I had turned three years old in January. My older sister, Louise, had turned six years old that summer, my brother Erwin would soon be eight, and John, the oldest, would turn ten in October. It was probably a Sunday, because we had decided to go to my maternal Grandma and Grandpa’s house, 50 miles away, and Sunday was usually chosen for such visits. It was a warm, sunny July day, perfect for a family outing. We had a family friend – ”Frenchie,” he was called – who knew my grandparents and decided to go, too.
We all piled into Frenchie’s car – seven of us. Cars had bench seats then, so it was easy to fit that many people in them. Frenchie was driving, John sat in the middle, and my father was on the right. There were four of us in back. Erwin climbed in first and sat on the left. Louise and I started arguing about who got to sit next to “Mama,” as I believe I called her then. To provide a compromise, Mom offered to let us sit one on each side of her. I ended up next to the door.
Mom was one of those people who fell asleep in the car. As soon as she felt the car in motion, her body would relax and off she would go. Erwin and Louise were talking or playing together on the other side of Mom. Since I was alone on the other side of Mom with nothing to do, I began to entertain myself. I became fascinated with the car door. I seemed to know from having watched others how the handle worked, but I thought I would like to find out for myself. If I pulled the handle up gently and put it down again just as gently, I reasoned, I would be able to surprise everyone with my abilities when we reached our destination. Unfortunately for me, I did not understand the laws of physics, nor anything about automobile construction. The hinges of the back door of that car (a Plymouth, I‘m told) were at the back, toward the rear of the car, which meant that the door opened at the front. As soon as the wind caught the door, even if it hadn’t been intentionally opened, the door was forced wide.
We were going approximately 50 miles an hour, and I flew out. Louise and Erwin saw me fly and screamed, “Kathleen fell out!” Mom woke up to the screams at the same moment that Frenchie slammed on the brakes. Without thinking, Mom jumped out of the still-moving car after me. Witnesses to the accident stopped immediately, and my parents asked one of them to call an ambulance. I had tried to raise myself up (I was lying face-down in the dirt) and had immediately passed out. Mom held herself over me, and the other children were not allowed to come close. Someone told my mother not to touch me, rather, to wait for the ambulance. The wait was endless and the ambulance never arrived. Suddenly Mom decided that we could not wait any longer, so she picked me up and they all took me to the hospital.
I had apparently received the greatest injury to my face, and Louise and my brothers agree that Mom held me with my face away from them and her body shielding mine, so they were unable to see the worst of my wounds. They brought me to the hospital through the front lobby, and Mom, still carrying me, was whisked off to the emergency room while the children and Frenchie stayed in the lobby, then went and waited in the car. Dad must have gone with Mom or, more correctly, Dad was probably at the desk trying to prove that he could pay before they would consent to treat me. Those waiting in the car recall that later, they could hear me crying from the fourth floor of the hospital as they sat in the parking lot.
I suffered no broken bones (not even a tooth knocked out), but my face, according to Dad, looked like ground hamburger. My wounds were cleaned and wrapped, and I was sent to the children’s ward to recover. Mom was treated for shock. She was admitted but stayed a shorter time than I did. By the time she left the hospital, I had recovered enough to tolerate the separation of her returning home. The day I awoke and found her missing, I was about to be very upset, until the nurses asked me if I was hungry. They brought me a fried egg and orange juice. I still remember this meal as one of the best of my life, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps the bandages had just been removed from my face and I could finally eat. My mother told me much later that the first time she entered the children’s ward she didn’t know which one was her child, because my head and face were totally covered with bandages.
All through my hospital stay I was obsessed with Grandma, and the fact that we had not reached her house. I stayed in the hospital from that Sunday until late afternoon on Friday. The day I was released from the hospital, Mom brought me the most beautiful dress in the world to wear. It was hand-crocheted in white, with crocheted pink rosettes attached in a single diagonal line from shoulder to hem. We went to the car, where my brothers and sister were waiting, then we all went to a store to buy me what turned out to be the most-loved doll of my childhood (Billy-Boy was his name). We proceeded homeward where, to my surprise, my grandmother had established herself purposely to welcome me home. She was probably there, also, to help my parents during and after the long ordeal. A happy ending – or so it seemed. I wasn’t to learn until 40 years later that there was more.
Correction, I did learn one thing: when I was about four or five years old, my dad told me that my heart had stopped the day I fell out of the car.
