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Dickey Baker is a sonof the Shenandoahs: born,raised and firmly rooted.He talkscountry­slow, as if each sentence isa chessmove requiring carefuldeliberation. “It’s a pretty place,” hesays of the verdantmeadows andmountains that surround him. “I’veleft a few times but always comeback.” ¶Baker—aheftymanwith a

ruddy complexion and pompadour gone gray—has been aShenandoahNational Parkmaintenanceworker for 43 years.Hewalks to the rear of a cabin at the Skyland campground and gazesacross the ruffled landscape he loves. PageValley tosses and turnsdirectly below. It’s a beautiful lateMay day, but Baker describes forme how very different things can bewhen thick clouds barrel in,cannon shots of thunder resound, and lightning fractures blackskies.He flashes back to a tumultuous afternoon some 20 years ago.

“I was painting the bedroom in thathouse,” he says, nodding toward thecabin next door. “I got to be honestwith you. I laid on the floor betweentwo beds. That storm actually scaredme comin’ up themountain that day.”

Instead, a crack of lightning tookout an oak tree by themaintenanceshed just down the road.

I’ve come to talk with Dickey Bakerabout the legacy of LightningMan.When Baker was a teenage employee,he crossed paths with Roy Sullivan,who died 30 years ago andundoubtedly is themost famous rangerin the history of ShenandoahNational

Park, if not every national park.Baker saw the tan ranger hat that

Sullivan kept in his truck as a souvenir. Ithad two scorchedholeswhere a lightningbolt supposedly entered and exited. “Heused to haul it aroundwithhim,” recallsBaker,who also sawSullivan’swristwatch that got toasted black byanother bolt.

Forty­one years after his debut inthe “Guinness Book ofWorld Records,”Ranger Roy Sullivan continues to holdthe dubious distinction of being struckby lightningmore than any knownperson. Not twice. Not three times.

Seven times.

That’ll attract attention. In the early1970s, Sullivan did an interview withexpat British broadcaster David Frostand appeared on the quiz show “To Tellthe Truth.” In 1980, Sullivan wasfeatured in an episode of the TV series“That’s Incredible.” More recently,Discover magazine (2008) includedhim on its list of memorable survivors,along with the SovietWorldWar IIpilot who bailed out of his plane at22,000 feet without a parachute andthe hapless sailor who endured beingadrift at sea for 76 days in a five­footraft. TheWeb site Cracked.com (2009)selected Sullivan as one of the seven“Most Bizarrely Unlucky PeopleWhoEver Lived.” (Tsutomu Yamaguchi wasnamedmost unlucky, having been atground zero when atomic bombs fell onbothHiroshima andNagasaki.) In2010 Sullivan’s misadventures were thebasis of a humorous South African TVcommercial for, of all things, energy­savingmilk cartons. His birth­chartreading is posted on AstrologyWeekly.com in the heady company of ElvisPresley, Bill Clinton and Leonardoda Vinci.

And surely he has to be the onlyNational Park Service ranger everimmortalized in song. A Florida fringeband called I HateMyself recorded“Roy Sullivan, By Lightning Loved” inthemid­1990s. It did not become a cult

4 15 in 1 , , , , , , , , , ,

classic, perhaps because of convolutedlyrics such as this:

Am I graced or grounded?Blessed or burnt to crisp?Through this mud, we’re impoundedIs this bliss?

We humans yearn for order andstructure, taking comfort in whatevercertainties can be found in a seeminglychaotic universe. But life misbehaves.What sense can bemade of its twistsand turns? Did Roy Sullivan have anexplanation for his epic misfortune?Why him? Can the fickle finger of fatereally be that preposterously unfair?

Dicke Bake poin metoward an unmarked trailabout 100 yards away.That’s where the Sullivansaga begins. Twenty­five

minutes of hikingmildly undulatingterrain brings me toMillers Headoverlook and what remains of a firetower; a 15­foot­by­15­foot stonefoundation topped by a concreteplatform. Back in the day, the towerafforded a panoramic glimpse of PageValley. This was Sullivan’s perchduring a vicious storm that poundedShenandoahNational Park in April1942. Unfortunately for Sullivan,lightning rods had yet to be installed.

