Jul 7, 2015 4 min read

The doctors called it “the widow maker.”

It earned this name because of very low percentage of survival; a specific kind of heart attack where 100 percent of William F. Lewis’s main artery was clogged.

On May 13, he stopped mowing grass at his Carmichaels home when he first started to feel the pain. According to his niece, Morgan Phillips, she believes he recognized what was happening from the beginning.

With his professions as a state constable, a deputy and a part-time coroner, he knew he was having a heart attack and needed to call for an ambulance right away.

Lewis, 55, was taken by ambulance to Washington Hospital with a caravan of his large family following. But before medics could get him inside an operating room, he flat lined.

“They brought him back,” Phillips said as she remembers the chaotic day with great detail. “Not only did they shock him once to bring him back to life, they shocked him 11 times just to get his heart back to rhythm and not to lose him.”

A long surgery followed and after three stents were placed in his heart and the artery was unclogged, the doctors came out to the full waiting room and told the family he would make it.

“It was just unreal,” Phillips said. “Still, to this day, none of us really want to believe it.”

She paused as she remembered seeing a man who was active, out every day working in the community and woke up to calls at 3 a.m. when a coroner was needed, almost taken away from her.

But after a while, the new reality hits. It hit hardest when the family received medical bills with numbers like $98,000 displayed, and that was only one bill.

With constables labeled as self-employed, and part-time coroners not receiving any benefits, Lewis has no health insurance to help pay for these costly medical bills. He also cannot work because his body is still healing from the surgery and the medication.

Phillips described the series of unfortunate events for her uncle with the saying, “when it rains, it pours.”

The bills kept on coming, his body had bad reactions to certain kinds of medicines he was taking after the surgery, recent tests show possible nerve or muscle damage in his shoulders and his bank account was hacked.

“A little bit of everything is going on,” Phillips said.

Word got around about the struggles the family faced. Even before Lewis was out of the hospital, a couple of his close friends and family came up with an idea to do something for him.

With many of Lewis’s close friends and family being a part of law enforcement, they decided to hold a “Brothers in Blue” benefit ride to help pay for the medical bills.

“‘Brother in Blue’ means that everybody within law enforcement considers each other brothers,” Phillips said. “They have each other’s backs at any time, whether they know each other or not. It’s kind of just like a little brotherhood of all law enforcement.”

Even though the ride will have many motorcycles and members of local law enforcement participating, the benefit ride is open to anyone with any type of road-worthy vehicle.

The benefit ride will be held Saturday at Waynesburg Fairgrounds. Registration begins at 10 a.m. and the ride will start at noon.

Phillips hopes this event shows her uncle how much he means to the community.

“Sometimes it seems like he is getting down,” Phillips said. “We hope to show him that people do love and care about him and support him and hopefully we get a good turnout.”

The two-hour ride will travel through the Greene County countryside with stops planned at local volunteer fire departments where water will be sold. Cumberland Township police also plan on leading the procession to keep the riders together and help direct traffic.

The ride will end at Nemacolin Fire Department, where a dinner will be served along with the band RagTag performing live and Chinese auctions.

The cost is $20 for riders, $10 for passengers and $15 for dinner only.

Lewis will be at the benefit ride and dinner to meet all the people who have come out to help him.

“Anyone we asked for help was more than willing to give us something,” Phillips said. “I hope he is going to be overwhelmed with the amount of people who come out to help him and I hope it helps him to keep pushing forward.”