Letter carrier delivers aid

Woman gets help for popular former GHS teacher, coach

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

By AMEE BOHRER

The Register-Mail

GALESBURG - A local postal worker on a bustling schedule decided the mail could wait Thursday when she spotted a fallen man in the snow in his driveway.

Traci Williams of Galva was under the pressure of the holiday mail rush about 11:30 a.m. last week when she glanced back and noticed a pair of feet in the driveway behind her. As a part-time flexible carrier, Williams was filling in on another letter carrier's route when she saw a man sprawled on the ground.

"I just squatted down and started talking to him," Williams said, after she asked if he had hit his head. When he responded, she ran into his home and called 911 to help Art Fish, 89, 1709 N. Prairie St.

According to National Weather Service meteorologist Lyle Barker in Lincoln, it would have been about 10 degrees at the time. The high Dec. 8 was just 12 degrees, and it snowed 3.6 inches. It was a day to be bundled up, and Fish had only a cap and trench coat on, since he simply planned to bring in his recycling bin.

Fish said he was helpless in the cold for about 30 minutes, at the end of the block where there is not much traffic.

"I was just lying there in the driveway, hoping somebody'd come and help me," Fish said. "I told her she could leave if she wanted, and she said, 'I'll stay here until they take good care of you.' And she did."

Waiting together for the paramedics to arrive, Fish told Williams about his career of 38 years as a physical education teacher and coach at Galesburg High School. He started the swimming and wrestling teams at GHS, and also coached football, basketball, track and cross-country, retiring in 1976.

They also talked of their families. Fish's daughter, Barbara Buch, was en route from Joliet to see him. Williams told Fish about her own daughter, 5-year-old Ashleigh.

He suspected his left leg was broken, as he could not move it. His cane had slipped on the ice.

"I crawled about 10 feet and then my leg just quit," Fish said. The ball of his left femur is broken and Fish's doctors told him he will need four to eight weeks to heal before he can be released. Sixteen months earlier, he had broken his right leg.

On Monday evening, Williams visited Fish in his room at Cottage Hospital for the second time, this time bringing her husband Mark and Ashleigh, as well.

"Have you ever seen a Fish?" the patient teased Ashleigh from his bed. "That's me."

Williams blushes when he thanks her for helping him.

"It made me feel good that I helped him," Williams said. "The adrenaline was flowing, I'll tell you."