14 DAY TRIAL // A centenarian's story is as heartwarming as it is unbelievable. Sam Ledward from North Wales celebrated his 106th birthday last Friday, after having been declared dead 76 years ago.
Following a motorcycle accident in 1936, he was taken to the hospital and declared dead. He had been driving his 500cc Triumph motorbike when his front tire burst and he was plummeted off the bike, the Huffington Post writes.
He was on his way to the mortuary when the hospital attendant who was carrying him got spooked when he saw his body twitch. Sam Ledward would have been buried, had the porter not caught the movement.
Doctors took a closer look, and discovered the man was just in a coma, from which he recovered five days after medical staff had given up on him.
As he came to, he was startled to see hospital ward personnel around him.
“My first recollection of anything was seeing someone stood round the bed and me knocking something out of someone's hand,” he recalls.
“You don’t get rid of me like that,” he jokingly writes off the ordeal.
He went on to live a happy life, by the side of wife Edith, whom he lost in 1993. It's his younger cousin, 90-year-old Millie Minshall who takes care of him now. She, her daughter and their family celebrated Ledward’s 106th birthday with him.
Asked if the motorcycle accident scarred him physically in any way, he tells reporters he does get pain from time to time, but he doesn't let it affect him.
“I still feel it, but you just have to grin and bear it, don’t you? [...] I'm not too bad for an old codger,” he says.
Millie confirms that, even 76 years after being officially declared dead, Ledward is in good health.
“He's not bad, not bad at all,” she describes.