PROFILES: BRUSHES WITH DEATH ALLOW HUCKSTEP TO ENJOY LIFE ALL THE MORE

With plain-speaking candor, Gene Huckstep commands respect.

You never hear a "maybe" from the lips of Cape Girardeau County's Presiding Commissioner. And when he makes a decision, 10 mules couldn't pull him out of it.

You always know exactly where he stands.

But Huckstep wasn't always this model of authority. As a teenager, he developed quite a knack for getting into trouble.

"I had a wild streak -- nothing dishonest," he protests with a laugh. "I do remember the time in industrial arts class that I nailed the teacher's dress shoes to the floor. I'd do about anything on a dare."

After high school, Huckstep recounts a number of brushes with death -- in the Army, during his 22 1/2 years in the extrication business, and even as a county official. Perhaps these close calls allow him to relish life all the more.

"I've used up my 39 lives many times," he admits. "I guess the Lord always had a different purpose for me."

EXPERT ON DELINQUENCY

Everyone has their favorite Gene Huckstep story.

For some, it may be his days on the Cape Girardeau Board of Education during the volatile '60s. Huckstep says his teenage rowdiness provided special insight.

During his three-terms, he butted heads with students and parents over discipline and dress codes. One father went so far as to threaten a lawsuit over his son's corporal punishment.

He recalled one heated forum about the dress code at Central High School. "Of course, I was the target. The gymnasium was packed."

One woman stood up and asked Huckstep what made him such as expert on juvenile delinquency.

"I told her I was one of the biggest in the school system at the time. She didn't expect that answer," he recalls with a broad smile.

But he always expected punishment. "If I cried, my father gave me a worse punishment. That's the way it was -- my German heritage."

After six years on the school board, Huckstep decided not to run again, and had publicly announced his intentions.

"A lady called me the morning of the final filing deadline and told me `At least we got rid of you.'"

He marched right down to the board office and filed for re-election.

"That's the story of my life. My one great weakness has been my temper."

But the 65-year-old Huckstep is quick to point out with a laugh he has mellowed.

He enjoyed this first experience with public service. He's especially proud of the board's efforts to bring the vocational-technical school to town.

CLOSE CALLS IN THE ARMY

His rowdiness helped earn him Army fatigues. Huckstep began a two-year tour of duty at age 17, just days after graduation.

After he was "unjustly accused three or four times of being rowdy," a magistrate judge suggested that Huckstep enlist. His dad concurred.

"I had my rights violated, but it was good for me," he chuckles.

One day, his tank exploded as it was being refueled in Fort Knox, Ky. Huckstep's face was burned, and he spent three weeks in the base hospital.

He also remembers another close call during a training exercise.

"My officer told me to get the tank stuck so they could demonstrate how to retrieve it. Well I drove it down a hill into 25 feet of water, and it sank. I damn near swallowed 10 gallons of creek water because I had all this equipment on. It liked to drown me, but you can't get rid of me that easily," he teases.

VICTIM OF TORNADO OF '49

After 23 months, he returned to his native Cape Girardeau to marry his high school sweetheart, and join the family business. He and his father built the new Huckstep Auto Body and Paint building at its current location, which was "strictly cornfields" at the time.

Just two years later -- at the age of 21 -- he nearly became a victim of the tornado of 1949.

He remembers the day as if it were yesterday.

It was his daughter's birthday -- May 21, 1949. They lived in a small home in the 1300 block of Bend Road. His wife wanted to see her folks, so they headed across town.

"It didn't look like a typical tornado," he recalls, shaping his hands in a funnel. "It just looked like a big black cloud. But you could hear it. It sounded like 10 freight trains. It had a three-block path."

Concern over his wife's elderly grandparents prompted Huckstep to take off on foot toward the north part of town.

He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, staring off in time through his silver wire-rimmed glasses.

"It was weird. The first 30 minutes were very quiet. The only sound was people screaming and hollering for help."

Huckstep passed the hill where his house had stood, seeing only rubble. He found his wife's grandparents, slightly injured.

