t hang up. Charlie’s father is right here and they’ve been praying you would call. I’m Charlie’s best friend. Here, talk to Chuck.”

Chuck Stone, his wife Joyce, Charlie’s two sisters, and a regiment of pilots, friends, and relatives had been keeping a twenty-four-hour-a-day vigil over Charlie’s bedside. They prayed, they sang, they posted pictures everywhere. Joyce asked if I would come speak to Charlie. She felt it might help if he could hear my voice—the last voice he’d heard before slipping deeper into unconsciousness.

How could I say no? Wouldn’t I want to know what happened that day? Wouldn’t I want the assurance that my son didn’t suffer those horrific injuries while conscious? I went so I could look Joyce and Chuck Stone in the eye and tell them their son didn’t suffer aloud or alone. I was able to do the same for the family of the deceased pilot, Brent Broussard. Two years later, I flew to Louisiana to the Broussard home to deliver a similar message to Florence and Stephan Broussard; your son passed peacefully that day. He did not suffer. The only conscious move he made was to take the hand of his young comrade as they lay side by side. A gesture I will never, ever forget.

Twenty-nine days passed at UMC, Nevada, before Charlie was stable enough to be flown closer to home. His fellow pilots insisted on personally flying him to Loma Linda University Medical Center for rehabilitation. He was still very disoriented, a result of the tremendous trauma to his brain on impact. He was in a back brace and had steel halos on his legs. Charlie faced many corrective surgeries—particularly to his legs. His teeth were gone. Teeth and bone fragments had to be surgically removed from his sinus cavities.

Before Charlie was taken to California, Chuck Stone asked me to take him and Charlie’s Uncle Bill to the crash site. I recognized the place immediately—the distinctive dimple in a hill surrounded by nothing but miles of desert. The FAA had completed their investigation and the site had been groomed and swept thoroughly for any debris.

Chuck was there for only a few minutes when he bent down and absentmindedly poked at the dirt and gravel. When he stood up he had a look of reverent awe on his face--he was holding Charlie’s wristwatch. The metal strap was broken but it was still keeping time. The watch had been Uncle Bill’s gift to Charlie when he’d graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Arizona. Charlie had worn it every day until the plane crash.

I know it was the wings of an angel that caused the unbelievable surge of psychic hair-raising energy that swept over our small group. We bowed our heads and prayed through our tears. We prayed for Brent Broussard and his family, and we prayed for Charlie’s continued healing.

On Charlie’s last day at UMC, I went to say goodbye. Charlie was still unaware of his surroundings and even the people closest to him. He was agitated and I told Chuck and Joyce I’d stay in the room with him while they attended to his release. He’d try to pull out his IV and catheter if left to his own devices. Joyce was so exhausted even her lips were constantly trembling.

As I stood by Charlie’s bed and spoke to him in a soothing voice, he grabbed my arm and pulled me closer. I thought for a moment he was finally going to speak but he didn’t. He tugged on my arm until my face was near his, then he kissed me gently on the cheek. Charlie had finally spoken. He was telling me “thank you.”

Joyce Stone later said that when she got the phone call from her husband that he’d found Charlie’s watch, she knew her son would survive. And survive he has. Charlie drives, he works two jobs, he’s going to school to get a degree in business administration and he also wants a realtor’s license. His dreams of flying again have seemed to fade along with the scars on his face, his neck, and his legs.

But where Charlie is concerned, nothing is impossible. He’ll never run or play sports, and gone is a certain spontaneity, says his mother, that was so indicative of the Charlie who took off from the Boulder City Airport earlier on that hot windy August day. The Charlie who survived an airplane crash, who struggled against overwhelming physical odds to stay alive and learn to live again, that Charlie has become an integral part of my family.

The FAA completed their investigation and determined the cause of the crash was pilot error. But which pilot? No one knows. Charlie doesn’t remember. Brent Broussard was in the seat-of-command, Charlie was his instructor. Brent was buying the plane and Charlie was getting him familiarized with the craft in order for Brent and his son, Scotty, to fly it home to Louisiana.

That whole long terrible afternoon, Scotty Broussard waited at the Boulder City Airport for his dad to come back. Later, family members told me that Scotty had gotten into the plane with Brent and Charlie for one last test flight, then changed his mind and urged both men not to go up again. His premonition was so strong, his aunts said, Scotty climbed out of the plane and stayed behind. And waited. And waited, for two pilots who never returned.

I met Scotty briefly, and I also met the governor of Louisiana, Mike Foster, while visiting Brent Broussard’s family on Pecan Island. The governor, a good friend of Brent and the family, was on the property duck hunting. We drank coffee and chatted awhile before Scotty drove up. The family had warned me there was still a lot of grief, pain, and confusion in Scotty’s heart. Who knows what mental agonies he endured that day as the minutes, then hours dragged by without any sign of the airplane or his father?

Scotty was soft-spoken and polite, and looking into his deep eyes and handsome face I could so see a reflection of his dad, and I could sense the same spirit as his father; the pilot who had blindly, yet resolutely, reached out for the hand of his co-pilot in what had become their darkest hour. Errol Brent Broussard passed from this life peacefully and with honor in his heart. I can bear witness to that.

I also met Brent’s widow, Darline, and their daughter, Ashley. The loss of her husband was evident in Darline’s eyes and in the protective way she treated her daughter. When she talked to me about reading the coroner’s report, I could only imagine the horror she must have felt. The report didn’t reflect her husband’s psychological condition in his last hours. What she read was just a clinical analysis of the cause of death.

Darline said Brent had always had a fear of losing his legs if there was ever to be an accident. And the coroner’s report stated that his left foot had been severed on impact. I knew that, I’d wrapped my tennis jacket around the wound on that sorrowful day to keep the dust away. She told me Brent had died of massive internal injuries. I knew that, too, without having ever read the report.

What the report didn’t tell her is that Brent didn’t suffer these horrific injuries consciously. The report didn’t tell her that he was in the care of two people who were constantly talking to him, praying over him, and wetting his lips with water.

The report didn’t tell her about Charlie’s own massive trauma, or his struggle to stay alive. Nor did it tell her about his fight to not leave her husband lying alone and abandoned on the ground, while the medics airlifted Charlie to safety.

People have said to me, “You’re a hero! You saved Charlie’s life!” Well, the friend I was rafting with was the hero. There was no way I could have physically pulled two grown men out of that airplane by myself; the cockpit was bent in two, and the engine was folded over onto their laps.

A power much higher than myself directed me to keep my eyes on the airplane that day. I believe it’s the same power that led Errol Brent Broussard to take Charlie Stone by the hand. It’s the same power that led Chuck Stone back to the scene of the crash and to Charlie’s treasured timepiece.

The area where we were rafting is generally deserted. My friend and I had debated on even going out because of the weather. We cut short our time on the water because the wind had gotten so gusty. I believe we were put there that day for a purpose. And his name is Charlie.

The world we live in is fraught with religious strife. It’s difficult, at times, to see past the politics and look instead at the true face of God. I may not have physically seen the face of God on August 10, 1999, but no one can tell me we weren’t in the mind of God that day.

At the hospital, I could see God’s love reflected in the faces of Charlie’s family, friends, nurses, and the surgeons who put him back together again.

I saw God in two strong, yet helpless, hands that were clasped together, there in the blood, in the dust, in the hot desert wind, beneath the wing of a shattered airplane. -- Christine McKellar, April 2006