The Will to Live

Nine days had passed since the Ford sedan carrying James Hixon Jr., 22, of Salt Lake City and his fiancee Jean Margetts of Sunnyvale, Calif, had disappeared. Then, at dusk, a searching airplane pilot spotted the wreckage at the foot of a 300-ft. embankment in Parley's Canyon, just off heavily traveled U.S. 40, in the Wasatch Mountains, east of Salt Lake. Highway patrolmen clambered down to remove the bodies. Hixon lay dead, 20-ft. from the car. Jean Margetts was pinned beneath the car and a log. As Superintendent Lyle Hyatt lifted the log, she gave a low cry. Though chilled by the night air, the body was warm. Jean gave another weak cry and mumbled that she was cold. Hyatt wrapped her in a blanket, rushed her to the hospital. Despite her bruises, emaciation, shock and exposure, doctors said she would live.

Laymen marveled that Jean Margetts had survived nine days without water. The medical explanation: she had been unconscious most of the time, and her metabolism had slowed down drastically. With her breathing volume reduced proportionately, she had lost little water in the form of vapor from her lungs. She had been incredibly fortunate in falling beneath the shade of both the body of the car and heavy oak scrub, and thundershowers conserved her body's water supply by cooling it and checking perspiration.

How long a human being can survive without water varies so much with conditions that doctors recognize no records. In Death Valley, with a hot, drying wind and no shade, survival might well be less than 48- hours. Jean Margetts' case, record or no, was a striking example of the human organism's innate will to live.

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