THE NEXT
chapter by Mark Miller | photos courtesy of MJ Brickey
L
ate in the night of Jan. 10, 2005, something happened to Jonathan Godfrey that he will never forget. Godfrey, a medical flight nurse, was lying eight feet below the surface of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., after the LifeEvac 2 medical helicopter in which he was riding crashed. It took first responders 45 minutes before they knew what happened. And while Godfrey was rescued, pilot Joe Schaffer and paramedic Nikki Kielar died.
As one of an estimated 700 survivors of air medical crashes and among the few sole survivors, Godfrey immediately knew he needed to tell the world what he went through. Within 30 days, he created his first PowerPoint and visited an air medical base. He toured the country for the next decade, giving his Max Impact: A Story of Survival presentation to whoever would listen. Then in 2015, a fellow helicopter crash survivor named Michael Eccard connected him with MJ Brickey, a then-Oklahoma newspaper reporter investigating five fatal helicopter crashes in that state in five years. They ended up co-writing a 2017 book named the same as his presentation and two years later got married. They recently relocated to Lantana to be near family and further his cause. The self-published book has sold more than 15,000 copies and will eventually lead to an updated edition after leaving out key elements. Godfrey and Brickey also are in pre-production negotiations for his story to become a movie. Everything they do is intended to honor the memory of Schaffer and Kielar. “There’s nothing good about it, but if someone is going to die, you want it to count,” Brickey said. “He could have made money off their tragedy, but he didn’t, and he’s held onto that. That’s why the movie isn’t out already, as we have tried to carefully carry this information as far as we can go.” While the physical scars of 11 broken bones eventually healed, the mental ones lingered for years. A combination of PTSD and 36 | LANTANA LIVING | SEPTEMBER 2021
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