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Penny Ray/pennyray@cherokeescout.com Royse Brown fell asleep while driving on Jan. 25 but survived to share his tale.
Murphy- A former mayoral candidate who only earned two votes in a primary election survived a terrifying experience last week that only escalates with intrigue the more he speaks.
“If you put a bunch of this in your story, people are probably going to say, ‘He’s lying,’ ” 79-year-old Royse Brown told the Cherokee Scout. “No, I’m not. It’s all true.”
Brown, who lost to Rick Ramsey during the 2017 Republican primary election in Murphy, survived a single-vehicle accident in the early evening hours of Jan. 25. He fell asleep at the wheel about a mile from his house, and his sport utility vehicle tumbled off the side of Beaver Dam Road before resting against a tree about 50 feet down a hill.
“It rolled over about seven times and tossed me around inside like a cracker,” Brown said. “I was hitting my head on the ceiling even though I had my seat belt on. Two men came down and rescued my dumb ass.”
Brown identified the two men who pulled him out of the passenger side window as Ward Gould and Colby Stalcup, neither of whom he knows. He said the men helped him back up the hill via an asphalt road a few feet away from the wrecked vehicle, then waited until police arrived in case he needed assistance.
Brown declined medical attention, as he only suffered a bruised left rib and a scarred right shin. He felt relief after a N.C. Highway Patrol trooper offered not to write up a report since it was a single-party accident that didn’t damage anyone’s property but his own.
“I said, ‘Well, that’s good because maybe it won’t affect my driving record and my insurance,’ ” Brown recalled. “The boys that rescued me are heroes in my mind. One of them brought me home, and he had three kids in the back of the vehicle. He had things to do, but he took the time to drag my dumb ass out of that car and save my life.”
The accident alone is enough to make anyone listen to his story, but the further Brown digs into the past, the more interesting his tale becomes. About two months ago, Brown met a homeless young man and woman at a local laundromat and offered to let them stay in his house for as long as they needed.
When the Scout visited Brown’s home Thursday morning, the pair was cooking breakfast and making coffee. Brown introduced the young woman as his daughter because “I feel like she is,” he said, adding that the pair make him feel “like a king.”
“I’m glad that there was somebody on the other side of the road that heard [the accident],” Rebecca Barber said. “I wish I knew who helped him home because I would like to go thank them.”
A few weeks after inviting the homeless pair into his house, Brown experienced a revelation that assured him he had nothing to worry about.
“I woke up in my living room and there was a fog in my house,” Brown recalled. “And, suddenly, a voice came down, and I believe it was from God or Jesus. It said, ‘Royse, everything is going to be alright.’ ”
Around that same time, Brown met a man who agreed to clear some trees from his 18 acres of land in exchange for a portion of the profits. That man, whose identity the Scout was unable to confirm, previously suffered a gasoline attack and was scheduled for treatment at a hospital in Atlanta on the day of Brown’s accident, he said.
Brown said the man started feeling extreme pain during the early morning hours of Jan. 25, so he decided to drive him to Georgia right away instead of waiting.
“I decided that he needed to go to the emergency room at 2 o’clock in the morning rather than waiting until 4 or 5 that afternoon to check into the hospital,” Brown said. “We got to Atlanta around 5 a.m.”
Brown said he immediately drove back to Cherokee County and dropped off a passenger who accompanied him and the lumberjack to the hospital. He believes he completed a few errands in Murphy before heading back to his Indian Hills Drive home around 4:30 p.m.
“I hadn’t slept for about 35 hours,” Brown said. “Thirty minutes before this accident, I decided I’m going to take a vacation in April and May, and I wanted to drive this car and all it had on it was liability insurance. I [called the insurance company] and said I want to change the insurance to full coverage, and they did.
“I’m the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.”
At the minimum, Brown’s Honda Element sustained damage on the roof, windshield, driver’s side door, left and right front fenders, plus the passenger’s side-view mirror and rocker panel.
“It looks to me like they won’t have any trouble putting it back together,” Brown optimistically said. “I have been blessed and for what reason, I have no idea.
“Everything I’ve told you is the truth. Even my vision, the realization of God in my room when he said, ‘You’re going to be OK.’ That’s true. And for anyone who says, ‘You don’t talk to God,’ I didn’t talk to Him, He talked to me.”
Brown turns 80 years old Sunday.
“I never dreamed I would [live until age 80],” he said. “I figured some guy with a gun would shoot me for messing with his wife. I used to be pretty wild.
“Actually, I’m hoping for 120. That’s my aim.”