“It was hit seven or eight times, andfire was jumping all over the place,”Sullivan told a reporter some 30 yearslater, reliving themoment.

He decided tomake a run for it.Bad idea.“I got just a few feet away from the

tower, and then, blam!”Lightning burned a half­inch stripe

down Sullivan’s right leg anddemolished the nail on his big toe.Blood spurted from his foot, drainingthrough a hole ripped in his boot sole.

Strike One! Only six more to go.A GeorgeWashington University

statistics professor once calculated thatthe odds of somebody being whackedby lightning seven times is 4.15 in100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

That’s a lot of zeros. And they don’tcome close to putting the Roy Sullivanstory in proper perspective.

Ligh ning ike a e emessages fromMotherNature: fast, furious andfrequent reminders ofwho’sboss. The typical bolt lasts less

than ahalf second. It is 1 to 6 inches indiameter, spans nearly fivemiles, andcanpack apunchof 100million volts.Earth gets pepperedbillions of times ayear,with lightning killing an estimated24,000people annually. Roughly 40ofthose victimswill beAmericans.Raw,unrestrainedpower of thatmagnitudecaptures the imagination.Dozens ofancient societies conjuredupmythicfigureswhobrandished lightning bolts.TheNorse hadThor. TheEgyptians,Typhon. TheChinese, Lei Tsu. TheGreeks, Zeus. Across cultures lightningbecame regarded as an instrument of avengefulGod,His joke’s­on­youway ofsettling scoreswith sinners.

Benjamin Franklin brokethe spell of what JohnFriedman, author of “Outof the Blue: AHistory ofLightning,” calls “theologicalmeteorology.” In June 1752,

Franklin conducted his kite­flyingexperiment, proving that lightning wasnothingmore than a gigantic electricalcharge and, therefore, inexorablydrawn to themetal key dangling on hiskite string. As brilliant as Franklincould be, he neglected to patent hisinvention. Poor Ben. By 1870 some10,000 salesmen were hawkinglightning rods in the United States,according to Friedman’s book.

Post­Franklin scientists studiedlightning and, over the centuries,discovered that the phenomenonamounts to a gigantic floating battery.Cumulonimbus clouds reach heights ofeightmiles, with temperatures varyingasmuch as 100degreeswithin. Rain,sleet and hail are producedsimultaneously.Highwindswhipeverything into an unstable stew.On asubatomic level, agitated particlescollide like bumper cars. Someparticlesbecomenegatively charged, otherspositively. As a rule, the positive particlesrise toward the top of the cloud.Negative ones sink to the bottom. Thetwo extremes act like polar­oppositeterminals of a battery.When electrical

, , , , , , , ,— THE ODDS OF SOMEBODY BEING STRUCK BY LIGHTNING SEVEN TIMES

14 THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE | august 18, 2013

transference occurs between them, avisible flash results. Lightning!About 90percent of lightning is inter­

cloud fireworks that never reach theground. The other 10percent—whatwesee and run from—takes place on agrander scale. Lightning shootsdownward (onoccasionupward, if thecloudhappens to bemore positivelycharged than the ground) to achievecircuit neutrality. Thunder is owed to thelightning flash giving offmillions of voltsof electricity,which superheats the air tomore than 50,000degrees, five times thetemperature of the sun.Most people are struck nowhere

near themother cloud. At NASA’sLangley Research Center in Hampton,Va., the protocol is for pilots to stay 70nautical miles away from the peripheryof a storm. For good reason. Lightningwreaks havoc with the body’s delicate

about a storm: petit mal seizures. Mike,hit while golfing: completely paralyzedbut slowly recovering. Rachel, hit onceindoors, once outdoors: no lastingeffects. Geneva, hit once indoors, onceoutdoors: headaches, chronic pain,digestive problems, fatigue, sensitivityto barometric pressure. Angela, hitthree times: severe neuropathy,chronic pain, digestive problems,aphasia, apraxia, frontal lobe damage,short­termmemory loss and post­traumatic stress disorder.Then there are theTwilight Zone

cases such asNinaLazzeroni, anOhiowomanwho turned into awalking circuitbreaker after being struck in 1995. Lightsinexplicably flick offwhen shepassesstreet lamps, billboards andparking lots.As she told author JohnFriedman, “Theycomeback on after I leave the area andturn off again if I return.”

