A Bad Wreck

Terry Wallis and his friend Chubb Moore were driving their pickup truck in the Ozarks during the early morning of July 13, 1984. There had been drinking and there was a crash. No one knows who was at the wheel, but as Terry's mother Angilee Wallis told us, it was a bad wreck, “one of the boys was thrown from the car and the other was hanging out the window.” They were taken to Harrison Hospital and then medevaced to St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Missouri.

During the four-hour car ride to Springfield, Angilee did not know if when she arrived she would find her son alive, “… they just told us that they were really sick boys and they didn't know if they'd be alive when we got there or not. And they did tell us … that he had a head injury, but at the time they had Terry and Chubb confused … they didn't have wallets on them or I don't know exactly what it was.”

Angilee took it that Terry was doing better than Chubb and that Terry's friend was the one with the head injury. She recalls, “… on the way to Springfield I was sitting in the back seat with Chubb's mother and I thought, I couldn't imagine Terry laying even in bed, I couldn't imagine him even being in the hospital because he was always huntin’, and fishin’, and mechanicin’, just an outdoor person. And I was feeling really bad for Chubb's mother because they were talking about how bad he was … I was feeling, actually feeling guilty because I was so happy Terry wasn't hurt as bad as Chubb was. Even though they said both of them was hurt really bad.”

When the families arrived at the hospital it soon became apparent that the boys had been mixed up. Terry was more grievously injured. Angilee was not angered by the error, she was grateful that Terry was still alive, but not yet registering the significance of his having sustained a brain injury.