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Lightning can't ground
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By Anne Egan-Waukau
WEAC Media Relations Consultant
Phil Schweitzer keeps his 8th Grade Earth science class at Shawano Community Middle School exciting and full of electricity with his style and sense of humor.
But some students – past and present – say the award-winning teacher may have gone a bit too far this spring when he was struck by a bolt of lightning while working in his back yard.
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“How much more exciting can he get than by being struck by lightning during his weather unit,” said his wife, Sharrie Schweitzer, as she sat at a table near his physical therapy room at St. Mary’s Hospital Burn Center in Milwaukee. One student wrote, “You are going too far with the weather unit. Ben Franklin you ain’t,” Mrs. Schweitzer said, laughing.
Family maintains humor
That’s just a sample of the humor that helped the Schweitzer family get through the ordeal that left Schweitzer with burns over nearly half of his body. By coincidence, Schweitzer’s daughter, Nicki, is a nurse at the hospital and his son, Noah, attends the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee just up the street. Son Nate, 13, attends Shawano Community Middle School but made frequent visits to the Burn Center in Milwaukee.
Schweitzer is now recovering at home but spent six grueling weeks in Milwaukee receiving skin grafts and undergoing therapy. He will continue therapy throughout the summer and plans to return to school this fall.
“It’s amazing how your body deteriorates in such a short time,” he said while going through exercises designed to stretch his skin and muscles. After 20 minutes of therapy, he said, he feels like he’s spent eight hours hauling lumber. “But I’m getting better.”
His adventure began quietly on March 28 when he and Mrs. Schweitzer were out planting wild flowers in their yard on an overcast, rainy day.
‘A big loud crack’
“We’d been outside for a while when suddenly there was just a big loud crack,” Mrs. Schweitzer said. “He was 12 feet away from me. He went down. It hit me. I went down, but I was up just as fast.
“It happened so fast I wasn’t scared. But when I saw Phil . . . that got to me. He fell forward after he was struck and the intense heat from his clothing burned his skin.”
She said he was wearing a gold chain she gave him and that may have acted as a conductor.
“It just shattered into pieces,” she said. It also left a distinct burn mark around his neck,” she said.
“When he came to, he was not aware of what had happened.”
Schweitzer, 51, was stabilized at a local hospital then transported to Milwaukee by ambulance. But no one knew what to expect when he arrived.
“Basically he had electricity going through his system. You don’t know what lightning does to the system. We didn’t know what was affected,” Mrs. Schweitzer said.
His first couple of weeks at the hospital were spent on a ventilator, she said, adding he wasn’t aware of anything until April 14.
“I looked like a piece of ham – the cheap stuff,” Schweitzer said, showing his injuries, the worst of which are on his chest and stomach.
During his recovery, Mrs. Schweitzer called the school principal daily to give updates that were shared with staff and students.
Hundreds of cards
“We didn’t want the kids to be scared, and we didn’t want the staff to be unnecessarily worried,” she said. “He got hundreds of cards, including some from students he hadn’t heard from in 25 years.”
Many students sent cards using the words Schweitzer is known for saying to his students: “Don’t forget somebody loves you.”
“It’s absolutely heartwarming,” Schweitzer said. “It’s brought tears to my eyes – and honestly, that’s a hard thing to do to me.”
Now Schweitzer is focused on getting settled in at home.
“The first thing I want to do is thank everyone and write a letter to the school telling the kids how much I miss them and the staff,” Schweitzer said.
“I’ve never been through an experience like this before and I don’t want to do it again.”
Posted June 11, 1998
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