Breaking a leg

[Dave Taylor]

Yesterday, before I went to the opening of the Port Royal Museum of American History, I attended services at Enon Baptist Church in Supply, VA. This was my second visit to the church that holds the bodies of the Garrett family in their cemetery. The congregation is quite small (15 attendees yesterday) but they have been very helpful to me in gaining knowledge about the Garretts for my March presentation at the Surratt Society Conference. I had the chance to chat with the Reverend for quite a bit yesterday and listened to an ironic story.

A few days after my initial visit to the church, the Reverend and members of the church were doing a clean up of the road leading to the church. The pastor told me that the grass had just been mowed, turning what was once single pieces of garbage into several pieces of garbage confetti. While making his way out of a ditch after picking up some pieces, the pastor fell awkwardly. Upon getting up he felt a pain in his ankle and knew that he had sprained it. When he got home, he wrapped it with an Ace bandage and made his way to his next appointment which happened to be a funeral. He said it was painful but he could still walk on it. After the funeral at home, he unwrapped it and found it had swollen considerably. The next day, when the swelling had not gone down, he went to see a doctor. An X-ray revealed that he did not sprain his ankle as he had thought, but rather he broke his left fibula right above the ankle. He was given a splint to wear for a week, and then spent six weeks in a cast. This last Sunday was the first since the incident that he has preached standing up. He currently has an air cast.

The reverend was amused when I told him that he broke his leg in the exact same place as John Wilkes Booth. I still haven't picked a side (box jump or horse fall) regarding how Booth broke his leg, but I think the fact that this 81 year old man could continue on with his duties with only minor pain before realizing his leg was broken definitely gives credence to the idea that Booth could have escaped Ford's Theatre and even mounted a horse, with his leg broken in the same way.

Have any of you broken your fibula or know of someone who has? Did they notice it was broken right away or thought it was a sprained ankle too?