At the men’s support group, which was held in the hotel’s conference center on a Thursday afternoon, survivors went around the room introducing themselves and describing their injuries. About 100 of them gathered recently at the Music Road Hotel in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., not far from Dollywood, for the 15 th annual international conference of lightning-strike and electric-shock survivors. Four in five survivors are men (who are more likely to work outside and play golf). Nobody keeps accurate records of the number of lightning injuries, but estimates range from 200 to 1,000 annually. On average, 67 Americans are reported killed by lightning each year. LeDoux rolls up his sleeve to show off a tattoo of a man getting struck by lightning engraved on his left bicep. But that doesn’t mean it’s easily forgotten. The most improbable of his many accidents is the one that left the least visible evidence-just a few white splotches on his arms and a discoloration near his hairline. The long knife wound on his hand? “Things happen,” he says.
The scar on his left arm is proof that he accidentally screwed his flesh to the wall. The ugly black mark on his finger is evidence that he once air-nailed it to a floorboard. (His wife, Bee, brandishes a photo album that documents the mauling before he’s done telling the story.) The Purple Heart on his Navy Seals sniper hat testifies to the three bullets he took in Vietnam. The stone claw hanging from his neck attests to his grisly encounter with a bear’s jaw at a roadside park in August 1990.
Jerry LeDoux is a guy you don’t really want to interview, because interviewing him means having to be near him, and that’s like planting yourself by a dartboard.
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