A South Carolina father made a treacherous 30-mile journey on foot by Hurricane Helene-ravaged Tennessee, risking life and limb to make sure he may stroll his daughter down the aisle at her marriage ceremony.
On his grueling five-and-a-half hour in a single day trek — most of which was in complete darkness — David Jones scrambled over mountains of gnarly flood particles, dodged heavy equipment and even received caught within the mud as much as his knees.
Miraculously, he made it to the church on time.
He initially deliberate to drive from his residence in South Carolina to Johnson Metropolis, Tenn., a roughly two-hour drive below regular circumstances. However Mom Nature had different plans, and after seven hours on the highway, he was knowledgeable by a state trooper within the residence stretch that Interstate 26 — and any conceivable again path to the venue — have been impassable as a result of extreme flooding.
Undeterred, Jones — a former marathon runner — steeled himself to hoof it the remainder of the best way, regardless of his cellphone’s flashlight being his solely supply of sunshine, native outlet WJHL reported.
“It simply… it’s terrible,” Jones mentioned. “And I can inform you a large number concerning the mud and the particles fields the place I’ve to climb six, seven-foot-tall piles of particles of previous fences and large timber and it was only a tangled mess and dead-end roads and every kind of issues.”
Whereas no a part of the journey was a cakewalk, he recalled one specific harrowing second the place he puzzled whether or not his luck had run out as he encountered a crew clearing roadways with heavy equipment, simply as he had gotten caught within the mud.
Provided that it was fully darkish and the operator had no thought he was there, he was nearly smacked by the swinging arm of a backhoe, repeatedly ducking down to flee being brained as he grew to become caught deeper and deeper in unyielding mud.
“I used to be as much as my knees in mud and couldn’t transfer,” Jones instructed the outlet. “And he doesn’t see me. After all, his cab is going through the opposite manner. More often than not, he’s swinging this factor round, and I’m ducking. Actually, I’m pondering this might be it. There was lots of prayer at that time.”
Someway Jones managed to free himself from the sludgy jail which very practically grew to become his tomb, shedding a shoe within the course of which he later needed to retrieve earlier than persevering with his voyage.
In a determined try to stay seen to vehicles streaming by as soon as away from the flood zone, Jones grabbed a reflective stake, which he later gifted to his daughter, Elizabeth, and her new husband to commemorate his precarious and unconventional path to the marriage.
“I introduced the reflector to the reception, and I offered it to Elizabeth, my daughter, and Daniel only for them to recollect, to be a protector and a superb reflection of one another and a mirrored image of God,” mentioned Jones, turning into emotional.
Elizabeth mentioned she had no thought what her father had put himself by till after the ceremony.
“That’s so emotionally shifting [to know] that my dad loves me that a lot, that he’ll come and undergo all of that to get to my marriage ceremony and be there on time,” Elizabeth Marquez instructed the outlet.
Though Jones resisted being labeled a hero, claiming he solely did “what any dad would do,” Elizabeth mentioned he’s a hero to her, and that she’s “so grateful he made it.”
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