Florida is the lightning capital of thecountry, recording 468 deaths between1959 and 2012, according toNationalWeather Service data. Texas is a distantsecondwith 215.Maryland reported 126fatalities and theDistrict only five.Virginia had 66, tied for 26th placewithKansas. Yes, the “SparkRanger” had ajob that put himat greater­than­averagerisk, but current and formerShenandoahNational Park staff can’tthink of a visitor or a ranger struck in thepast 17 years, and probablymuch longer.The collective knowledge about

odds­beating, death­defying RoySullivan appears to be spread thin,even among those in the know. Hepreceded the science community’sinterest. “None of us working inlightning ever met him,” Cooper says.NASA engineer Bruce Fisher has been

on hundreds of research flightsthrough the wildest of thunderstormsbut can offer only this tidbit aboutSullivan: “I heard he had lightning rodson his four­poster bed.”

Ja i h Dicke Bake ,

Sullivan’s existence wascircumscribed by the BlueRidgeMountains— thedifference being Sullivan

never ventured into the wider world.He was born in February 1912 inGreene County, the fourth of Arthurand Ida Bell Shifflett Sullivan’s 11children. The Sullivans and Shifflettswere well­establishedmountainfamilies. They hacked a living from thesoil and kept their distance fromgenteel society.Likemany “hollow folk,” as

academics dubbedmountaininhabitants, Roy Sullivan didn’tgraduate from high school. Instead, hegot a thorough grounding in theoutdoors, hiking the ridges and woodsaround Simmons Gap. He claimed tohave once shot 30 rabbits in a singleday as a boy, selling them for 25 cents ahead. In his early 20s, Sullivan joinedthe Civilian Conservation Corps. It hadjust started the dirty work of buildingSkyline Drive and ShenandoahNational Park. Part of his job entaileddemolishing the homes of neighborsforced to relocate so the forests couldbe returned to pristine condition.Sullivan hired onwith the park’s fire

patrol in 1940. Forest Service rangerFranklin Taylor, who recalls fighting onefire inwhich “Mr. Roy”—asTaylor stillrespectfully refers to him—advised thecrew, “If a storm comes up, you all getaway fromme.” Sullivan later becameone of three rangers responsible formonitoring the 40­mile stretch fromSwift RunGap toWaynesboro, thesouthern terminus of ShenandoahNational Park.WilliamNicholssupervised him for five years. “Hewasuneducated but a very intelligentman,”Nichols says. “He loved telling a story. Inaword, hewas a character.” But agracious one. Sullivan readily shared hispractical expertisewith colleagueswhoheld college degrees; hewas able to

wiring.Mary Ann Cooper, professoremeritus of emergencymedicine at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, hasstudied strike survivors for threedecades. “It causes chronic pain andcauses brain­injury, post­concussion­type symptoms,” she says. “You and Ican filter out distractions and stillfocus. One of the things we see withlightning and electric[­shock] patientsis that ability is scraped off.”Death by cardiac arrest is the worst

scenario. Other potential effects run awide and unpredictable gamut.Consider these injury reports filed bymembers of Lightning Strike andElectric Shock Survivors, a NorthCarolina­based support group thatheld its annual meeting recently inPigeon Forge, Tenn. Cheryl, hit whilephoning her husband to warn him

I ea d e adde bed

— NASA ENGINEER BRUCE FISHER ON ROY SULLIVAN

{ C H A R G E D }

ANONYM

OUS

august 18, 2013 | THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 15

easily identify assorted trees, even in thedead ofwinter, when they’d beenstripped of their leaves.

