B00ADOAFYO EBOK by Leesa Culp, Gregg Drinnan, Bob Wilkie Read Free Book Online Page B

Costello didn’t have the heart to pass along something so trifling as car keys to Kari at that particular time. So he gave the keys to a member of the coaching staff, who later gave them to her.)
    A few minutes after the Krugers arrived at the hospital, assistant coach Lorne Frey, who was Louise’s brother, entered the waiting room and immediately told them that four players — including their son Scott — were dead.
    When Wilkie and Soberlak first arrived at the hospital, they knew only that Mantyka had been killed. They knew that only because they had watched helplessly as their teammate had died, the weight of the bus crushing the life out of him.
    “I’m not sure who eventually told me about the other three,” Wilkie says. “At the hospital, I continued to fade in and out of consciousness, and to this day I am unable to recall who told me.”
    Later that night, Wilkie was moved into a room with Kurt Lackten, a forward from Kamsack, Saskatchewan, who was the Broncos’ captain. According to Wilkie, they lay in their beds and talked … and talked … and talked.
    “We talked about what had happened — what we knew, who had survived, and who hadn’t,” Wilkie remembers. “It was all very, very sad, and the weight of it was oftentimes more than we could bear. There were tears and more tears.”
    Lackten had been one of the last players to leave the accident site for the hospital. He had spent a lot of time trying to help people in and around the crashed bus. He emerged from the accident with cuts and bruises, as did everyone else, and was later found to have some cracked ribs.
    “Kurt truly had shown a strong compassionate side to his personality by forgetting about himself and his injuries,” Wilkie says. “In my eyes, he had done what heroes do.”
    Lackten, now a Honolulu-based commercial pilot with Hawaiian Airlines, doesn’t see himself as a hero. He was the team captain — “I think it was a team vote,” he says. Asked if he was always seen as a leader, Lackten pauses before saying, “I guess everybody likes to think so.”
    For his part, he says he has no recollection of helping people get off the bus or providing aid to them once they were outside. Over the years, he has tried to remember, he says, but there just isn’t anything there.
    “I really can’t say,” he says, when asked about his role post-accident. “I really don’t remember helping people out.”
    He knows that, like everyone else, he exited the bus through what used to be the windshield. After that, well, “I don’t really remember a whole bunch.”
    Lackten assumes that he can’t remember because of shock, but admits that he has nothing other than personal experience on which to base that. However, he does remember his injuries, especially a four-inch gash on the back of his head. It was that gash, more than anything else, that led to his bloodied appearance.
    “I remember the doctor was an old-time doctor,” Lackten says with a chuckle. “I can’t remember his name. He was an old-timer. I remember it being really busy and crazy there.
    “I’d had tons of stitches before. Even after a game or during a game, they kind of take their time. This guy didn’t take his time. He just did it as quick as he could and he moved on. I remember that. I remember thinking, That was kind of weird .”
    It could be that Lackten remembers that episode because it left him with a souvenir of the accident.
    “I don’t have much hair any more and I cut it real close,” he explains. “You can see that scar — it’s a real butcher job. It’s like he folded it over. But that’s all right. It’s no big deal.”
    He knows that he also was left with a couple of cracked ribs, but has no recollection of being taken for X-rays. He knows that when he got to the hospital, “a couple of guys were helping me and right by the door I collapsed. I think that is when I started feeling things.”
    He can’t recall any conversations he may have