What was once a two-hour drive to Johnson City, Tennessee, turned into a seven-hour drive and five-hour trek for David Jones. This man made the impossible happen as he was determined to reach the city to walk her daughter down the aisle.
Starting his journey at his home in Boiling Springs, South Carolina, Jones eventually crossed state lines at 2 a.m. He spent seven hours sitting behind the wheel. Unfortunately, the interstate was shut down due to Hurricane Helene. However, that wouldn't stop Jones from attending her daughter's wedding.
"I went up to the incident commander and I said, 'Sir, I need to get to Johnson City.' 'Well, I'm sorry. You can't. The bridges are out. Nobody can get through,'" said Jones to News Channel 11.
Nothing was going to stop Jones. He then decided to walk approximately 30 miles to the place where the wedding was going to be celebrated. He encountered unimaginable amounts of debris and he only had his cell phone light to guide him.
"It just... it's awful," Jones said. "And I can tell you a lot about the mud and the debris fields where I have to climb six, seven-foot-tall piles of debris of old fences and huge trees and it was just a tangled mess and dead-end roads and all kinds of things."
At one moment, he was trapped while an operator was clearing the road with a backhoe. "I was up to my knees in mud and couldn't move," Jones said. "And he doesn't see me. Of course, his cab is facing the other way." Fortunately, he was able to free himself eventually, but he did have to duck whenever the operator swung the backhoe.
A Wedding To Remember
He made it all the way back to Interstate 26 after crossing a river and a town. He used a reflective stake to avoid getting hit by cars. Luckily, he encountered a friendly motorist who Jones happened to know. He drove him to the wedding venue.
Her daughter, Elizabeth, welcomed his father, not knowing the journey he had been through to get there. She found out at the reception. "That's so emotionally moving [to know] that my dad loves me that much, that he'll come and go through all of that to get to my wedding and be there on time," said Elizabeth.
Jones presented Elizabeth and her husband with his reflective stake. "I brought the reflector to the reception, and I presented it to Elizabeth, my daughter, and Daniel just for them to remember, to be a protector and a good reflection of each other and a reflection of God," Jones said.
While David Jones insists he is no hero, Elizabeth considers him to be one. "I woke up at 4:30 a.m. this morning just wide awake, just spent that whole morning praising God that my dad made it and that my dad's alive," she said.
