81 Two minutes last a lifetime EDITOR’S NOTE: The following story, written by Jerry Petcher, publisher of AGRI-VIEW, Marshfield, Wis., was the best feature story for a national contest sponsored earlier this year by the Newspaper Farm Editors of America. It’s the story of a Colby, Wis. dairyman who lost both hands in a corn-picking accident. The accident victim, Wilbur Becker, had a moving and powerful story to tell. Petcher heard of it and presented it to his readers in award-winning fashion. It's reprinted here with permission from the author. StoryandPhoto by JERRY PETCHER Agri-View Publisher and Writer eight children getting ready for chores. Suddenly xhe phone rang. “Wilbur is on his way to the hospital to be cleaned up,” was what the doctor said. That’s all she and the family were told. They were kept m suspense until about 1 a.m., when informed Wilbur had lost all eight fingers. Becker remained in the hospital for 72 days, undergoing a number of skin graftings. His hands were sewn onto his stomach for six weeks The skin from his stomach was successfully grafted onto his hands, and then skin from his legs was grafted to his stomach. His appendicitus scar, in fact, is grafted and can be noticed on his right hand. The road to recovery was a long and costly one - $12,000 just for the hospital bill, although his insurance met those expenses. Various courts of the Catholic Order of Foresters provided donations, and the city of Colby raised about $2,200 to help the Becker family. shut off the tractor, it would never have happened,” he said. “That’s why they call it an accident," interjected his wife. Two minutes isn’t a very long time, unless, that is, your eight fingers are being eaten away m a corn picker. Wilbur Becker has a 120-second-long nightmare to tell you one which seemed to take hours, one which made his past nine years frustrating, sad and challenging. Still, he’s thankful to be alive. Becker tries not to remember those moments anymore than he has to. One thing he has never done is felt sorry for himself. “Oh, it’s awfully frustrating when you try and can't hold on tight and are constantly dropping things. 1 can’t fix machinery, which gets to be costly when you have to pay somebody Becker is the first to blame himself for the “freak accident. If I woyld have How well he remembers that day December 13, 1966. The time: ap proximately 3:30 pm Becker, picking corn for a neighbor two miles south of Colby, noticed the elevator on the picker was plugged with stalks. He stopped the tractor, freed the debris from the picking unit and, as he was going back to the tractor, tripped over the stalks he had removed from the picker. His right hand hit a gear. Within the next two-minute period, Becker experienced the nightmare of a lifetime. | Continued on Page 82] His hand was slowly pulled into the unit, the glove twisted tightly around the gears. Becker quickly tried to free his right hand with his left, but within a second, a gear caught the left glove, pulling that hand into the unit too. “Oh my God, help," Becker said to himself. But the machine kept running, grinding away at his fingers, inching his hands further and further into the picker. “It’s not going to get all of me," was one of Becker’s first reactions. He braced himself against the machine, so tightly that his chest and legs turned black and blue. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before he won the battle and the machine stopped wrenching his body. But the gears kept moving, and by this time the gloves were in shreds, his fingers bare to the bones. Total time elapsed: about two minutes. Becker, about 40 rods from Highway 13, could see the cars going by. He spit out his false teeth so he could yell for help. “Help, help, somebody help," he yelled for about a half hour, but the cars just kept speeding by. He kept yelling, growing hoarse. Finally, a miracle happened. A neighbor, Melvin “Fuzzy” Mohan, had come home from driving a school bus and as he was walking to the house, heard Becker yelling. He ran to aid Becker, who told him to shut off the tractor and explained how to free his hands from the picker. When Becker pulled his hands out the sight would have made most persons sick. His fingers were still intact, although all the skin had been burned away and his wedding ring smashed, ground into the finger. There was little blood, although the air smelled of burned flesh. Since Mohan couldn't get his car into the field, Becker had to walk to the highway, crawling under two fences. He was taken to the Colby Clinic, then by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield. Meanwhile, at his home, located about three miles east of Colby on Highway N, his wife, Marge was preparing supper, with five of their Wilbur Becker, a farmer from Colby, Wis., lost eight fingers in a corn picker accident nine years ago, but he's continued to farm despite the tragedy. He is pictured working artificial with his right hand covered by a prosthesis, an device which protects the grafted skin. Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 8,1976
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