"Then I saw this man -- I'll never forget this. He wore black trousers and a white shirt and was carrying a baby. I realized he was impaled by a 2 by 4, but he was awake and carrying this baby. He asked us to please take the baby, and then he knelt down in front of me, rolled over and died. It was pretty devastating."

Huckstep returned to his house to look for his daughter's birthday present -- a cocker spaniel. He could hear the dog barking, but couldn't locate it.

He stepped through the rubble and slipped on the overturned refrigerator -- landing on his back in the cellar. In the darkness, he waited in terrible pain for someone to find him.

"It went through my mind that I wasn't going to make it."

He had fractured three vertebrae and his injuries required a body cast from his hip to his heck. "The cast was a real ordeal, but there was no air conditioning, and I had to wear it about eight weeks. It was six or seven months before I would work again."

Huckstep says that tornado left him forever changed.

"I guess I was a little more afraid and a little more hardened by that death and destruction." In all, the tornado left 22 dead, including several friends.

SAVING TRAPPED MOTORISTS

In 1965, Huckstep started the extrication business quite by accident.

The business had just received a new type of gas-powered saw. "We were trying it out when the present sheriff and then highway patrolman Norman Copeland stopped by. He made the remark that it would be a fine piece of equipment for certain accidents when people were trapped in the wreckage. There was no such animal as extrication at the time -- at least in out-state areas," he says. "Prior to that, they'd have to pry the wreckage open, or haul it to the junkyard with the victim inside and cut it open."

A few weeks later, the sheriff's department called and asked if Huckstep could bring his saw to a bad wreck near Old Appleton. A truck driver was trapped.

"It gave us a great feeling that a man was alive because of our efforts and our equipment."

The sheriff's department and highway patrol kept calling. And Huckstep began seeing ways to do the job better with jacks and other equipment.

By 1967, it was a full blown operation.

During his 22 1/2 years in extrication, Huckstep personally answered 1,976 calls.

There was a lot of tragedy. Cars weren't constructed as well, with the same degree of safety devices.

"I had a man burn up in front of me because we didn't have firefighting equipment at the time. He begged me to hit him on the head or shoot him. It branded my mind."

HORROR ON GOOD FRIDAY

But the night that sticks with Huckstep more than any other came on Easter weekend in 1972.

In the wee hours of Good Friday, a terrible bus and truck accident was reported in McClure, Ill. Dozens of people were reportedly injured.

"I pulled the worst tactical error in my years of extrication," he sighs. "I called out the whole crew, with all the equipment."

By the time they crossed the bridge, it became clear the call was just a prank.

A few minutes after the crew had left, the highway patrol called about a truckdriver trapped in the wreckage at I-55 below Benton.

"My wife tried to reach us on the radio, but the equipment wasn't that good. About 10-15 minutes had passed. It took us another five or six minutes to set him free and by that time, he had died. An artery had been severed in his leg."

Huckstep found a picture of the driver with his wife and five daughters in the truck.

"I just couldn't accept the fact he died because we wasted 10 to 15 minutes retracing our steps in Illinois. That prank cost that man his life."

Huckstep said he's often been accused of being "callous and cold-blooded." But he said people can't become emotionally involved and do this kind of work.

"But that call almost put me down."

A dear friend, Dr. Charles McGinty, helped Huckstep to go on. "He told me, `you win some and you lose some,' and said if I kept rehashing this I just might as well quit. I couldn't do that."

Another time, he was almost swarmed by hundreds of water moccasins as he retrieved a drowning victim.

"I'm scared to death of snakes. I'd jump 40 feet to see one."

The crew on the bank could see the snakes, and pulled him back to shore so hard that the rope cut into his armpits. He avoided the snakes, but was pierced by a grappling hook.

"Dr. John Crowe, another dear friend, laughed as he dug that hook out of my rear end."

BEATING THE ER WAR DRUM

In 1974, Huckstep started beating the war drums for a 24-hour staffed emergency room at old St. Francis Hospital, aided by Dr. Raymond Ritter.

