September 30, 1955, Cholame, 6 P.M.

"And there was another man behind me, in a panic, shaking, and offering me anything I wanted if I could help his friend. But I knew he was gone."

Annabele Coombes, the nurse who came upon the scene. 

By Tim Black

James Dean lost his mother when he was nine years old, and legend has him dying lonely on a highway. But recent research has uncovered that he was not without the ministrations of a wonderful woman in his last moments--a woman who never forgot the day when she came upon the crumpled Porsche at the intersection of highways 41 and 466 on September 30, 1955. Annabele Coombes, a nurse at Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, is the unsung heroine of the tragic day. We are indebted to a man who was not yet born that day, her grandson, Drew Seal, for sharing his recollections of the remarkable woman who was his grandmother.

This is her story:

Annabele Coombes, known as "Kay" to her friends, was an RN at the Paso Robles, California War Memorial Hospital in 1955. Paso Robles is twenty-six miles west of Cholame. Annabele was a poster-child for Middle-American achievement and values. She had graduated at the top of her class at Blackhawk Nursing College in Moline, Illinois, in 1934, and married her high-school sweetheart Robert Coombes. For a time, while Robert worked hard and brought home the pay and Annabele looked for placement, they lived in Moline. But soon, opportunities for both looked better in Iowa, so they moved to Davenport. It was in Davenport that Karen Coombes-- Drew's mother-- was born in 1937.

They were a typical All-Amercan, hard-working family who stayed together and lived life to the fullest at a time when that harmonious element seemed as natural as the wind that blew through the large maple trees in their quiet Iowa neighborhood.

Eventually, they would locate to Paso Robles, a beautiful small town located on the Central Coast of California along highway 101. Annabele continued her nursing at War Memorial. Drew's mother Karen, enrolled in Paso Robles High School and supported her football team, "The Bearcats".

That warm September 30th evening in Paso Robles at about 5:30p.m., Annabele, her husband Robert, and Karen, got into their Oldsmobile and headed out of town, east on the highway 466 enroute to Bakersfield.  Later, the "Bearcats" would be competing against their number-one rival, "The Oilers"

The drive for the first twenty-five miles was peaceful. The Central Coast is a beautiful location and the drive east on highway 466 was straight through some of the richest farmland where cattle ranches thrived and grain was harvested. Cholame once was inhabited by the Chumash Indians who gave it the name meaning "beautiful". One could imagine a quiet drive in the Coombes Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Starfire. The car was top-of- the-line and cost $2960.00, a large sum for a car at the time when a top of the line Ford Victoria Crestliner would cost $2241.00. 

The sun had gone down below the hills behind them to the west and the daylight they had when they left was giving way to dusk as it neared 6 P.M. The rumble of the "Rocket 8" motor may have been lulling Karen to sleep.

Twenty-six miles east of Paso Robles, they passed the general store, garage and post office in the area known as Cholame. As they rounded a curve, they noticed people and some cars parked on the roadside and there appeared to be an ambulance also parked there. As the Coombes family advanced toward the area it became evident a black and white 1950 Ford Tudor was turned sideways, its left-front fender and bright chrome grill devastated by an apparent collision.

Annabele instictively calculated the possibility of carnage, but hoped nobody was seriously injured. She saw a young man leaning against his totaled black and white Ford. His head was down. This was Donald Turnupseed, a 21 year-old Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student who had been attemting a left turn when the collision with the other car happened.

The big two-toned, Buick ambulance's doors were opened and Annabele asked Robert to stop. Robert had no interest in viewing the carnage, but Annabele thought she might be of help, over where there appeared to be a smaller car. It was badly crumpled. It was James Dean's new Porsche 550 Spyder against a barbed wire fence thirty-feet from the impact point in the intersection of Highways 41 and 466. It landed pointing in the same direction it had been driven. Annabele got out of the Oldsmobile and Karen was soon behind her. Bill Hickman and Sandy Roth had already arrived. They had been following James Dean and his mechanic Rolf Wuetherich since they left Competition Motors in Hollywood two-hundred miles south. 

