Nate Conte knows being the oldest child means he may need to help his two younger brothers from time to time. What he never expected was extending that help in a potentially fatal situation.
But when a group of youth from First Baptist Church, Montgomery, wound up upside down in the church van on Interstate 85, 15-year-old Nate was the one who kept 13-year-old Jacob safe.
“It just makes you proud to be a dad,” Jesse Conte, an associate in the office of communications services for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said, choking up. “I remember thinking, ‘God, you are there.’ I remember breathing prayers. I was still thinking, ‘God, I know you are in control,’ and I had a peace from that perspective. But I was terrified.”
Conte’s sons were part of a church caravan of youth on their way to Lake Martin for a day trip Aug. 21. The Conte brothers were in a van with nine other youth and three adult leaders when the right rear tire of their van blew out causing it to fishtail and flip several times across the median.
Stuart Davidson, minister to students at the Montgomery Baptist Association church, was driving the van and was trapped until the Jaws of Life was used to get him out. One student landed on the asphalt of the southbound lanes, and one was pinned under the van.
It was Jacob’s first youth trip and first trip without his parents.
“I had been telling Nate to watch [Jacob] closely,” Conte said. “[Jacob] was almost ejected from the van, but Nate grabbed him.”
Nate, who was sitting over the tire that blew, said protecting his brother came as a “natural” reaction.
“As we were flipping around, I saw Briggs King (Attorney General Troy King’s son) fly out, and I saw the front of Jacob’s head hit the back of the windshield, and I thought he’d fly out, too, so I grabbed him,” he said. “It was sort of natural in that he was there and that he needed someone to bring him back in and no one else was going to do it.”
Jacob, Briggs and five others were taken to Baptist Medical Center South in Montgomery but none had life-threatening injuries. The other seven walked away from the accident with little to no injuries.
Senior Pastor Jay Wolf was on his way to perform a funeral when he received word of the accident. After it became clear that there were no fatalities and everyone was going to be all right, Wolf began praising God.
“They are calling it the ‘Miracle on 85,’” he said. “It’s becoming God’s triumph.
“It’s an amazing good news story that could be so vastly, darkly different,” Wolf continued. “Our primary goal is to praise God for what did not happen.”
During the morning service Aug. 22, Wolf told his congregation, “For all practical rights, we should be meeting here today to mourn because of a great tragedy, but instead we meet here to praise God for an immeasurable victory. I can’t explain it all but that it’s God’s grace, His glory; He did something extraordinary yesterday.”
Nate couldn’t agree more.
“There’s no doubt there is a God in my mind,” he said. “Just seeing the van as crushed as it was and many of us not getting hurt at all, God had to have His hand in our lives protecting [us].”
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