Meadow Heights coach runs into bizarre string of incidents

If a basketball coach ever needed a stunt double, it's Meadow Heights boys coach Tom Brown.

Brown, who is in his ninth year of leading the Panthers program, is fine along the sidelines.

It's away from the court that a double might come in handy.

Over the past month, Brown has encountered a series of events that range from harrowing to almost comical. It's been enough to make the upbeat coach both count his blessings and laugh at the absurdity. And enough to make even Wile E. Coyote wince.

The strange occurrences have ranged from an interstate automobile accident that included him falling approximately 100 feet off a bridge, an ATV accident that involved a dead deer and a trip to a taxidermist that involved a live deer.

Meadow Heights coach Tom Brown talks to his team Friday night during the championship game of the Woodland Tournament in Marble Hill, Mo. Brown has led the Panthers to a 3-1 record after escaping serious injury in a series of accidents during the preseason. (LAURA SIMON)

It's been a pinball ride between fortune and misfortune, somewhat like last week, when Brown led Meadow Heights to the championship game of the Woodland Tournament for the fifth time in eight years, only to come away as the runner-up for the fifth time.

"I feel lucky. I do," Brown said. "Some people said, 'You're the unluckiest person I know.' And I said, 'Well, I don't really think I'm unlucky. If I had been unlucky, there would have been no water down there [off the bridge] and I would have been hurt more severe.'

"But I do feel lucky. And each day I feel is more precious."

Accident at an accident

Brown was returning from St. Louis after driving his daughter to Lambert Field to catch a 6 a.m. flight Nov. 16. His daughter, Susanne Dartt, had come in to visit Brown's stepfather, who has been in poor health in a Dexter, Mo., nursing home.

Brown is visited by his son Thomas at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Brown fell approximately 100 feet into a creek near Herculaneum, Mo., after a car accident on Interstate 55. (Submitted photo)

Brown's stepfather, Frank Minton, had suffered a stroke exactly two months earlier. Brown knows the date well because while he was standing in a Cape Girardeau hospital, he received a call that his son, who was headed for the hospital, had been in an accident when another driver ran a stop sign. His son, Joseph, who had to be escorted to a hospital with minor injuries, had been driving a Grand Prix, the same make of car that Brown was driving on Interstate 55 after dropping off his daughter. He had borrowed the car from his sister.

It was dark and raining heavily as Brown approached Herculaneum, Mo., at about 5:30 a.m. That's when events turned wild.

The car in front of Brown began to fishtail, so Brown tapped his brakes, only to find his own car begin to fishtail in the passing lane. He then lost control. And as he remembers, his car began traveling backwards. And then from what he was told later, his car banged the inside guard rail, spun across the highway, caromed off the other guard rail and came back across and hit the passing lane rail again, where it came to rest. In the darkness of the morning, Brown sat in his car facing northbound.

His airbag had deployed and Brown exited his car through the passenger door.

But the incident was far from over. The headlights of a truck were bearing down on his car.

"I seen it getting closer. It wasn't going to get in the other lane," Brown said. "I stepped over what I thought was a guard rail -- it was a concrete barrier -- and there was nothing there. I fell a hundred feet into the water."

Brown said he had no choice but to get out of the way.

"It was fixing to make contact when I went over the side," Brown said. "I did not want to die. If it would of hit me, it would of killed me because it pushed my car from the middle of the bridge all the way off to the shoulder."

Unaware that he was on a bridge, Brown plummeted into Joachim Creek.

"It was scary because I didn't know where I was falling or when I was going to hit," Brown said.

Brown said he landed on his left side with a violent impact. He floundered as he tried to swim upstream to the bridge without success.

"I went under," Brown said. "I can remember like it was a minute ago. I said, 'I'm not going to drown. I don't want to die that way.' And I came back up."

His youngest brother had died in a November head-on accident three years earlier. And his family was dealing with that tragic anniversary and other health issues.

"I knew if I would have drowned, my mom, she is an older lady and in bad shape, and my dad is in a nursing home in bad, bad shape ... My family, I don't think they could of handled another situation," he said.

He recalled a survival lesson and began to swim diagonally downstream.

He pulled himself to the bank and yelled for help, but he had gone too far downstream to be heard.

"What scared me is I didn't see any flashlights looking down at me while I was laying there," Brown said. "I laid there for a little while because I was hurting."

When no help arrived, he climbed the steep embankment to find others involved in the accident at the top along with a police officer.

