“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.” —Luke 10:33

By Emily Darby Williams

On Thursday, November 8, a father and husband from Courtland paid the ultimate price in an act of compassion.

Larry Hulett Patton, 63, tried to help an elderly driver after he’d seen the man crash into a utility pole on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Whitehaven.

Now the Patton family is asking for help for “Little” Larry Ray Patton, 33, who also tried to aid the wreck victim and survived injuries from the snapped wires that claimed his father’s life.

An account has been set up at First Security Bank branches for the Larry Patton Benefit Fund.
First Pentecostal Church of Batesville plans to hold a fund-raiser in January to help defray medical and travel expenses to the Med in Memphis.

“Little” Larry is now home in Courtland.

A home health nurse visits three times a week to help care for his wounds.

Patton has an abdominal belt to hold in gauze and his wife, Katherine Smith Patton, packs it every four hours to keep infection from setting.

“He can’t walk more than 20 or 30 feet without losing his breath,” she said. “He has a colostomy bag and whenever it is removed they will have to reopen where he was already cut.”

He had muscles removed from bone where the wire cut across his stomach and part of his colon was removed.

They will visit the Med once a week to make sure his wound isn’t infected.

It’s unknown when Larry will be able to return to his job with the petroleum company he works for and the expenses of doctor bills and traveling are mounting.

Patton  and his son were repairing gas pumps at the BP Station in Memphis when they saw the elderly man lose control of his car and hit the pole.

Larry Hulett had undergone heart catheterization only a few days before but felt well and wanted to help his son at work that day, said Katherine Patton.

“He was just that way, he was always going,” she added.

When the father and son saw the need for help, their good-natured hearts did what good Samaritans do: they ran to help.

At 11 a.m. their fate changed when a white SUV drove over the downed power lines causing them to snap from the pole and whip both men 20 feet into the air, according to eye witnesses.

Larry Hulett was killed on the scene and Little Larry was critically injured. The snapped power lines sliced the 33-year-old’s chest from his neck through his back according to media reports.

The driver who crashed into the utility pole escaped with minor injuries, and Little Larry was taken to the Med where he would stay in intensive care for weeks undergoing several surgeries.
As the son fought for his life, his father was being buried in Shiloh Cemetery in Courtland Wednesday, November 14.

“He was a simple farmer and construction worker. I have learned that Larry Patton was married to the same woman for 45 years, his wife Wynette. He had a son and daughter and three grandchildren. But to law enforcement and the media, and more importantly, the many people whose lives he touched in all his brief 63 years on this earth, Larry Patton will always be known as the ‘Good Samaritan,’” Desoto Times Tribune editor Robert Lee Long wrote in a column on November 14.

“His name deserves to be in a headline,” Long wrote.

First Security Bank has branches in Batesville, Como, Crenshaw, Hernando, Marks, Olive Branch, Barton, Pope, Robinsonville, Sardis, Southaven and Tunica.