Sullivanmay have related to treesbetter than he did women. He had fourwives. It’s unclear if all those unionswere legally consummated, butgenealogy records indicate that in1932, at age 20, he took the hand ofMarthaHerring. They had a son, RoyJr., who died in 1996. On the heels ofMartha cameMadeline Shifflett (1943)and Vinda Blackwell (1953). InMarch1962, Sullivanmarried PatriciaMorris,an Augusta County girl. She was 19. Hewas 50. Tongues wagged, especiallywhen they had three children.

Says Frank Deckert, who was aShenandoah park ranger from 1968 to1971: “We used to kid him that he’d getrecharged with the lightning strikesand have another kid.”

Af e hi ha o ingexperience atMillersHead fire tower, RoySullivan enjoyed 27 yearsof uneventful skies. That

streak ended in July 1969nearmilepost97 on SkylineDrive. It was rainy butsticky­hot.Hewas driving in thesouthbound lane, negotiating tight S­curves, when lightning blasted twotrees on that side of the road, then

deflected into the northbound lane andtook out a third. In between, the boltpassed through the openwindows ofSullivan’s truck.Hiswristwatch gotcooked, his eyebrows fried. Any hair notprotected by his hatwas burned off.Sullivan lost consciousness, and thetruck rolled to the lip of a deep ditch.

Strike Three occurred exactly oneyear later: July 1970. Pat andRoySullivanwere living in a house trailer onthewestern fringe of the park at SawmillRun.Roywas tending his garden oneafternoon. Lightning suddenly streakedout of a relatively clear sky, pulverizing apower transformer near the trailer, thensmashing into his left shoulder and

16 THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE | august 18, 2013

{ C H A R G E D }

sending himairborne. Amonth later Patgot dinged, for the first and only time,while shewas standing in the front yard.Following in Sullivan’s electrified

footsteps, I’m uncertain if there’s apattern developing. Does each strikeget progressively more dramatic andharder to swallow? Or am I being city­slicker cynical? There’s no denying,however, that Strike Four takes theSullivan narrative to a new level.A gentle rain fell on April 16, 1972.

The Spark Ranger was in a smallguardhouse atop LoftMountain,registering carloads of visitors whowere arriving at the campground. Notsomuch as a coo of thunder riffled theair. Then…KABOOM! Lightningannihilated a fuse box inside theguardhouse. “The fire was bouncingaround inside the station, and whenmy ears stopped ringing, I heardsomething sizzling,” Sullivan told aWashington Post reporter whocontacted him a week later. “It wasmyhair on fire.”Sullivan stuck his head in the sink,

but it wouldn’t fit under the spigot. Heused wet paper towels to extinguish thehair fire and drove toWaynesboroCommunity Hospital. He lamentedthat he “tried to lead a good life,” butGod seemed hell­bent on barbecuinghim. He also gave The Post aminiscoop.While cutting wheat as a kid, alightning bolt had zapped his scythe,setting the field ablaze.Strike Four went global, capturing

the attention of Ross andNorrisMcWhirter, the British twins who co­edited the “Guinness Book ofWorldRecords,” the Bible of oddballsuperlatives. The 1972 edition went topress with Sullivan heralded as the“only livingman to be struck bylightning four times.”

The cce of heGuinness franchise largelyhinges on credibility. It’sconsidered the go­to sourcefor confirming, say, the

world’s heaviest tumor or the fastesttime pogo­sticking to the top ofMountFuji. Ross andNorrisMcWhirterreputedly were sticklers for facts.

Within a year they had to updateSullivan’s entry. On Aug. 7, 1973, heracked up Strike Five. The preciselocation is lost to history. TheGuinness publishing companychanged hands a half­dozen times, andthe Sullivan files got lost in all thecorporate shuffling. The National ParkService kept no documentation.Details about Strike Five come

from an account Sullivan gave threeweeks later. He was driving his truckon Skyline Drive, trying to outrace astorm. Once he got out of range, hestopped to have a look. Apparently hedidn’t drive far enough. “I actually sawthe lightning shoot out of the cloudthis time,” he said, “and it was comingstraight for me.”Bull’s­eye! This was a head shot

that ignited another hair fire and sentSullivan pinwheeling. The flashfunneled down his left arm and leg,“knocking off my shoe but not untyingthe lace.” He talked openly about thecosmic ramifications of these brusheswith death. He’d dreamed about thisstrike in advance, just as he did StrikeFour. Only now there was a follow­updream, which he interpreted assignifying the spell had been broken:nomore lightning strikes.“God sparedme for some good

purpose,” declared Sullivan, refusingto reveal exactly what that purposewas: “It’s between God andme, andnobody but us will ever know.”Apparently God changedHis plan.

