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| "Life's only handicaps are the ones we put on ourselves." |
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| About Bob Mortimer |
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It's a God Thing — Pictures and Portraits of God's Grace
An excerpt from the book by Luis Palau
Bob Mortimer's freewheeling life changed forever when he lost three of his limbs as the result of an accident one night. His story — one of turning tragedy into triumph — is a message of hope for individuals and families being ravaged by the affects of alcohol and drug use.
Choosing a Different Road
They call it the "Green Chain" at the Aloha Cedar Products sawmill outside Hoquiam, Washington. For five days a week, eight hours a day, Bob Mortimer pulled freshly sawn 2 by 4 boards and 6 by 6 beams off the roller belt and stacked them for shipment.
At twenty-one years old, Bob didn't mind the physically demanding work. It fit well with the blue-collar lifestyle of drinking Rainier longnecks and getting stoned with his buddies after quitting time.
Bob was sixteen when he tried to wake up his father in their single-wide trailer home — and couldn't. He had died from a drug overdose, and when the family moved to the Pacific Northwest to start over, Bob found himself drinking and doping with a new group of friends.
Struck a Power Pole
Some of those friends worked at the sawmill and, after partying one night in Olympia, Bob and his brother, Tom, started the drive back home to Hoquiam, fifty miles away. Tom took a curve wrong, overcorrected, and struck a power pole before sliding down an embankment.
The brothers were lucky this time; they emerged from the car unscathed.
"You okay?" Tom asked.
"Believe so," said Bob, stepping out of the car. "Where's the road?"
"Dunno."
"Did we hit a tree?"
"I don't know what we hit," Tom said.
Bob saw a path to the highway through the knocked-down brush.
When he climbed the embankment and reached to road, Bob didn't realize that waiting for him were five downed power lines. In the darkness his left arm touched a line, causing 12,500 volts of electricity to surge through his body. He fell to his knees, which grounded him. The electric charge, looking for somewhere to go, exploded out of his knees. He fell forward across the other wires, which burned the front of his body.
Next — Bob Wasn't Moving 
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