Deep Sea Amputee: The Life and Times of John Lawton

By John Lawton

Fate is a funny thing...

"The accident would change everything, and in ways that, at nineteen, I could never even begin to imagine. Yes, my life as I knew it was over. But in another sense, a much deeper sense, my life was just beginning..."

Deep Sea Amputee is the remarkable story of John La

• Language: English
• Publisher: No Visibility Media
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735986913

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Mass General

John, we need to talk." I hadn’t had a lot of conversations with doctors in my young life, but I understood enough to know that that wasn’t good. The phrase we need to talk isn’t typically very encouraging in any context. But it’s worse in a hospital setting.

The doctor was accompanied by a nurse who sat down on the bed I was lying in and took my hand, something I would have welcomed in any other situation.

You’ve got a few things wrong with you, the doc continued. You’ve got two broken wrists, you’ve got a compound break in your thigh… then he paused and took a breath and said, and you’ve lost your right leg.

He might have just hit me with a brick, such was the level of my shock.

We’re in the process of trying to save your knee, he concluded.

The nurse embraced me and began to cry. So did I.

I knew I’d been banged up, but I hadn’t known how bad it really was. I had no idea I’d lost a limb.

A month before, I had turned nineteen. It was close to Christmas, 1974, and I was home from college. My father had asked me if I’d like to borrow the car to pick up my brother from work one night.

Take along that girl you’ve been seeing, he said. Take her to see the Christmas lights at La Salette Shrine. Sounded good to me. I took Dad’s Chevy Impala, picked up Jackie, and off we went. It was a clear, cool evening and it was good to be out on the road. Good to be young, good to be free.

The National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette was in fine form that night. With hundreds of thousands of lights spread over ten acres in Attleboro, Massachusetts, the annual Festival of Lights had become a cherished New England Christmas tradition. Jackie and I took it all in, strolling around the grounds, gazing at the lights, and stopping at the gift shop for a hot chocolate. Afterward, we went to pick up my brother.

Along the way, Jackie fell asleep with her head in my lap. And somewhere along the way, I fell asleep, too. I don’t remember drifting off. I only remember waking up as the car cut through a series of guard rails and just kept going, all the way over a bridge and finally down onto some railroad tracks. The engine had pushed its way into the front seat. Miraculously, Jackie had a small broken bone in her ankle and that was it. Me, I had everything the doctor would later tell me, plus a gash on my forehead. The gash is what I remember the most because blood was dripping into my eyes and I couldn’t see. I had no idea I’d lost my leg. I had no idea it had been torn off and was resting in the backseat.

People in the restaurant across the street, a restaurant I used to work in washing dishes, saw the accident and called the paramedics immediately. There was no doubt that medical help was needed, and urgently. I remained conscious until I saw the face of a fireman who leaned in toward me and said, Don’t worry, son. You’re going to be fine. We got you. And we’re going to take good care of you. Then I was out, waking up three days later at Massachusetts General Hospital. I would later learn I’d been first taken to a nearby hospital in Rhode Island, just over the state line. My father had had me transferred. He wanted the best doctors for me, and everyone knew that the best doctors were at Mass General.

And now I knew the whole truth. My leg was gone.

You know, fate is a funny thing. I imagine there are a lot of different directions in which a person can go at a life moment like that one. Some good, some not so good. Certainly, a lot of things run through your mind. And a lot of emotions, including doubt and self-pity. Plus a zillion questions. What will I do? How will I get on in life? How will I ever find employment? What girl will ever find me attractive? It seemed like I’d lost a hell of a lot more than my leg. My life, as I knew it, was over.

Interestingly, it turns out that sometimes that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It would only be later—much, much later—that I would see the accident for what it truly was. The accident, as it happens, would change everything and in ways that, at nineteen, I could never even begin to imagine. Yes, my life as I knew it was over. But in another sense, a much deeper sense, my life was just beginning.

CHAPTER 2

Boringham

The leg I lost, along with the rest of me, was born in Bermuda in 1955. And yet, I was born a US citizen on American soil. My father, as it turns out, was in the Air Force and stationed in Bermuda at Kindley Air Force Base. The base would close in 1995 and Kindley Field would become Bermuda International Airport, but forty years before, it was an active military base under the control of the United States government. In 1980, just to make it all official, I’d apply for my Consular Report of Birth Abroad, approved and signed by Edmund Muskie himself, Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State: I was an American. Interestingly, I was also still considered Bermudian enough that I would be allowed to buy real estate in Bermuda, something not everyone can do. There’s a governmental policy in the small island nation that forbids Bermudians from selling their homes to non-Bermudians. It’s their way of maintaining control of their beloved island nation. Rumor has it that Oprah Winfrey once tried to buy a house in Bermuda and, even with all of her millions, was unable to do so.

But I digress. The point is, I was born in Bermuda. On Kindley Air Force Base. There, the US was testing radar and Dad’s assignment to Bermuda fit in well with his interest in electronics. Raytheon was the major US contractor for missile defense radar for the Air Force, so when Dad left the service and moved back home, he went to work for Raytheon in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. It was a natural step. We left Bermuda when I was three, so I have no real memories of the place, although my mom has countless photographs of me as a child there, many of them of me and our dog playing in the sand. I sure looked happy.

The Lawtons of Rhode Island go back centuries. Apparently, we weren’t the nicest people back in the 1600s when we first settled on Aquidneck Island, home of Middletown, Portsmouth, and Newport. We were thieves, actually. Pirates. The story that’s told is that my forefathers would move the channel-marking torch lights at night to make incoming ships think they were sailing safely through the channel between Newport and Jamestown. In reality, they were headed for the rocks. They’d become grounded and we’d throw the men overboard and take their cargo and women.

I’m proud to report that future generations behaved much better. In fact, we have a long and illustrious history of loyal service to our country. My great-great-grandfather Henry Ware Lawton, for instance, was a true patriot. Henry was a highly decorated officer in the US Army, serving with distinction in the Civil War, the Apache Wars, and the Spanish-American War. In 1899, he was sent to the Philippines and fought in the Philippine-American War, becoming the only US officer to be killed in that war. (So admired was he in the Colonial Philippines that at one time his face actually appeared on Filipino fifty-dollar bill and, to this day, a plaza in Manila is named after him.) Henry’s body was brought back to the States and he was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. I have proudly visited his grave.

After we moved from Bermuda to the States, we lived in an old farmhouse that