[/url]ASHEVILLE, N.C. (June 7) -- Richard Butler wanted his girlfriend to think they were just taking a scenic hike in the North Carolina mountains, but he had a secret plan. When they got to the top, he planned to pull out a ring and ask her to be his bride.
Lightning struck three times as the Knoxville, Tenn., couple were on Max Patch Bald, near Asheville. The third hit Butler, 30, and his girlfriend, Bethany Lott, 25, killing her on Friday, he told the Asheville Citizen Times. He suffered third degree burns.
"She didn't say anything, and I turned around and she was laying a few feet away, and I crawled to her," he told the newspaper on Monday. "I did CPR for probably 15 minutes and the whole time was trying her cell phone, but I couldn't get anything out."
He described the lightning strike.
"I was spun 180 degrees and thrown several feet back," he told the newspaper. "My legs turned to Jello, my shoes were smoking and the bottom of my feet felt like they were on fire."
His mother, Janet Delaney, said her future daughter-in-law loved the mountains.
"She hiked thousands of miles and spent a couple of years in Utah just hiking," Delaney, also of Knoxville, told The Associated Press.
She and her son are mourning instead of celebrating the joy the engagement would have brought.
"The first couple of times I met her, I felt she was my own daughter," Delaney said. "She made my life complete and my son's life complete."
Heavy rain let up as the two walked toward the bald, but more bad weather returned including the lightning, Butler said.
"Her last words were, 'Look at how beautiful it is,'" Delaney said.
Butler turned around to see his fiancee lying on the hill.
Unable to carry her down the hill, Butler drove to the first home he found. A father and his son, who was home on leave from the Navy, jumped in Butler's truck and raced back to the bald.
"They stood on the top of the hill doing what they could for probably 20 minutes until the rescuers got there," Butler said.
After rescuers arrived, they tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate Lott. Services for her will be this week in New Tazewell, Tenn.
Butler suffered third-degree burns, but Delaney said he hasn't been to a doctor despite her urging him to go. She said his emotions seem to be in good shape.
"He's holding up better than I thought he would," Delaney said tearfully, adding, "He's going to try to go on."
Perhaps These Two Were Not Meant to Be
Moderator: Priests of Syrinx
Perhaps These Two Were Not Meant to Be
More bad luck with lightning
PROVIDENCE ?? The three refugee families living on Waverly Street had endured all manner of disasters before they arrived in America.
They fled war, border conflicts, political terror and massacres. Three adults were forced to porter for the Burmese Army. One man had fled Eritrea, married his wife in a refugee camp, only to watch her die of anemia. He arrived here on April 8 with his six children.
On Saturday morning, a lightning bolt threw the fragile lives they had begun to rebuild here into chaos once again.
?Somebody, a neighbor knocked on the door, [yelling] ?Fire! Fire! Come out!? ? said Lue Lu. ?Upstairs, your house is on fire!?
The lightning struck a satellite dish during a violent thunderstorm and started a fire in the attic. One neighbor saw lightning strike the dish twice, according to a Fire Department report. The fire was confined to the loft of the wood-framed house.
Lu and her husband, Men Tu, who arrived from Burma last October, grabbed their passports, Social Security cards and other crucial documents and threw them into the International Organization for Migration bags they?d carried to the United States.
Then they grabbed their three children, all of whom were born in a Thai refugee camp, and ran.
?I?m very nervous. We ran outside. I?m shaking,? said Leu Lu, through an interpreter.
?Our eardrums, it is very loud,? said her husband, Men Tu, a former rice farmer. ?Powww!? he said, with his hands over his ears.
Of the 21 people, including infants, toddlers, children and adults, who lived at the three-story building at 190 Waverly St., 15 were believed to have been at home when the fire broke out.
Three sisters from the African country of Equatorial Guinea did not answer when firefighters knocked on their second-floor apartment, possibly because of fright and/or a language barrier, said Catherine Kelly of the International Institute of Rhode Island, the agency that resettled the families.
No one was injured, but all are homeless. Many of their belongings, nearly all donated, were ruined or damaged by water.
The American Red Cross has put two of the families at a Best Western hotel; the sisters from Equatorial Guinea, and their children, who arrived in the last year, are sharing crowded quarters with other family members.
?We?re going back to square one,? said Kelly. ?The challenge is, we had large apartments, a very good price ? We?re looking for options. We?re trying to get them back on course.?
Some of the adults are already working, and their children are attending school. The adults are studying English and going through job training at the International Institute.
HASSAN TUBA, 50, was on the third floor when the fire broke out. His 4-year-old daughter and five stepchildren ? ages 6, 7, 10, 16 and 18 ? were at their aunt?s home.
Tuba?s journey to the U.S. followed 10 years in Shimelba Refugee Camp in Ethiopia, home to some 14,000 refugees. Tuba fled there from Eritrea, an African nation rife with religious persecution, and that currently exists largely in a news blackout.
Sitting in a common room at the International Institute, Tu told his story in halting English, a language he is trying to master.
He said it was ?hard to hide from the soldiers. Very dangerous.? If they caught you, ?they kill you.?
In 2005, he married his wife, Himanot Umu, who had five children. Together, they had a child, Graciella, who is 4.
Umu died almost exactly a year ago at the camp, while awaiting resettlement in the United States. Her death certificate says she died of anemia, a condition ?that was likely treatable,? under better circumstances, Kelly said. She was 31.
Tuba said when he realized the house was on fire, ?I was very afraid.?
?I have the children,? he said. Without him, he added, how would they survive?