On June 5, 1976, Sullivan got boppedfor the sixth time. He’d been walkingalone on Sawmill Shelter Trail, about amile fromwhere Strike Two found himin 1969. Enough already! Sullivanretired from the Park Service fivemonths later. He and Pat moved to aplot of land in an unincorporated townjust north ofWaynesboro that seemedmeant for him. It’s calledDooms.They parked their house trailer,

and Roy spared no expense onlightning rods. He never equipped thefour­poster bed, but he did affix themto all four corners of his trailer. Hefastenedmore rods to the TV antenna,electric meter and six of the tallesttrees. Each wasmade of heavy­gauge

copper wire and sunk seven feet in theground.He should’ve put a lightning rod on

his head.On June 25, 1977, Sullivan was

trout fishing when he smelled sulphurand felt the hair bristle on his arms.Seconds later, he took another shot inthe coconut, pitching him into thewater. His hair got singed, and hesustained burns to his chest andstomach, plus hearing loss in one ear.Holes were burned in his T­shirt andunderwear. Sullivan pulled himself

august 18, 2013 | THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 17

together and scrambled to his car,whereupon he bumped into a hungryblack bear that swiped his lunch andthe three trout on his line. He drovehome in a daze.Pat took him to the hospital, where

a cub reporter for theWaynesboroNews Virginian interviewed him.Sullivan described how he shooed awaythe bear by smacking it in the snoutwith a tree branch, claiming that wasthe 22nd bear attack he’d fought off(another Guinness record?). “Somepeople are allergic to flowers,” Sullivan

mused, “but I’m allergic to lightning.It’s funny stuff.”In another interview that fall he

speculated “some chemical, somemineral” in his bodymade him supersusceptible to lightning. “I have afeeling,” he added, “I’m going to bestruck again someday.”That premonition came true in the

early morning hours of Sept. 28, 1983.Only lightning didn’t strike RoySullivan. Lying in bed next to his wife,he pressed a .22­caliber pistol to hisright ear and pulled the trigger.

Icheck in o a mo el inWaynesboro and ask Franny,the desk clerk, if she knowsanything about Roy Sullivan.Nope. However, she does know

a woman who got slammed bylightning when she was about 17.“Turned her hair snow white,” Frannysays. “It lost all its pigmentation. ‘Itwas like I saw a ghost’ is how sheexplained it to her kids.”Depression is a more common side

effect. Did Sullivan pay a steeppsychological price for his ordeal?That, of course, presumes theHumanLightning Rod was a straight talkerand not theHuman Lying Rod.Nobody witnessed any of Sullivan’sseven strikes. Not his wife. Not a fellowranger. And not a peep out of anattending physician. On the otherhand, newspaper articles do credit hisfamily doctor and ParkSuperintendent R. Taylor Hoskinswith verifying his injuries, if not theactual strikes themselves. “My fatherwas very conservative,” says R. TaylorHoskins Jr. “He never would havestuck his neck out if he didn’t havefairly credible information.”I hit the streets ofWaynesboro in

search of clarity. AtWeasie’s Kitchen,where locals flock for breakfast, I takea seat by aman whomounted a deerhead for Sullivan’s youngest son,Bobby. Decent guy, he says. Acontractor. I’d already left multiplephonemessages for Bobby, sisterKathy and older brother Tim. All to noavail. AtWeasie’s, I get directions toBobby’s house. He inherited hisfather’s old place in Dooms. The trailerhas been replaced by a prefab home.

