Electrocuted! - A Story About My Dad

As you look at this front page of the Daily Quill, what catches your eye first? What do you immediately scan for? Do you lock onto the pictures? The headlines?

When I see a newspaper or a clipping from a newspaper, my first thought or question is; "What's the date?" "What era is this from?" This grounds me and I can relate it to the span of my life or a history timeline.

Then I look at the pictures to see if, by a quick scan, I can recognize any of the faces. Then I scan the names associated with the pictures for a name I recognize to put with a face.

The headlines are last. I scan them for a word or phrase that I can relate to events in my life.

There are several articles on this page that gave a brief glance into events that impacted many lives. Some in a good way. Some in a bad way. There is a celebration of a fifty year marriage with all the family getting together. A date is set for a murder trial. The Zizzer "B" team wins a grudge football game. Jefferson Avenue gets new blacktopping.

However, it is one of the smaller articles on this page that made the biggest impact on my life.

The date is September 21st, 1960; Fifty-seven years, one month and five days ago. (I wasn't even born yet!)

The headline: "Leahmon Riggs Suffers Severe Burns Here Today" (And first of all, let's make a correction. My Dad's name was spelled "Leamon".)

Here is the article enlarged for ease of reading:

Down through the years, the statement of facts in this article have been repeated and confirmed by my Dad and Mom, and others in the family. Ralph was only nine months old at the time so his memory of the events is like mine, from the telling of the tragedy and from seeing the effects on my Dad's body.

Let me just start with where the accident took place. From my understanding, the Kilkenny Limestone Co. was east of the old depot building in West Plains, on the north side of the tracks. I think the shell of the building is still there but I haven't been able to confirm this. If you are on St. Louis Street going south, just before you cross the railroad tracks, look to your right and you will see the old Kilkenny Limestone Co. building (I think).

Then, there was the 30,000 volt Ark-Mo electric line that he contacted. I talked with my Grandpa, Elmer Riggs (Popo), about this. From my recollection, he said that the line ran directly over the building and was (obviously) low enough to touch when you were standing on the building. Popo said that he had tried from the beginning of the job to get Ark-Mo (Arkansas-Missouri Power Company) to move the electric line away from the building. Ark-Mo delayed, lollygagged and drug their feet about moving the line. The building had to go up so the construction crew, including my Dad, was trying to "work around" the line to finish construction. I'll say more about Ark-Mo's delay later.

The metal decking they were putting on the roof was just long, narrow sheets of corrugated steel, probably 4' wide and anywhere from 10'-16' feet long. As Dad was carrying a piece of the metal over his shoulder, and using both hands to balance it; the end behind him tipped up and made contact with the high voltage line.

When contact was made with the 30,000 volt line, the electricity traveled through the metal roofing to Dad's hands, through his hands, arms, torso, legs, and finally out the bottoms of his feet to the metal he was standing on. When the electricity left his feet, it created a arc or a weld to the roof and when this happened, it burnt holes in the bottoms of both feet. Basically, he was welded to the roof by his feet. Also (and I'm not sure if or how this would have happened) but the electricity also blew out the soft parts of his armpits. I do know that to his dying day, one of his arms, (probably his right arm) had a dark brown ring just right above his bicep that was caused by this accident.

The shock knocked my Dad unconscious and he almost fell off of the roof. I assume by reading this article that he regained consciousness by the time he was transported to the hospital.

The recovery process was nothing more than one long drawn out nightmare for my Dad. They were going to graft skin onto the bottoms of his feet and that skin had to come from someplace on his body that the bottoms of his feet could touch.

Just try to touch the bottom of one of your feet to some area on your body where you would like to lose some skin! It ain't easy! They started by cutting a square of skin on the calf of one leg and leaving it attached by the lower side so it would flap down.

Then they sewed the flap to the bottom of his other foot where the electricity had burnt and blown out the skin, but leaving it attached to the calf.

After Dad's foot was sewn to the graft on his calf, they put a stick across from one bend of his leg to the other, to keep from putting too much pressure on the graft.

