In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.
Title: Collin Davis: A Profile in Courage
Author: Dan Pattison
Date: May 1986
Yecch!
That's a reaction you get sometimes from world personalities, not only in sports, but others, too. It's like a taste of cod liver oil—the nasty tasting stuff that most people hold their nose while swallowing. And, of course, you're left with a bad taste in your mouth.
Then, there are others that follow in the category that you can only measure by how big their hearts are. It takes the body, the will and the heart to succeed.
Sometimes you travel the main streets and can meet an endless parade of stars. And you can travel the side streets and meet people like West Valley's Joe Husband, who had his leg amputated while working on Kennecott's track, only to comeback and start golfing to a 10-handicap, or Connie Johnston, a Weber High deaf student who has dominated the 4A girls track scene this spring, or you can meet Hillcrest High's Collin Davis who was struck down by lightning (August 23, 1984) and almost left for dead on a football field, only to comeback and compete for the Huskies in football and track again.
All three people, Husband, Johnston, and Davis, are real profiles of courage. Fear knocked at their door, faith answered and no one was there.
What you first have to establish with Davis is that there really is one. His story could be right out of a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie. You only have to meet his mother, Jolene, to establish that Collin is real and know his nightmare was real.
The 18-year-old Davis beat all odds. He dropped all the major obstacles in his path faster than bad guys in a Sylvester Stallone movie.
It's like he puts it, "The most memorable experience of my life is one I don't even remember." His parents and friends helped him remember.
"On August 23, 1984, at 6 p.m., I went over to the Midvale Middle School to help coach the little league football team that I had coached for the past year," recalled Davis. "The evening was wet, rainy with thunder and lightning. I was on the field surrounded by fifteen anxious little football players, going through the normal drills. We had been out there for approximately twenty minutes and I was soaking wet from top to bottom.
"Out of nowhere, without any warning, a light flashed and cracked over my head. The sound was terrifying and the repercussion of it threw the boys to the ground. At the same time, a bolt of lightning struck me on the back of my head, traveled down the middle of my back between my buttocks, down my right leg and out my foot. The boys said that I lit up like an 'electric man,' and that my eyes 'glowed.'
"A man on the field turned me over and said that I was dead. I had no heartbeat or pulse, and I was not breathing. Immediately a coach, Jim Hanney, who had just finished his CPR course, began working on me and with the help of others continued to work on me until the Midvale EMTs arrived. The EMTs took over and finally received a pulse and heartbeat."
That, however, was just the beginning of Davis' ordeal. Before the accident, Davis was a 6'3" 180-pound starting linebacker for Hillcrest. During his ordeal he lost weight to 138 pounds. Fortunately, however, all of his internal organs and brain were untouched.
"The most difficult part for me to accept was the fact I couldn't do the things I was used to doing or even at the same capacity," offered Davis.
"I would get really depressed to the point that I would just cry. My grades would drop and all the previous hard work in school to end up like this and my future plans of practicing medicine diminishing."
He finally quit school that year. He was in and out of hospitals because the pain in his feet was so bad he couldn't walk. He finally saw a neurologist at the University Hospital. He diagnosed the problem as Causalgia, which is when the sensory nerves—that have been damaged—become oversensitive and create a burning, stinging feeling. The neurologist was worried, too, about Davis becoming addicted to drugs.
Still, Davis had to find the will and the courage to face up to it himself. He did. After going through therapy, he started skiing in January, and playing church basketball in February. He put on 30 pounds and was ready to start playing his favorite position—linebacker—at Hillcrest once again, and this spring, he is improving every track meet in the field events. Most of all, he got his grades up again to where he could advance to premedical school at the University of Utah.
And if a stranger came in to paint a Davis family portrait, it would be all in rainbow shades of one big happy family. And surely, like Collin puts it, "I have learned a few things from this experience. For one, you can't choose when you die. It might be tomorrow, next week or in years. So you can't put things off until tomorrow, but do all you can do today."
