For many dads, there is nothing they won’t do for their children. They work hard and do their best daily to provide their kids with a wonderful life. Some, quite literally, put their lives on the line to make their dreams come true. David Jones wasn’t going to let flooding get in the way of him walking his daughter, Elizabeth Marquez, down the aisle at her wedding, so he did something incredible.
Jones was supposed to make a two-hour drive from South Carolina to Tennessee for the ceremony, but Hurricane Helene made the trip much longer. The aftereffects of the storm left the area heavily flooded, and his short trip turned into seven hours by car and another five and a half hours on foot. But he made it and gave the couple an incredible gift.
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Jones tried his best to get there.
The father told WJHL he traveled from South Carolina to Tennessee on Interstate 26 through many diversions. He finally crossed the state line around 2 a.m., but a state trooper told him he could drive no further.
“I said, ‘You have to understand. My daughter’s getting married at 11:00 this morning, and I’m going to be there to walk her down the aisle,'” Jones told the news outlet.
He ventured out on foot.
When the car couldn’t go any further, Jones decided to walk. He had run marathons and figured he was about 30 miles from where he needed to be. So he took off in complete darkness with just a cellphone light and a lot of faith.
“It just … it’s awful,” Jones explained to WJHL. “And I can tell you a lot about the mud and the debris fields where I have to climb six, seven-foot-tall piles of debris of old fences and huge trees and it was just a tangled mess and dead-end roads and all kinds of things.”
He could have died on the trip.
He explained he came in contact with a crew working with a backhoe to clear debris that didn’t know he was there. It became frightening when Jones became trapped in the mud.
“I was up to my knees in mud and couldn’t move. And he doesn’t see me. Of course, his cab is facing the other way,” he told WJHL. “Most of the time, he’s swinging this thing around, and I’m ducking. Really, I’m thinking this could be it. There was a lot of prayer at that point.”
Jones miraculously made his way out.
After freeing himself from the mud, he ended up back on the highway with the help of a reflective stake so cars would see him and not hit him. He eventually flagged a car down, and a friend happened to be inside. The former coworker drove him the final eight miles so he could get to his daughter’s wedding on time.
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The bride had no idea what her father went through.
She told WJHL that her dad’s journey touched her heart. “That’s so emotionally moving [to know] that my dad loves me that much, that he’ll come and go through all of that to get to my wedding and be there on time,” she said.
Jones gave the couple the stake she carried on his journey with a sweet message. “I brought the reflector to the reception, and I presented it to Elizabeth, my daughter, and Daniel just for them to remember, to be a protector and a good reflection of each other and a reflection of God,” he said. The father of the bride added he’s not a hero, “it’s what any dad would do.”