He e e a b ea Sec d a e ,

e a , ce a e

— THE SEVENTH TIME SULLIVAN WAS HIT BY LIGHTNING

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{ C H A R G E D }

Warm and cozy it’s not.A huge scarlet flag adorned with

the word “REDNECK” hangs looselyfrom a pole in the front yard. AConfederate battle flag fills the frontwindow in lieu of curtains. I walkbriskly up the driveway, past thebarbecue grill, past this sign tacked toa tree: “No Trespassing! Violators willbe shot. Survivors will be shot again.” Iknock on the door. Inside, countrymusic plays on the radio. I keepknocking.Music keeps playing. I sticka note in Bobby’s mailbox but neverhear from him.In newspaper clips Roy Sullivan

comes off as an affable, slightlybefuddled “good ol’ country boy,” assomebody characterized him forme.Did he get carried away with hislightning stories? Five grizzledmen inbaseball caps dawdle outside a 7­Eleven in the town adjacent to Dooms.They’re sipping coffee and jawing inthemidday heat. “There’s someskepticism,” one fellow admits. His palLarry— I can’t drag a full name out ofany of these guys— says he knows whySullivan was such an easy target: “Hehad a plate in his head. Pat’s sister’shusband toldme that.”Well, another voice pipes up, if

that’s true, what about the lightningbolt that zipped straight through thewindows of Roy’s vehicle? “Why didn’tit attack themetal in his car?”Hmmm.Larry suggests I might get answers

from Pat’s sister, who lives just downthe highway. I find DeeMorris andhusband Ronny Roadcap lounging inpatio chairs behind their whiteclapboard house. Dee confirms thather sister did get stung by lightning atSawmill Run. Roy was gone that day.“She went out to pick up the kids’toys. She didn’t even see a stormcoming up.”They both snicker at this notion

that Roy was amarkedman becausehe had ametal plate in his head.Nonsense. “You know how people liketo talk, especially around here,” Ronnysays.Funny thing, forest ranger Franklin

Taylor also remembers “Mr. Roy”

mentioning he had ametal plate in hishead. But that doesn’t entirely squarewith what Sullivan told the NewsVirginian after Strike Seven. “I have ametal plate inmy right ankle fromwhen I broke it years ago,” he said.“That plate got hot, I’ll tell you.”Roy Sullivan belonged to

ShenandoahHeights Baptist Church,where 83­year­old Bob Campbellworships. I give him a call. He didn’tknow Sullivan well, but Campbell sayssomething that gives me a start,something that his wife overhears andcauses her to cluck and playfully shushhim up.“I did hear one rumor that lightning

couldn’t kill him. But his wife’s .22 did.”

We a e all oapoperas. There are nosimple lives, noteven those led by thesimplest of men. Roy

Sullivan’s lightning encounters do defylogic. Still, it’s hard to imagine himtaking a blowtorch to his hair orcutting burn holes in his underwear.Reed Engle, a retired National ParkService historian, has full faith in thoseGuinness records. “The lightninghappened, and it was welldocumented,” he declares.A ranger who transported Sullivan

to the hospital once is wary. “My gutfeeling,” the ranger says, “is he wasstruck probably several times. I thinkhis mental health had been failingsome. They started gettingmoredifficult to believe. I think as thenotoriety grew, Roy liked thenotoriety.”I presume that NASA engineer

Bruce Fisher will be avocal critical. Not so. “Ican believe it,” he says,“because he was out in theopen. He’s exposed, andhe’s got metal on him,probably carrying a gun anda badge.”I’m curious what survivors

of multiple lightning strikesmake of Sullivan. They’ve beenthere, felt that. Wayne Cottrill,retired from Fairfax County ParksAuthority in 1998. He got lit upthree times between 1969 and 1971.All were indirect side strikes; alltaking place while he wasmanagingboat rentals. He experiencedtemporary paralysis and had hairburned off his arms. “I’ve always beenfascinated by Roy Sullivan,” Cottrillsays. “Maybe sometimes hemadethings up.Who knows?”Bob Edwards of Charlotte works as

a nuclear power plant mechanic andrigger. He’s 52 and a three­timelightning victim dogged by post­traumatic stress disorder. He’scontemptuous of South CarolinianMelvin Roberts, who professes to havebeen hit seven times but has notcracked the Guinness record book.(One reason could be thatMelvininsists he now “sees dead people.”)Edwards reserves judgment onSullivan but can’t conceive a bodywithstanding seven jolts of lightning.“Each time I was hit, I was out of it,”

Edwards says. “I was on the groundconvulsing. I was curled up in a fetalposition. I’m a hard­core redneck, butwhen a storm comes I run like a silly­a­­ girl and get in the house.”

