Part 1 - It Happened in Crawford County: A serious crash turns out to be a lifesaver

Part 1 - It Happened in Crawford County: A serious crash turns out to be a lifesaver
Dale Richardson is a son of James, whose home was in Honaker, Virginia, and Christine Richardson from Monticello, Kentucky. Dale’s Grandpa Paul Richardson and Grandpa Herman Miller came to Bucyrus looking for work. Their lives as coal miners were difficult and only paid $4 a day. James and Christine were both young when their families moved here.

Dale was born and raised in Bucyrus on Perry Street. He went to the Bucyrus schools and graduated from Bucyrus High School in 1981. He’s a hands-on person, so basically, he hated school and was happy to move on and get a real job.

After school, Dale began working at Bucyrus Road Materials, mainly running equipment — a job that he really enjoyed. After 25 years with the company, on Sept. 8, 2008, he was driving an asphalt tanker truck when the left front tire blew out. The truck went into the ditch and went end-over-end once, and then barrel-rolled, ejecting him. He was covered with hot liquid asphalt from his head to his knees. The crash also cut off his left ear, shattered his left shoulder and broke four vertebrae in his back.

Dale said his Guardian Angel stopped and cleaned his mouth and nose out so he could breathe. No one really knows who the person was who stopped and saved him. Next, the Ohio Highway Patrol showed up and told him that help was on the way.

John Schifer was the first responder from Holmes Township Fire Department, and he reassured Dale that help was on its way. John did a perfect job keeping Dale calm and relaxed until transported to the hospital. The nurses asked how to get this asphalt off, and he told them that Vaseline would break it down. The problem was, they just had little packets and had to strip it off into a bucket so they could see all the damage.

The injuries were severe and Dale was flown to The James Cancer Center at The Ohio State University. While it wasn’t usual to be taken to the cancer hospital, in the end God orchestrated it all. They performed the MRI and discovered a tumor on the tail of his pancreas. Luckily, Dr. Ellison was on call. His father had perfected the pancreaticoduodenectomy, the Whipple procedure, a major surgical operation to remove cancerous tumors.

Also on call that day was the best plastic surgeon and OSU’s best bone doctor. Dr. Ellison told Dale he would be dying with pancreatic cancer in a year if he hadn’t had this crash, revealing the tumor. Next, he would face this intimidating big surgery. God does work in mysterious ways; his hand was on everything that happened because of the crash.

Dale was in the hospital for a week because of the crash. Then, one month later, in October, he went back to OSU for the Whipple procedure and a two-week recovery period. After surgery, Dr. Ellison told Dale the sooner you get up and walk, the faster you’ll heal. It was coming up on his son’s fifth birthday in a week, and Dale made it home.

The staff couldn’t believe his recovery in that short time; it’s one of the worst surgeries to get through and survive. Normally patients aren’t out of bed that soon, much less go home. Dale had three years of follow-ups to make sure the cancer wasn’t growing back. Instead, they found three spots in his kidneys. Three years later, and on Dr. Ellison's retirement, he told Dale “All the spots on your kidneys are gone.” How many miracles can happen to one person?

Finally, Dale was headed home and looked forward to getting back to his hobby of working on his classic cars. He still has his first two cars — the first from when he was 6, the Model T car the Shriners used in the Bratwurst Fest parade. The second car was his 1967 Nova SS that he’s had since he was 14. His dad was a car body man. James Sebring was a mechanic; Dale was in the best of both worlds having that kind of talent to help him learn.

Many things happened after that awful wreck and surgery in 2008. Dale, now 57, planned a trip in 2020 that proved to be another "nail biter" of life-changing events. After a week’s vacation visiting family in Virginia, Dale and Merri Jacobs planned to spend most of Labor Day 2020 on the road. They were heading north to their hometown of Bucyrus. Next week — part two — and how his life changed again.