Lineman back on job

Changing a damaged utility pole usually is routine for EPB's electric linemen.

But on May 4, the task was almost deadly for David Murray.

"It really teaches you to never take a day for granted," said Mr. Murray, speaking nearly six months after he fell 30 feet from a truck-mounted bucket, landing on his head and injuring his brain.

Mr. Murray, 37, is fuzzy about what happened that day on Vincent Road at Harrison Bay. He remembers the moments just before he fell, but he doesn't remember the accident itself.

"I remember laughing (just before the accident), and that's about it," Mr. Murray said. His next clear memory is in the hospital.

"I woke up in the hospital, and my wife was standing there. She said, 'You've been in a terrible accident.'"

During safety investigations afterward, EPB officials determined that a telephone cable Mr. Murray was trying to unfasten popped loose and struck him while he was walking on a platform outside his bucket.

He fell "like a sack of potatoes, straight on his head" to the paved road, said Wendell Boring, EPB assistant vice president of construction and management.

Mr. Murray's skull was shattered.

"They had to put in 13 steel plates. I broke two vertebrae, I broke every bone in my face except my nose," he said.

Almost immediately, Mr. Murray defied doctors' expectations, his wife Tammy said.

"They told me not to expect him to wake up for a couple days," she said. "But when I walked in -- not expecting any response -- he woke up to the sound of my voice."

Mr. Murray spent two months at the Shepherd Center, a brain injury rehabilitation program in Atlanta, and received more treatment at Shepherd's outpatient Pathways program. EPB paid his medical bills.

Now he's blind in his right eye and he can't smell or taste. Sometimes he can't remember names, faces or other details from the past, but his first priority after being cleared by doctors was to get back to repairing EPB's power lines.

But even though Mr. Murray was sure he wanted to go back to his old job, everyone else needed convincing -- his wife, his doctors and his bosses.

"The most impressive thing through it all was David's attitude," Mr. Boring said. "David's doctors told him he was never going to be a lineman again, but he went out and proved them wrong."

EPB construction manager Houston Thomas said Mr. Murray had to take a refresher test his first day back at work.

"We didn't want there to be any doubt about it. We wouldn't put someone back in a bucket truck if we didn't think it was safe," Mr. Thomas said.

Mr. Murray thinks luck and God were on his side.

"There were people at the Shepherd Center who fell off a porch and weren't ever going to walk again," he said. "I just had the good Lord on my side."

"There were so many churches that had prayer lines going," his wife added. "I know that God gave me the strength to get through it, and that God gave David the strength to do what he did."