This is an unbelievable story of the frozen ordeal (Jean Hilliards) that has a happy ending. Almost a tragedy turned into a Christmas of thanksgiving for her. Jean Hilliards, center, survived six hours in the snow despite showing almost no signs of life. Jean Hilliard was involved in a car accident in the bitter cold. She was driving two miles to her friend’s house when she went over, only fifteen feet from the scene.
Jean Hilliard’s shallow deaths eased out two or three to a minute. Her heart beat faintly eight times a minute. Upon first sight that frigid morning of December, everyone’s first impression of Jean Hilliards was the same: She is dead. The 19-year-old Lengby, Minn., woman had more than a brush with death; she had a collision. But now she rests comfortably at Fosston Municipal Hospital. The near-fatal run-in with the moments turned into a very special Christmas for the Hilliards, realizing how lucky we are.”
She was found six hours after being left outside in temperatures as low as -22 °F. When she arrived at the hospital, medical staff discovered that her skin was too frozen for a hypodermic needle to be inserted and that her pulse rate was an extremely low 12 beats per minute.
Jean Hilliards was placed under an electric blanket to try and warm her body gradually. Her vital signs began to stabilize as her body temperature rose, and she regained consciousness that same day. She miraculously recovered from a 49-day hospital stay.
Jean Hilliards was driving home from visiting a friend when the family car skidded on ice and became trapped in a snowbank. She sought shelter from the 22 below-zero temperatures. She left her hat behind, even though she was wearing mittens and a winter coat, because she could see a farmhouse not far away, but neither it nor the second farm had any occupants.
She headed for Wally Nelson’s home, two miles from the marooned car. She didn’t make it. She collapsed and lay in the snow for six hours. Nelson discovered her at 7 a.m. while on his route to his job at the Fosston Locker Plant. How shocking it was, and she was barely fifteen feet from my door when she was found dead. Her face was ghost-like, and her body was stiff as a pulp tick. I initially figured she had expired, but then I thought I heard a slight moan. I rushed her to the hospital.”
Jean Hilliards slid into the back seat. None of her joints would bend. Nelson noted her persistence. You could see where she had crawled the last few feet before collapsing. You could also see where she had fallen three or four times from the mailbox, one-eighth of a mile down the road.”
Dr. George Sather was called to the hospital. “I thought she was dead,” he said. “But then we picked up an extremely faint whimper. We knew a person existed there then.” But the survival chances were deemed slim. Her feet were frozen in the shape of her boots, and her pupils and eyeballs were frozen solid. The temperature was below 88 degrees, more than 10 degrees below normal, and her temperature did not even register on the thermometer.
Her mother, Bernice, and father, Lester, are extremely happy to see their daughter alive. Further, this was a newspaper story concerning the ordeal that Jean Hilliard went through after having been marooned in the open country after having had car trouble. The picture is a follow-up that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Grand Forks Herald.
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