I e a eaad bee a e

T e a ed ee d c be e e

— A RANGER WHO ONCE TOOK SULLIVAN TO THE HOSPITAL

Media and Internet scuttlebutt hasit that Sullivan killed himself becauseof a broken heart, the implicationbeing that this was a devoted husbandwho proved to be as luckless in loveas he was with lightning. But thereare whispers of a darker side, thoughtsonly shared off­the­record andcryptically phrased. Sullivan leftbehind an extended family largeenough to accommodate a fewconspiracy theorists. One relativeunloads a lot of innuendo but refusesto be specific. “I know the man. I knowhis reputation. I know people whocould tell you what he was really like.”Beyond that, those lips stay stubbornlysealed.

Another conspiracist contends thatPat and Roy had “a roughmarriage”;rough enough that Sullivan’s youngersister, Ruth—who passed away inJune at age 92— believed to her dyingday that Pat murdered him.

The facts of the case invitespeculation. TheWaynesboro first­aidsquad transported Roy Sullivan fromhis home to the hospital at 9 a.m. onMonday, Sept. 28, 1983. He waspronounced dead on arrival. His twosons provided information to newsreporters. Timwas then 13; Bobby,only 10. They quoted their mother assaying the shooting took place atapproximately 3 in themorning butwent unnoticed for hours.

Pat was in bed next to her husband.Why didn’t the gunshot rouse her?Randy Fisher, now Augusta Countysheriff, recalls being dispatched to thescene that morning. He found Sullivanbleeding from a single .22 bullet to thehead, “a contact wound through apillow.”

There were no witnesses, not evenPat Sullivan.

“She was a very sound sleeper,”Fisher says. “The speculation on herpart was that he’d been very depressed.She woke up in bed, and he was dead.”

Time passed, and rumors bubbledto the surface. Both Fisher and OfficerPhilip Broadfoot, today chief of policein Danville, caught wind of them. “Thefamily doesn’t want it to be suicide. It’shard for people to accept,” Broadfoot

says. “You’ve got to put a lot of faithand trust in folks responding to thescene. If it hadn’t been Roy Sullivanwho’d been struck by lightning seventimes, I don’t think we’d be having thisconversation.”

Edge ood Ceme eoccupies what appears tobe a converted cornfieldacross the dusty road froma lonesome country

church. The headstones stand in rowsstraight and tall, as if ready forharvesting. A townie joked that Ishould look for the gravesite withcharred grass on top.

A deer leaping over a log is etchedinto the granite surface of RoySullivan’s marker. Pat died in 2002.She’s buried about 10 feet to his right.Wedged between them is the tiny graveof their grandson, an unquestionablyunlucky soul who lived for all of oneday in December 1995.

Researchers marvel at thecomplexity of lightning storms.They’ve learned a lot but are stillpuzzled by the physics of how airionizes and reconfigures or exactly howa strike affects the body’s chemistry.Yet nature at its spectacular,mysterious best is nomatch for whatgoes on daily inside a person’s headand heart. Howmuch do we knowabout the storm clouds and blue skieswithin any of us?

TheHuman Lightning Rod neverdivulged the deeper purpose heclaimed to have discerned in his star­crossed life. If he was, indeed, singledout in a peculiar otherworldly way,somebody seems to have concluded itwas for the best. Here’s what ischiseled on Roy Sullivan’s headstone.“We loved you, but God loved youmore.”

TomDunkel is a freelance writer andthe author of “Color Blind: TheForgotten Team That Broke Baseball’sColor Line.” To comment on this story,e­mail wpmagazine@washpost.comor visit washingtonpost.com/magazine. Eddy Palanzo contributedto this report.

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