Photos by Kohl Threlkeld, audio and editing by Matt Fields-Johnson

Story by Kohl Threlkeld

William Rummage watched the trees in his yard being snapped like toothpicks through the window of his Owensboro home last Wednesday. He thought that as long as he could keep his ailing mother downstairs and safe, everything would be fine. Then the power went out, along with the heat. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the crashing trees that were potentially deadly— it was also the cold. Lucile Rummage is 84 years old and bedridden. William Rummage, a Western alumnus and former assistant professor, lives with and cares for Lucile Rummage.

William Rummage gently carried his mother upstairs to her bed because she was unable to walk on her own. He piled blankets on her, hoping the power would only be out for a short time.“Every time I pick up my mother its like picking up fine china,” William Rummage said. “It could be death if she drops.”

He scrambled to get a fire going, fearing that his mother would catch pneumonia.  “She’s coughing every other breath and I’m thinking, ‘Man, she’s going to die unless I get her out of here and into some warmth,’” William Rummage said.

On Thursday at 4 a.m. he woke her up to take Lucile for a scheduled bathroom visit. He left her alone to go upstairs and returned a few moments later to find his mother lying on the ground. He called an ambulance because he feared she was injured and he did not have a reliable car. The scene at the hospital was chaotic, and there were no empty beds for his mother.  Lucile Rummage had a possible cracked vertebrae and possible pneumonia. She was sent home with a neck brace and medications.

William Rummage worried that his mother wouldn’t make it long in a cold house and feared the drive home. “It was like going to jail,” he said.
But as the ambulance pulled onto his street, the driver noticed a light on in a window of the Rummages’ home.

William Rummage decided it must be a candle he left burning because all the other houses were dark. However, as they approached the house it became clear that the power had been restored.
“It was almost as if the hospital had the house turned back on, and they knew it and I didn’t,” Rummage said. “It was like a miracle.”