Annabele Coombes viewed the man in the mangled Porsche racer. He had a broken neck. She pressed her forefinger to his wrist and realized there was a very faint pulse. James Dean was dying. 

"I saw he was not going to live. And there was another man there behind me, in a panic, shaking, and offering me anything I wanted if I could help his friend," Annabele remembered. "But I knew he was already gone".

Annabele checked on Rolf Wuetherich who was lying prone beside the Porsche, badly injured, but alive.  Donald Turnupseed seemed to be sadly relating his version of the crash to an officer who had just arrived on the scene.

Karen Coombes 

 Annabele Coombes (right) Nurse at the Scene who knew there was no hope saving Jimmy. 

Annabele and Karen returned to the car as the body of James Dean and his gravely injured mechanic were being lifted into the ambulance by Paul Moreno and his assistant Collier 'Buster' Davidson. They continued on to the football game. At the game, many of Karen's Paso Robles High friends were discussing the accident they saw as they passed through the Cholame area.

Not long after the accident at Cholame, The Coombes moved South down the California Coast  a couple of hours to Santa Barbara. Karen enrolled in Santa Barbara High and Annabele continued her nursing profession at St. Francis, and then College Hospitals.

Eventually, Annabele's daughter would move back to the Midwest and have a son, Drew in 1961. In 1993, Annabele moved back to Illinois to be closer to her daughter and grandson. Annabele died in 1995, but not long before that, she gave away two of the remaining Bearcat-Oilers tickets dated September 30, 1955, to someone she hardly knew. Drew doesn't know where they went, but he claims Annabele cultivated James Dean fans who loved to hear her story about the day he died as much as she loved the atention she recieved recounting it. 

What If the Crash happened today?

Today, in addition to seat belts, an expensive car like Dean's might have a GPS system and crash-detection sensors tied to a computer system that would summon EMS and police to the scene using the 911 system, which was established in the early 1960s. Wireless phones presumably would speed help to the scene, as well. Dean likely would have been airlifted to a trauma center.

In 1955, many ambulances were owned by funeral homes without medical equipment other than a stretcher. CPR had not been invented either. Today, EMS squads carry defibrillators, cervical collars, spine boards, suction and other airway adjunts. In addition, EMS personnel perform procedures such as intubation, surgical airways and chest decompression.

But whether Dean would survive his crash in 2007 is a question that requires looking into the mechanism of injury involved. His head became the lead point of the collision. With head-on impacts, one of three propulsion patterns will occur to those not properly restrained by seat belts: down-and-under, up-and-over or seat belt syndromes. Dean experienced the up-and-over pattern and his unrestrained body became a human missile. His body arced forward and his head and face struck the windshield. His brain likely sustained a "coup-contra-coup" injury, and perhaps another injury, since he was knocked unconscious. His thorax/abdomen slamming into the steering wheel makes cardiac, pulmonary and abdominal injuries and rib fractures likely as well. Dean also may have sustaine an aortic injury, though a large amount of energy was absorbed by his neck (cervical spine). Depending on the position of the head in relation to the cervical spine, vertebral fractures may be produced by hyperflexion, hyperextension or a direct-compression mechanism. Dean probably had a craniocervical disruption from severe traumatic flexion and distraction. Most die from such injuries, but occasionally survive if resuscitation is performed. This type of injury is identified in fatal cervical spine autopsies. Unfortunately, an autopsy was never performed. We know some of his external injuries but not his internal ones. It's clear, though, that Dean sustained fatal injuries. Even if there had been an ambulance at the intersection at the moment of his crash, it doesn't mean he would have survived.

    TB

Medical information: Cynthia Blank-Reid. Ms. Blank-Reid is a trauma clinical nurse specialist at Temple University Hospital and a clinical adjunct associate professor at Drexel University College of Nursing, both in Phladelphia