Collisions and Innervisions
A little preview of Chapter 24 of the Rock N Roll Archaeology Podcast. Get all the episodes and more at rocknrollarchaeology.com
Charlie Shepherd drove his flatbed farm truck north on Interstate 85, approaching the little town of Salisbury, North Carolina. The old ’48 Dodge ran much smoother unloaded. Earlier that day, August 6th, 1973, Charlie had dropped off a load of Carolina Pine two towns over, in China Grove.
With the truck windows wide open, the swampy summer heat poured into the cab. Charlie’s shirt was stuck with sweat to the seat back.
The rain had finally stopped, that was the good news. The month prior, Rowan County experienced some of the heaviest rain on record and it lasted on into August. That morning, blue skies at last. Charlie seized the chance to get some work in.
Approaching the Klumac Road overpass–-now known as Jake Alexander Boulevard–off to the right he noticed the near-empty parking lot of Rowan Technical College. Summer vacation.
Then he heard that jarring noise, halfway between a thump and a crunch, that unmistakable sound of a vehicle collision. At the same instant, Charlie felt a powerful jolt from behind.
Time slowed to a crawl. Charlie realized — with mounting dread — that the truck was careening out of control. There was a sickening lurch, and Charlie’s truck flipped. It was a complete rollover. The old Dodge ended up back on its wheels, on the grassy right shoulder of the highway.
Charlie, just 23 at the time, was alive and conscious, but he was going in and out. His upper lip felt detached from his face, and he was already soaked in blood from multiple cuts to his face and body. Both ankles were broken.
It took a long painful time for help to arrive.
Trooper Don Moran of the North Carolina Highway Patrol was first on the scene. It was a highway rear-ender; Moran had seen plenty of those. Most likely the result of distraction or inattention.
A ’73 Mercury Monterey*–big four-door luxury sedan, a Hertz rental out of Greenville, South Carolina–had plowed into the back of Charlie Shepherd’s farm truck. The truck was on the shoulder, the car ended up on the median.**
Moran assessed the injuries. Two people hurt, one not too bad, the other would need immediate attention. He radioed for medical transport, then started taking measurements, talking to witnesses.
He learned that a third person had been injured, a passenger riding in the Mercury. Some friends following just a little behind had seen the accident and pulled over. They got the as-yet un-identified passenger out and took him to the local hospital.
All this before Moran had even rolled up in his police cruiser.
Trooper Moran frowned a moment, clicked his pen. Someone messing with the integrity of his accident scene, then leaving that scene…didn’t sit well with him. On the other hand, if that third guy really was hurt bad, well, that was the right thing to do…
He shook off the thought. Not my lookout, he reminded himself. Just write the report. The ambulance rolled up a few minutes later.
Charlie Shepherd was only dimly aware of his surroundings as he was lifted onto a gurney and transported to Rowan Memorial. Flat on his back in the emergency room, things started coming into focus a bit more.
There was somebody on a gurney next to him, somebody who was also badly hurt, alive but unconscious.
Charlie didn’t know who it was, and he would not find out that day.
He overheard some quiet but urgent conversation. Charlie couldn’t really make it out, but the ER staff started whisking the other patient away. The attending physician, Dr. Harold Newman, moved over to assist Charlie.
D.J. Whitfield, charge nurse at Rowan, would have preferred to be at Charlie’s bedside, assisting Dr. Newman. Instead, she was stuck at her desk, fielding phone calls, each one more frantic and insistent than the last. Reporters mostly, first from local outfits, then from the New York Times, the CBS Evening News, even the BBC. Now it was the singer Roberta Flack, now it was some lawyer, now some music business person.
D.J. hadn’t even seen the patient and didn’t know the extent of the injuries. Even if she did, no way, no how would she break doctor-patient confidentiality. So in her soft Carolina drawl, she sweetly and politely told each caller: if you’ll excuse me, I have a shift to run and could you please just go jump in a lake…? Bless your heart. Click.
And then the phone would ring. Again.
The patient in question wasn’t long for Rowan Memorial anyway. He was admitted and treated, but almost right away the ER staff decided to move him to North Carolina Baptist Hospital, in Winston-Salem, 40 miles away.
23 year old male, blind since infancy. Toxicology screen was negative for drugs and alcohol. Head trauma, serious by the looks of it. He needed to be seen by a neurologist, possibly a neurosurgeon. Nonresponsive, but vital signs were stable enough to move him. Dr. Newman decided. His small-town hospital didn’t have the necessary expertise.***
Before they transported the patient, “I had to sew him up,” Doc Newman told his family at dinner that night. By then it was international news. Later that same evening, at 9:05 pm, the patient was admitted to NC Baptist.
The next morning, back at Rowan Memorial, Charlie Shepherd finally heard the story, found out what happened out there on I-85.
“Who’s Stevie Wonder?” he asked.
- * A lot of accounts give the make and model of the car as a ’73 Mercury Cruiser. Lincoln Mercury didn’t make a model called the Cruiser. A good look at the photo from the local paper, and a couple visits to car-collector websites, and we figured out it was a Monarch.
- **There’s some mythmaking around this. We suspect it mostly comes from Stevie Wonder’s management — and some of his friends, and his mom, Lula Hardaway. The one apocryphal piece of the story that keeps showing up (even in Wikipedia!) goes like this: A log fell off the back of a lumber truck and blasted through the windshield, striking Stevie in the forehead. Not what happened. It was a simple rear-ender, albeit a pretty bad one. No flying log. That’s confirmed by the NCHP’s accident report and contemporaneous accounts in the local paper.
- ***The legend has it that Stevie Wonder hovered near death in a coma for four days. Medically it was serious, we don’t want to suggest otherwise. Stevie suffered a major concussion, but there was no skull fracture, no neurosurgery to relieve pressure from a brain bleed. He was somewhat responsive the following day, was able to take food and speak the day after that.
Robert Christgau: Stevie Wonder Is a Masterpiece
Robert Christgau: CG: Stevie Wonder
The day the music almost died: Stevie Wonder survived horrible crash in Salisbury
Some reports changed, greatly exaggerated details of the crash — Salisbury Post
