Grandson assists man who fell in yard
By Eric Freehling
Eagle Community Editor
LIBERTY TWP, Mercer County — It was an ordinary day until suddenly it wasn’t. Luckily Bob Chestnut, 78, and his grandson, Gavin Chestnut, 17, kept their heads.
It was July 3, a Sunday, and Chestnut had spent hours in the heat mowing around his 40-acre property off Brent Road in Liberty Township with his tractor and brush hog.
He was driving the tractor back toward his house when he stopped for a rest. And with one movement everything changed.
“I jumped off the tractor and my knees went down into the ground, and my elbows went down into the ground,” Chestnut said.
“I’m lying in this brushy stuff, and I can’t get up. I was trying to do something. I couldn’t do anything. I was scared,” he said.
Chestnut was sprawled next to his tractor, unable to get up, hundreds of yards from his house, where Gavin was.
Chestnut didn’t have his phone with him. He did the only thing he could think to do and that was to start yelling for help.
It was a bad situation for the fallen man. He was on the ground in a clump of woods without any neighbors within earshot. The only person near was Gavin. Chestnut estimated that he must have shouted for a half hour to 45 minutes.
“I kept hollering. I laid back sometimes and then start hollering again,” said Chestnut.
In the house, Gavin, who’s lived with his grandfather for the past eight years, heard the distant calls.
“I was in the house playing video games. Somehow, I heard him,” said Gavin, who went outside to discover what was the matter.
“It wasn’t hard to find him,” Gavin said.
“I was scared when I found my grandfather, but I tried to keep myself together,” he said. “He told me to go back in the house and get the cellphone. I gave it to him, and he called 911.”
Once an ambulance was called, Gavin said his grandfather told him to ride his bicycle to the end of their quarter-mile dirt driveway to flag it down.
Chestnut and his late wife, Carol Ann, had picked out the property 30 years ago because of its isolation.
“We lived in Wexford, but we didn’t like it any more. Too many rules about when to mow your yard,” Chestnut said.
He said when his wife, who liked the outdoors, discovered there was a Mennonite-built house dating to 1871 on the property, she was sold.
Two EMTs arrived with a stretcher, carried Chestnut to the ambulance and took him and Gavin to Grove City Hospital.
Chestnut said hours in the emergency room couldn’t turn up any cause for his fall and inability to get back up. He was found to have low blood pressure but no one seemed to think it was the cause of his falling.
Chestnut said that although the day was very hot, he had water with him on the tractor, so he feels he can safely rule out dehydration as a cause.
In fact, other than a bruised chest, aching knees and a bad skin rash caused by the weeds he was lying in, the retired structural engineer feels just the same as ever.
“I’m not going to jump off the tractor anymore,” said Chestnut.
For him and his grandson, their immediate plans are maybe to plan a camping trip to the Shenango Reservoir before Gavin starts 11th grade at Grove City High School at the end of August.
And they both look forward to a summer filled with ordinary days.
“We’re buddies,” Chestnut said.