"When the ambulance arrived in the middle of the night, a doctor would have to be called from home. In some cases, we might as well have stayed at home," he laments.

He was asked to come on the hospital board, and within no time, the first round-the-clock emergency room began. Huckstep remains on the board today.

Ironically, Huckstep was one of the first victims treated in that 24-hour ER. He was sprayed with battery acid during an early morning extrication call.

In 1987, the hospital renamed its trauma wing in Huckstep's honor -- the same year that the city took over the extrication business.

"I never received a dime from any human being (for the extrication). It was our gift to our fellow man."

THE TOUGHEST TRAGEDY OF ALL

The tragedy Huckstep most remembers struck close to home. His 16-year-old granddaughter was killed in a 1989 car accident -- just a city block from the hospital emergency room he worked to build.

"As much death and tragedy that I've seen, I didn't think I'd be affected. But it's different when it's your own," he says quietly, his eyes brimming.

"She was a beautiful girl. I miss her."

LEARNING DISASTER THE HARD WAY

In addition to the extrication business, Huckstep kept busy with county government. At the urging of friends, he won the presiding seat on what was then called the county court in 1978.

After about six weeks on the job, the blizzard hit.

Huckstep had been out all night working several bad accidents. It was snowing a bit around 2:30 or so when he returned back home.

"At 9:30 the sheriff's department called and asked what they should do about the blizzard. That's when I was indoctrinated."

During his years on the county commission, Huckstep has handled other disasters as well -- including the most recent flooding.

"Sometimes, I think my middle name is disaster," he says with a shake of his graying head.

I'LL JUST WAKE DAD UP

Ten years ago, Huckstep had his closest call with death -- and he has the ticket to prove it.

He traveled to Chicago for a bond signing. The process took about four hours -- signing the bonds with a master pen as 24 other pens replicated his signature.

He flew up on Air Illinois, and made arrangements to fly back to Carbondale, Ill. He called his son, Gordon, about picking him up.

"I was coming down with a flu bug that day. I felt horrible. They came around at lunch for a break, but I told them I'd keep on signing so I could hurry and get home. I asked them to check for an earlier flight out. All that was available was TWA, and I had to change planes in St. Louis. I didn't have time to tell anyone about my change in plans or cancel my ticket."

When he left St. Louis at 6:15, the plane collided with the storm cell.

"The plane was rocking. I thought `what a damned fool I was.' I should have stayed on my regularly scheduled flight."

Little did he know his regularly scheduled flight crashed in the same storm near Marion, Ill.

Huckstep landed at the Cape airport and went straight to bed to nurse his flu.

Meanwhile, his son saw a bulletin on the TV screen about the crash. He learned later there were no survivors.

"Gordon got his sisters together and they came up to the house to start the wake. They told my wife, `It's times like this we have to stick together.' She didn't know what they were talking about. She said `if we all have to stick together, she'd just wake dad up.'"

BOND AMONG GOOD FRIENDS

His frankness has earned Huckstep quite a reputation.

"I've always been this way. Even in school, I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I'd say it -- no matter where the chips fell."

He's paid the price for his candor at times, especially in government. "I get so tired of government people saying one thing and doing another. And I tell them so."

But it's also earned him close friendships, such as with Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond.

They met when Bond was an auditor candidate, making a campaign stop. "I kind of liked him. He was just a young pup."

During the visit, a Marine recruiter stopped by to say Huckstep's son, Gordon, had been wounded in Vietnam. He could find out no further information.

But Bond used his connections to discover that Gordon's injuries were not life-threatening. Bond and Huckstep have been great buddies ever since.

NOT READY FOR RETIRING LIFE

At year's end, he will retire from the county commission, but he's not opting for the retiring life. He will keep busy as chairman of the Cameron Insurance board.

Huckstep looks back on his years in government with pride, bringing a businessman's approach to the job.

"There's nothing worse than a dishonest politician," he grimaces. "You can get mad at me because of my stupidity, but not because I'm a crook or a thief. That's just my philosophy."

Huckstep doesn't plan to stop speaking his mind.

You always know where he stands. Just ask him.