Woman Frozen Solid
Jean Hilliard is one of those people whose stories you hear and you think, “No way” at least, that's what LLR creator Amelia thought when she heard about this miraculous woman. The nineteen-year-old woman was living in Lengby, Minnesota the year of her amazing icy adventure. Jean was in the middle of nowhere on the night of December 20, 1980, when she made her way home from a night out with friends in -20-degree weather around midnight.
Jean recalled to Minnesota Public Radio, “I had gone into town and met some friends,”
Jean had just left the Fosston American Legion in her dad’s Ford LTD, which had rear-wheel drive and no anti-lock brakes. When the car slid into a ditch on the icy Minnesota roads; Jean Hilliard, in her cowboy boots, began to walk for help. Her friend Wally Nelson was only about two miles down the road, after all!
Nelson’s home seemed further away that night than Hilliard could remember and she grew frustrated. “I’d get over one hill, thinking his place would be there, and it wasn’t,” she reported. When she finally did see the lights of Nelson’s home, everything went black.
At dawn the next day, Nelson woke up like every other day. He then noticed a “little hunk” in his snow-covered lawn about fifteen feet from his front door. Upon his investigations, he found it was Jean Hilliard; frozen solid.
Nelson knew Jean well because his best friend was dating her at the time.
“I grabbed her by the collar and skidded her into the porch. I thought she was dead. Froze stiffer than a board, but I saw a few bubbles coming out of her nose,” Nelson recalled to reporters.
Nelson soon found that Jean’s body was so stiff it wouldn’t fit into the cab of his pickup truck. He had to use a car instead. He drove her 10 minutes to the nearest hospital. There, the doctors were not hopeful about reviving Jean Hilliard.
Jean’s skin was so frozen that they couldn’t pierce it with hypodermic needles, they just broke on contact. Her body temperature was so low that it didn’t register on a thermometer. Her face was an ashen-gray color and her eyes didn’t respond to changes in light.
The doctors decided to gradually warm her body up with heating pads. They decided she was probably about 88 degrees Fahrenheit, and her pulse was about 12 beats per minute.
Dr. George Sather, the attending physician, said, “I thought she was dead, but then we picked up an extremely faint whimper. We knew there was a person existing then.”
“The reaction didn’t appear until two or three hours after she started thawing out,” Dr. Sather said. “The body was cold, completely solid, just like a piece of meat out of a deep freeze.”
By mid-morning, Jean Hilliard awoke with spasms. By noon, she was talking, worrying about what her father might think about wrecking his car.
Jean felt normal, and the whole thing proved to be just an ordinary turn in the path of her life. “It’s like I fell asleep and woke up in the hospital,” she said. “I didn’t see the light or anything like that. It was kind of disappointing. So many people talk about that, and I didn’t get anything.”
Jean recalled to Minnesota Public Radio, “I had gone into town and met some friends,”
Jean had just left the Fosston American Legion in her dad’s Ford LTD, which had rear-wheel drive and no anti-lock brakes. When the car slid into a ditch on the icy Minnesota roads; Jean Hilliard, in her cowboy boots, began to walk for help. Her friend Wally Nelson was only about two miles down the road, after all!
Nelson’s home seemed further away that night than Hilliard could remember and she grew frustrated. “I’d get over one hill, thinking his place would be there, and it wasn’t,” she reported. When she finally did see the lights of Nelson’s home, everything went black.
At dawn the next day, Nelson woke up like every other day. He then noticed a “little hunk” in his snow-covered lawn about fifteen feet from his front door. Upon his investigations, he found it was Jean Hilliard; frozen solid.
Nelson knew Jean well because his best friend was dating her at the time.
“I grabbed her by the collar and skidded her into the porch. I thought she was dead. Froze stiffer than a board, but I saw a few bubbles coming out of her nose,” Nelson recalled to reporters.
Nelson soon found that Jean’s body was so stiff it wouldn’t fit into the cab of his pickup truck. He had to use a car instead. He drove her 10 minutes to the nearest hospital. There, the doctors were not hopeful about reviving Jean Hilliard.
Jean’s skin was so frozen that they couldn’t pierce it with hypodermic needles, they just broke on contact. Her body temperature was so low that it didn’t register on a thermometer. Her face was an ashen-gray color and her eyes didn’t respond to changes in light.
The doctors decided to gradually warm her body up with heating pads. They decided she was probably about 88 degrees Fahrenheit, and her pulse was about 12 beats per minute.
Dr. George Sather, the attending physician, said, “I thought she was dead, but then we picked up an extremely faint whimper. We knew there was a person existing then.”
“The reaction didn’t appear until two or three hours after she started thawing out,” Dr. Sather said. “The body was cold, completely solid, just like a piece of meat out of a deep freeze.”
By mid-morning, Jean Hilliard awoke with spasms. By noon, she was talking, worrying about what her father might think about wrecking his car.
Jean felt normal, and the whole thing proved to be just an ordinary turn in the path of her life. “It’s like I fell asleep and woke up in the hospital,” she said. “I didn’t see the light or anything like that. It was kind of disappointing. So many people talk about that, and I didn’t get anything.”
But to everyone else, she was and still is, a medical miracle. To everyone, it is amazing that all she lost was a few toes.
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