Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind

From the time I was an infant, I've had many brushes with death. Here are just a few. I think it's a miracle I'm still alive after 78 years. My first brush with death came in 1946 when I was only one year old. At the time I was living in an orphanage in Marburg, Germany where my birth mother had placed me when I was just a few days old. There, I contracted a severe case of diphtheria for which I had to be hospitalized. I think that one of the reasons I survived was the excellent care and nurturing I received in that hospital. I remember my dad telling me many years later that, when I had to be immunized as a three-year-old, I screamed bloody murder as soon as I got near the school where the vaccinations were to take place. My dad surmised that my extreme reaction was the result of smelling the pungent odor of ether that reminded me of my earlier hospital experience.

As an adult, I also had several brushes with death. The first occurred when I was nineteen years old and on a vacation trip to North Carolina with my dad. We were headed for Cape Hatteras to view the air museum in Kitty Hawk and to swim in the Atlantic. But on the way there, we had a near-fatal auto accident as we were cresting a hill near Roanoke, Virginia. Another car smashed into us head-on as dusk was falling and visibility was poor. I was driving and my dad was in the passenger seat. Fortunately, neither one of us was seriously hurt, and I just had some abrasions after bumping my head on the steering wheel. But I'll never forget the shock I experienced. I remember shaking uncontrollably for a long time. And I never felt completely confident in my driving after that.

Another near death experience happened to me at the age of thirty when I was vacationing in Norway with some German friends of mine. We stopped at a place called the Jotunheimer mountain range north of Oslo. My friends wanted to ski down one of the mountains. To ascend the mountain, I had to use a primitive T-bar ski lift to which I was tied by a leather strap. However, about halfway up the mountain slope, the belt started to tighten so much that I almost choked to death. As I felt myself being strangled, I managed to cry out. Fortunately, someone stopped the lift and helped me climb out of it. However, even after that close shave, I was still determined to downhill ski. But when I started my descent down the slope, one of my skis slipped out of its binding and careened down the mountain by itself. Fortunately, I was able to stop my descent before having another brush with death.

My most serious near-fatal encounter (apart from contracting diphtheria) came when I was a twenty-three-year-old grad student at The Ohio State University in the summer of 1969. It was summertime, and I had just gotten off the Greyhound bus around midnight in downtown Columbus, after visiting my dad in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, because I didn't know my way around downtown, I got lost trying to find a city bus that would take me back to my apartment near the OSU campus. As I was stumbling around in the dark, I was suddenly stopped by two young African-American men. They told me to hand over my money, so I got out my wallet and gave them all the cash I had which only amounted to a few dollars. Fortunately, they didn't know that I was also carrying two hundred dollars worth of Travellers checks in my backpack. After they'd taken my money, they offered me a beer and told me they were planning to go to California. I don't recall everything that happened after that except that they stopped a car driven by a young black couple. Then they forced me to get into the back seat with one of them on either side of me. One showed me a knife, the other a gun. They got the driver to take us to a bar located in the black neighborhood. Then they told me to get out of the car and follow them into the bar. As I got there, I noticed that all of the bar patrons were black. I was in a state of shock and had no idea what they had in store for me. I truly felt that I was at death's door.

But then, before my robbers could do anything further, a white cop spotted me. By now, my two assailants had disappeared. The cop told me to follow him and took me to the nearest police station where he questioned me about the two men. I was still in such a state of shock, that I couldn't identify them. I remember that the cop was annoyed with me for not being more helpful. After that, he let me go.

But my ordeal was far from over! Since it was already way past midnight, I had no way of getting home since the city buses had stopped running. It didn't even occur to me to hail a cab. But that wouldn't have helped since the two robbers had taken all my cash. It was then that I remembered the $200 worth of Travellers checks in my backpack. I suddenly had the brilliant idea of using them to pay for a night at a nearby hotel. But the hotel clerk wouldn't take my Travellers' checks. So, after all that I'd been through, I had no way of getting back to my apartment except to walk. That took me almost an hour. And I had to risk being held up again. Fortunately, I made it back safely. Even though I was dying to tell my three roommates what I'd just been through, they were already sound asleep. And I didn't want to wake them. So, I had to wait until the next morning to tell them. Even though I don't recall their reaction, I was just grateful to be alive.

It turned out that about six months later, after I had dropped out of O.S.U. to return to live in Cincinnati, that a close friend of mine was murdered along with her boyfriend near the O.S.U. campus, not far from my former apartment. It made me realize that it could have been me.