After the stick was in place, the entire area of Dad's right and left legs were encased in plaster of paris, up his thigh, close to the groin, down to the ankle on one leg and below the knee, just above the graft on the other. Both ends of the stick were encased in the plaster so his legs were immobile.

If you think this would be as bad as it could get... Think again.

Because the doctors could only do one foot at a time, the hole in his other foot had to be kept open and not allowed to scar or heal. Every day, the medical staff would have to scrape, scrub, and cut out the dead and dying flesh from the wound. I have to admit, even as I'm typing this, I get tears in my eyes thinking about the pain and suffering that my old Dad went through.

After the skin graft began to grow onto Dad's foot, the piece of skin that attached the graft to his calf was cut off and the process was began all over again on his other foot. I'm not real sure of the time span between the accident and when he was dismissed from the hospital but I do know he was home for Christmas in 1960. Mom told me that they had the Riggs' Christmas at their house and they had bought Dad a new recliner so he could be somewhat comfortable while he was recovering.

This ordeal brought a lot of changes to the Riggs household. Again, I was not there for many of them but I saw and experienced the effects; and actually am STILL feeling the effects from this accident. Some of the effects were bad. But there was at least one effect that was good.

When this accident happened, my Dad was not a Christian. He went to church with Mom and Ralph, but he had not surrendered his heart and life to God. When he was able to walk and then sit for an extended period of time, Dad went back to church at the Victoria Mission Pentecostal Church near Cull, Missouri. I have heard Brother Harold Essary, the pastor at the church at that time, repeat the story of Dad's conversion many, many times.

"When Leamon came up to the altar that Sunday morning, he couldn't kneel down to pray. So he just sat on the altar and prayed through to old time salvation!"

Like he was in everything in life, Dad was a quietly spiritual person. He couldn't kneel to pray so he sat at his seat at prayer time with his head bent into his hand. The few times that I remember when he was asked to pray publicly, was obviously uncomfortable for him. And I never remember seeing him participate in our Pentecostal style of worship.

But... We went to church. We did not miss regular services on Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Saturday night youth service, revival meetings (sometime two or three weeks long... or longer), youth rallys, fellowship meetings and revivals at neighboring churches. We went to church!

My Dad LOVED sports. Basketball, college football, baseball... He would sit for hours with his old radio (they got rid of the television when he got saved) and listen to the games. He allowed Ralph and I to play some sports in grade school. But nothing that would interfere with our church going. Since high school sports would require us to miss some of the regularly scheduled church services, the Riggs boys didn't play (and besides, he kept us too busy working to worry about football or basketball!!).

There were some bad effects. Looking back from a fifty-plus-year perspective, I really think my Dad had or came close to having, a nervous breakdown while he was in the hospital. I say this because of one of his peculiar irritations. 

He could not bear to hear anyone chewing on potato chips, ice, popcorn, anything that had a crunch.

Many is the time when he would say to us (as we were crunching away...) "If you're going to eat them, you go outside or to another room." Dad said that to him, the crunching was like someone scratching their fingernails down a chalk board.

Dad said (or my Mom told me), that it stemmed from when he was in the hospital and had the casts on his legs. He was basically immobile and could only move with assistance and a traction bar over his bed. One night when my Grandpa, Popo, was sitting with Dad, he brought in a big bag of potato chips. Popo sat and crunched his way through the bag and Dad was never the same. Popo never knew about this and it would have caused him a lot of grief if he would have known about it.

The strange thing about this whole "crunching/munching" thing is, I seem to have inherited the same irritation that my Dad had. My family thinks I am crazy but I cannot stand to hear loud crunching of potato chips, celery, carrots, etc... I have to leave the room or turn the music up!

Another thing that was never allowed in our home was small toys: marbles, hotwheels cars and such like, to be left in the floor where they could be stepped on.

On the calves of my Dad's legs, there was a rectangular, sunken-in scar, where the graft had been taken out.

