I think there have been 3 GHG presidents in a coma. Smartphones with instant internet has changed the way we react to these trajedies.
When Charles Haskett was in a coma in September of 1995, few people knew of the awful tragedy and its impact, but especially not the details. Myself and another caver were with his parents when they were making the final call to pull the plug. He was my best friend at the time. I drive by that hospital every single day. Over three-thousand times, I have pictured that moment. It is still unsettling to me. His memory lives on now on the Texas Caver Memorial web-page. After the beautiful funeral, his elderly parents allegedly moved immediately to somewhere around the town of Palestine where they owned some peach trees. I do not know if any cavers ever contacted them again, or if they are still alive, etc. The boy in the treehouse that Charles fell out of, now has kids of his own and is a bartender at a club in Lake Charles. The boy was only about 10 when he bopped a 700 foot pit in the Sierra de Alvarez ( Toron ? ) The boy had so much caving experience and potential, but never went caving again after the treehouse accident. There is sort of a picture of the boy in the book "50 years of Texas Caving, but you would need a microscope to see it.". It was in a mosaic of photos on the NSS Convention Map Display. That display is presently in my garage and my wife wants me to throw it away. I hope to set it up again one more time, before getting rid of it. I have not un-rolled it in 15 years, so it is probably in poor condition. David Locklear