"They seen me go over [the rail], but they didn't know if I was ever coming up because nobody could see." Brown said of people on the scene. "It was 100 feet down and it was dark. They were glad to see me come up. They thought I was dead."

He was taken by ambulance to Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Crystal City, Mo., with initial concerns of hypothermia and shock. That afternoon he was transferred to the trauma facility at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

Brown was the only person hurt in the accident, and he said his injuries were relatively mild. He could not hear out of his left ear due to the impact, he fractured a rib, had a lacerated spleen, a bruised hip and a cut on his knuckle. He spent Monday night in the hospital.

"The next day they came in and checked me over and said, 'You know, there's hardly nothing wrong with you,'" Brown said.

Brown checked out of the hospital that day, Tuesday, took care of personal business related to the accident Wednesday and returned to school and his coaching duties Thursday.

Deer hunt mishap

He felt well enough to go deer hunting the following Sunday in Bollinger County.

"I love to hunt," Brown said. "That's what I look forward to every year besides basketball."

His excursion bagged mixed fortune.

Suffering from dizziness from the accident, which continues to this day, Brown was unable to hunt from a tree stand. But that didn't keep him from shooting a nine-point buck.

"It was the biggest one I've ever shot," he said. "I was as happy as heck."

Brown returned to camp with the news of his kill, and his brother gave him his ATV to drag the deer back.

Not wanting to mess up his trophy, Brown used a hoist to load the deer onto the back of the vehicle. With the deer secured and proudly in tow, all was going smoothly when Brown drove down one side of a ditch. On the way up the other side, the vehicle, with the deer on the back, flipped backward onto Brown.

He found himself with the vehicle on top of him, and the deer's antlers pressed against his right side.

"The one thing I thought was, 'Gee, here I fell off a 100-foot bridge and now I'm going to have a dead dear kill me," Brown said with a laugh. "Actually, the deer cushioned my fall when the four-wheeler fell back on me."

Brown managed to extricate himself from the situation, crawling out from under the vehicle and then turning it back over.

Revenge of the deer

However, he apparently was unable to extricate himself from the ire of the deer's relatives.

Brown took his largest kill to the taxidermist the next evening.

He was returning home on Highway 67 around 7 p.m., when he spotted a large buck standing in the road ahead. The buck wandered off to the left side of the highway as Brown's car approached.

"I'm not joking, I was about 25 feet away and that deer just turned, he was facing the other way, and he turned and ran as hard as he could right at the door of my vehicle at an angle," Brown said. "It looked like he was going to come through the window."

Brown said he slammed on his brakes, and the deer hit the front end of his Suburban, tore open the front fender well, hit the door and then ambled off into the woods.

The motorist behind Brown got out of his vehicle to check on Brown, who was fine but a little shook.

"I think he knew I killed Uncle Joe and he was just getting his revenge," Brown said with a laugh. "But it was scary."

A lucky man

Brown mixes in some laughs when relating the absurd mishaps, but unlike his deer, he knows he's dodged some bullets.

He's heard it from a Herculaneum policeman, who told him the bridge he stepped off had been the site of several suicide leaps.

"He said three people went off that bridge and nobody lived," Brown said. "I was the first one he's ever known of living. He said it was a miracle because where I hit was flooded, and usually there is a foot of water there.

"He said there was six or seven feet."

The officer told him it was ideal that he fell on his side.

"If I had fell standing up or headfirst, I would have broke my legs or my neck. He said there was a 12-foot area where I could have hit. There were those big, giant white rocks on the sides.

"I was just lucky. God parked my car in a good parking spot."

He's heard it from a science teacher at his school, who estimated Brown fell for 2.85 seconds.

"He told me that when you're traveling that far, that that's just like hitting concrete at that distance," Brown said.

And there were the doctors.

"The doctors said it was unbelievable that you're not crippled or anything," he said.

Brown is Catholic, and the mishap only reinforced his faith.

"I've always believed that God helps people and takes care of people," he said. "We don't always know why things happen to us, but I always believe there is a reason for everything. I've always believed that in my life."

Brown coaches all of Meadow Heights' basketball teams, from third grade through varsity -- eight teams in all.

"I try to do my best with the kids," Brown said. "And I think that had a little bit to do with it. I think God knows that I take care of the kids. I think that would have been hard on our community. It might not of been, but I really do, because they were really glad to see me."