Pluck, Luck & Skill

When the roof of a Fort Worth building began to cave in beneath his feet, the first thing Building Wrecker Walter J. Piper did was to throw away his crow bar. The act came within a quarter of an inch of taking his life. Sliding down a beam as the roof fell, Piper, 69, plummeted onto the 5-ft.-long, l-in.-thick tool, which had lodged point up in a pile of debris. The crowbar rammed through Piper's scrotum, smashed his pelvis, punctured his intestines, stomach, diaphragm and a lung before stopping within a quarter of an inch to the right of his heart.

What followed was a combination of pluck, luck and medical skill. When passers-by mistook Piper's pleading moans for the babblings of a wino and ignored him, he pulled the crowbar out himself, made a compress out of his soft worker's hat and summoned the strength to walk 100 ft. to a service station. An hour passed before he reached Fort Worth's St. Joseph's Hospital. There, by luck, a team of abdominal surgeons had just scrubbed up for an operation. Calling in a chest surgeon from nearby All Saints Hospital, they went to work on Piper. For over five hours, they followed the crowbar's path, repairing damaged organs as they discovered them through two incisions in the Building Wrecker's abdomen and chest. Last week Piper was home recuperating from his wounds and planning to go back to work. Said one doctor, reflecting on the slim chances for surviving such a wound: "He's a tough little Irishman, or he wouldn't be here."

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