Family lauded as heroes

I f they had hesitated, he would have died.

Lisa Wingate is embraced by Dr. Stephen Cauley and his family. Staff That’s what a Statesboro optometrist says about three Burke County motorists who are being hailed as heroes.

Brian and Lisa Wingate and her mother Brenda Drews were all honored at the Burke County Court House last Friday, more than 10 months after they pulled the unconscious doctor from his burning truck.

“Normally when we’re here, unfortunately, it is to recognize people for their bad choices and bad actions,” Sheriff Greg Coursey said to a courtroom filled with state officials, deputies, troopers and friends and family of the man who might otherwise have died. “But today, we’re here to do just the opposite.”

It was March 21, and Dr. Stephen Cauley had been in Augusta all day with his wife who was being treated for leukemia. He’d begun feeling ill and decided to head home. But what he mistook for influenza turned out to be a perforated colon, and he would black out in the driver’s seat just past Munnerlyn.

Dr. Stephen Cauley with Lisa and Brian Wingate and Brenda Drews. Several miles south, the Wingates and Mrs. Drew were making their way home from a somber day in Pembroke. It had been a hard day and a hard month. Three weeks earlier, Lisa’s brother was electrocuted in a freak accident while repairing gutters at a local church. This day they’d spent at a memorial service for their pastor’s grandchild.

It was almost dark when they saw the smoke, then the twisted metal that had been Dr. Cauley’s truck, smashed into a tree.

The front end had begun to blaze, and the flames were licking closer and closer to Dr. Cauley, who was still unconscious and slumped behind the wheel.

Others at the wreck scene backed away, fearing the whole truck was about to explode. They yelled for the Wingates to back off too, but neither they nor Mrs. Drews, a retired law enforcement officer, would budge.

“It wasn’t something we stopped and thought about,” Brian said. “We just knew we had to get him out.”

Finding the doors locked, they picked up sticks and tried to break out the windows.

“We were going to get him out if we had to pull the entire truck away,” Lisa said.

Finally, Brian found the drive shaft that had been wrenched from the undercarriage during the wreck, and used it to shatter the glass.

As they dragged Dr. Cauley away, flames engulfed the truck in a series of explosions that left little more than a burned hull.

When the EMTs took over, Lisa thought about her brother and how one second, one choice, can change everything.

“When we lost my brother, we lost a big life,” she explained. “Being able to help someone else ... well, we gained a little bit of that back.”

Dr. Cauley woke up in the ICU with multiple fractures but no recollection of the wreck. Throughout his slow recovery, he would often think of the people he later learned had risked their lives for his. Little did he know, his close friend Tom Armstrong was behind the scenes arranging for their first meeting.

With the help of Sheriff Coursey, Ellis Wood, Vice- Chairman of the Georgia Board of Public Safety, and Col. Bill Hitchins of the Georgia State Patrol, it turned out to be much more.

“It was all I could do to keep from crying,” Lisa said after Wood read a proclamation in their honor and Col. Hitchins made them all honorary troopers. “I was overwhelmed at the outpouring of people there.”

From the front row, Dr. Cauley rose in ovation with the rest of the courtroom then summed up his thanks in a simple statement. “I think God had a hand in this,” he said. “I wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for them.”

The Wingates and Mrs. Drews refuse to think of themselves as heroes, insisting, instead, that they did what any other person would have.

Others would disagree. “There are angels amongst us,” Superior Court Judge James G. Blanchard Jr. said from his bench where he presided over the whole affair. “After hearing what I’ve heard, I don’t know how you could deny the presence of the Almighty in the courtroom or anywhere else.”