LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — The morning of this year’s Oak Barrel Half Marathon started like a lot of others for Major General Lynn A. Collyar of Huntsville, but then something extraordinary happened. Just a mile into the race, Collyar suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and dropped to the pavement. Several nurses, a nurse practitioner, and a member of Redstone Arsenal’s law enforcement were running alongside, spotted his medical distress, and rushed to help.

“They said they heard the ribs break on the third compression, which means they’re doing it right,” Collyar told the crowd at Monday night’s Metro Council meeting. “You got to hurt somebody if you’re doing it right, and most people don’t want to hurt anybody.”

The bystanders kept him alive with CPR but were unable to restart his heart — that took the defibrillator in the hands of the EMS team.

Collyar went down about 50 yards from the Moore County Jail where a couple of local deputies were directing traffic. They moved quickly to get local EMS on the scene, who stabilized him so an air ambulance crew could airlift him out to area hospital. All involved worried he wouldn’t make it but hoped for the best.

“I was very fortunate,” Collyar told the crowd. “Less than one percent of the people that suffer a sudden cardiac arrest survive, but because of the capabilities of your team here, I did.”

Collyar’s statements at the Metro Council meeting were part of National EMS Week, which happens May 17-23 each year. In appreciation of their live-saving efforts, Collyar recognized local EMS who helped him survive that day including Ronnie Smith, Kris Gagnon, Savannah Morton, Dwayne Clark, and Hunter Case.

Local EMA Director Jason Deal also gave his crew high praise.

“These moments are usually very rare for us to have these one-on-one impacts where people get discharged from the hospital with a hundred percent healing intact, like it never happened,” Deal told the crowd. “This is a great success story for our team and for Mr. Collyar.”

The retired Major General who spent 35 years in the military said that it’s important to recognize people when they do everything right.

“With the team you have here, you are in great shape,” Collyar told Monday’s crowd. “They were on target, had the right tools, the right equipment to do the thing, and were very professional about how they did it.” •

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