Right now, I want you to look at the calf of your leg... and then take your fingers and push on it. Pretty soft and tender isn't it?? Think about that skin being on the bottom of your foot, right where the arch is at. That area of your foot is tender anyway but it was made extra sensitive on Dad's feet because of the graft. When he did step on something in his sock feet (I never saw him walk bare-footed) he would almost go into orbit! He didn't cuss or get loud, but he let us know, in no uncertain terms, that we need to PICK UP THE STUFF OUT OF THE FLOOR!!

Because of the nature of a graft like Dad had, scar tissue would form around the edge of the graft, where it met the natural skin of his feet. I would guess that now-a-days, you go to the doctor to get this scar tissue cut back in a sanitary room, with a local anesthetic and a hefty bill to boot.

Not my Dad! In my mind I can see him right now, sitting down in a kitchen chair, pulling his foot up into his lap, and going to work on the scar tissue... with his razor-sharp, Case pocket knife! Every couple of months or so, this ritual was performed.

If I haven't grossed you out by now... As Columbo would say "Just One More Thing."

When you looked at your calf a few minutes ago (men and hopefully not women), what did you see? Hair? Uh-huh... My Dad had HAIR on the bottom of his feet!! Yep! The hair on the graft continued to grow, even though it was on the bottom of his feet.

There was a somewhat positive development or you might say, outcome to Dad's accident.

When he was recovering, Dad was obviously not working. I'm really not sure if he had some kind of worker's compensation insurance or if it was unemployment pay but the family survived. His family and community turned out to help in so many ways. I do remember one  person that Mom mentioned many, many times.

James Bales ran the little store and gas station at County Line near our farm house. When James found out about Dad's accident, he said to Mom, "Helen, you come get anything you need from my store and gas when you need it. Don't worry about paying for it 'til you're able." You don't forget people like that.

The medical bills were piling up though.

After Dad was recovered to the point of being able to function somewhat normally, he contacted an attorney. An up and coming younger man in his mid-thirties, Harold L. Henry, Esq. Popo always claimed that the Henry's were some kind of shirt-tail relation. And they might be... Popo's mother's maiden name was Sally Parthena Henry, daughter of George Mumphry Henry.

Mr. Henry took the case and sued Ark-Mo Power for negligence, in not moving the electric line from across the Kilkenny Limestone Company building, in a timely fashion. I don't know a lot of the details about the Circuit Court trial but in the end, the jury found in favor of Dad and awarded an $80,000 settlement. My brother, Ralph, was visiting with Judge Don Henry a few months ago and Judge Henry (Harold Henry's son) gave this little tidbit of information about the case.

It seems that when the jury found in favor of Dad, they asked the judge if they, as the jury, could increase the amount of the settlement. They felt that it was not enough for the suffering that Dad endured. The judge informed them that that was not possible but it goes to show the amount of evidence that was presented in Dad's favor.

Ark-Mo appealed the jury's decision and the case was sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals 8th District in Springfield, Missouri. An additional attorney was retained for the appeal, Mr. B.H. Clampett, Esq of Springfield.

After the evidence from the circuit court was presented, the Appeals court upheld the decision and dismissed Ark-Mo's appeal.

Although this accident affected my Dad in so many ways, he did not wallow in pity and allow the injury to control his life. He continued in the construction business until the early 70's and then in roughly this order, he was: a real estate salesman, real estate broker, ran a tax preparation service, was an auction clerk, ran a moving and storage business, ran a used furniture store, repaired tractors and various other farm equipment, and built tandem axle trailers.

My Dad and the way he handled adversity, has kept me grounded in the few little problems I have faced in my lifetime... And, I hope you have enjoyed this small glimpse into the history of my family.

(If you have questions about anything that is unclear or can clarify something in this story, PLEASE comment.)

This is a picture of my Dad and Mom, taken in February of 1985. Dad was 52 and Mom was 53. Dad passed away in December of 1985, when he was 53. As of this month, I have out-lived my Dad by two months.