Published Sept. 16, 1992 in the Louisville Courier-Journal

Crash left 4 lives' promise unfulfilled

By BEVERLY BARTLETT
Louisville Courier-Journal

OIL SPRINGS — They all left children. They all left spouses.

And in the crashing metal and the incredible burst of flames that marked the moment at 5:15 p.m. Monday when a Magoffin County ambulance and a Mack coal truck collided eight miles west of Paintsville, four people died, leaving all their loves and likes, all their dreams and all the details of their lives behind.

James Lowe, the 21-year-old emergency medical technician police believe was driving the ambulance, will not move into the home he had started renting in Oil Springs. He will not watch his 4-month-old daughter, Natasha Shea Lowe, learn to walk. He will not celebrate the second anniversary of his marriage to Patricia Cole Lewis. He will not go back to school to become an X-ray technician and maybe, eventually, a doctor.

"He was one of the best EMTs in the county ... He was a good daddy," said his brother, Rick. "He was a good brother. He was a good Christian boy."

And Isaac Jude, the 51-year-old Pilgrim, Ky., driver of the coal truck, will no longer hunt or fish. He will no longer joke with his wife, Marlene. He won't watch the youngest of his five children grow into adulthood. He won't climb into the 1985 Mack tractor-trailer in which he made a living and that he died driving. "That was his life," said his sister-in-law, Mary Fletcher, "all of his life."

Police still don't know what caused the vehicles to collide on the clear, dry Monday afternoon. Trooper Ghomer Prater said police hope to have reconstructed the accident and determined the cause in a few days.

All they knew yesterday were its results.

When emergency crews arrived, they found the truck's cab had pushed the ambulance backward across the road and into a culvert. Both the ambulance, which had been traveling west, and the truck, which was headed east, burst into flames.

Carter Conley, chief of the Magoffin County Rescue Squad, saw the heavy black smoke from more than a mile away.

John Blanton, who lives in a trailer nearby, said he "heard a big, thunderous crash" and came out onto his porch.

At first, Blanton said, all he could see was a big cloud of dust. "It felt so hot, I couldn't get anywhere near it. There was nothing nobody could do," he said.

One of the ambulance personnel, Johnnie Vanderpool, lay under the bed of the truck about 25 feet away.

Johnson County Coroner J. R. Frisby said three of the victims, Lowe, Jude, and an ambulance passenger, Margie Bailey, were found under the ambulance, which was beneath the cab of the truck.

An autopsy showed Vanderpool may have died from injuries suffered in the accident, Frisby said, but the others died of severe burns. He said al four died "absolutely instantly."

And so it was over.

Vanderpool, a 28-year-old Salyersville EMT, will miss watching his daughters, newborn Anita Marie, and Tabitha, 5, grow up. He will not grow old with his wife, Juila Marie Vanderpool. He will no longer brag to his sister, Nora Sue, about the lights and gadgets of the ambulance he sometimes drove. He will never again take the extra time with a patient that won him praise from his colleagues.

"I wish you could have got to meet him; you would have liked him," his sister said. "I'm going to miss him, that's all."

Margie Bailey, 30, who was in the ambulance, was only trying to get home from a doctor's appointment in Paintsville, Frisby said. Her sister-in-law, Reselea Joseph, said Bailey didn't have a driver's license. Her husband, James Wendell, couldn't take her to the 10:30 a.m. appointment for a checkup because the couple was afraid they wouldn't get back in time to meet their children after school. Instead, they arranged for transportation with G&B Ambulance Service in Salyersville.

And now Margie Bailey will no longer take her two sons and daughter to the pond behind their Salyersville home to fish.

"She loved to fish," Joseph said. "I think she loved to fish just to catch them. I don't think she cooked them or anything. She just loved to catch them."

KENTUCKY EMS MEMORIAL

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