The year was 1982.  I was on summer break from teaching band and choir at a Christian school in Tulsa.  I was looking forward to the next semester because I had been appointed Head of the Music Department and had my pick of classes to teach.  It was going to be a great year.

During the summer break, I was working for a small asphalt company.  The hours were 3:00 am to 12:00 noon.  My job for the first few hours was cleaning parking lots with a lawn mower that had been converted into a vacuum cleaner.  Then from dawn to noon, we repaired asphalt parking lots.  I didn't mind the job or the hours.  I'd come home at noon, take a nap, then have the rest of the day to myself.

On Friday, July 2nd, the middle day of the year, I got home just before 12:00 noon, having gotten off early that day.  My in-laws had just bought a camper trailer and we were going to try it out for the Fourth of July weekend.  We had made plans to leave late that afternoon.  

The apartment complex my wife and I lived in surrounded a small man made lake.  The lake was its drawing card. It gave the complex its charm.  Our patio doors faced the lake and were only a few yards away from its bank.  The bank of the lake was bordered by a single rope that loosely hung about 2 1/2 feet up from the ground between vertical railroad ties that circled the water's edge.  There was an immediate drop off at the water's edge.  Signs were posted.  “DEEP WATER, STEEP BANKS, APPROACH WITH CAUTION.”  People swam and dove in it daily during the hot summer months.

When I arrived home that ordinary July day, my wife asked me if I wanted to go swimming.  I asked her to let me sleep for an hour and I'd go with her then.  At precisely 1:00 pm she gently awakened me and told me the time.  I got up, put my swimsuit on and walked toward the patio door.  Laying against the outside of the stationary door was our yellow inflatable rubber mattress - full and ready to go.

Without giving it a second thought, I grabbed the mattress with both hands and ran toward the lake.  As I leaped over the low hanging rope and flew over the water, the wind or something caused me to lose the grip of my left hand and the mattress blew out from under me.  I chose to keep the grip I had with my right hand so the mattress wouldn't float way out across the lake. I also figured it would act as a floatation device, preventing me from sinking "all the way" to the bottom.  I was thinking, in that split second in mid air, that it was a good thing the water was deep.

I hit the water face first and in a split second, my head hit the muddy bottom and my body froze and floated upward.  "Oh, God, no!" I wasn't cursing in my head.  I was crying out in my mind.  I knew exactly what had happened.   I'd seen the movie about Joni Ericksen-Tada just a few months prior; and even more eerily coincident, the night before, I watched a 20/20 special about spinal cord injuries that had been caused by diving accidents.   I couldn't believe it.  

In those hour-like seconds that passed, I waited to see if my life would pass before my eyes.  "Am I dying?...  Wait..."  I tried turning my head.  "I can't get my face above the surface of the water...  I can't cry out...  Relax...  Relax...  Conserve your air.  God, they don't know I can't move..."  15 seconds...  20... 30... I tried breathing the air in my cheeks.   "That's carbon dioxide, dummy!" I thought to myself.  "You can't rebreath that air!..."  40 seconds  "I'm running out of oxygen."   I began to hear voices from the shore.  

"Is he playing around?" a neighbor asked.

"I don't know!" was my wife's frantic reply.

"He's been down there too long!" said another

50 seconds...  Then just before I took in water, my anxious ears heard the welcoming sound of splashes as two men jumped into the water, grabbed me by the arms and lifted me out of the water.  As soon as my face cleared the water, I took a deep breath and heard my wife scream.  She watched helplessly as they gently laid me on the soft grass that grew between the lake and the row of apartments.

"I can't move!  I've become like Joni!  We just saw this last night!  I can't believe this has happened to me!  Please don't leave me!"  I talked incessantly.  I couldn't stop.

My wife attempted to calm me.  "Try to relax.  I'm not going to leave you."