Jeff Wingo

Jeff was my best friend and the Best Man at my wedding in 1997. He and I started our climbing journeys together in 1992 while going to Berry College in Rome, Georgia. Among so many other reasons for our friendship, we shared a love of the sport, our Faith, mountain biking, and just being outdoors.

In 1998, Jeff left for Mt. Whitney in the California Sierras. Its the tallest point in the contiguous (i.e. excluding Alaska) USA. He, Marty, and CJ carefully planned for an ascent of the East Face. They were successful, but on the descent Jeff slipped and he slid down a 300 foot ice slope to a much farther drop off. He was lost to us.

I got the call on a Wednesday night. Arriving home, Susan told me what Marty had called and told her. I remember word-for-word how it all went, and how we later that night talked with a Sierras park ranger who asked me to go tell Jeff's parents. Susan and I went, of course - and it was heart-wrenching, of course. I'll never forget each moment of that night.

The funeral service was emotional and powerful. The entire Church in Jeff's home town was packed beyond capacity. Jeff was very social. He never could get through a room full of people without stopping and talking with everyone. That used to annoy me when he was here, but I look back fondly and see that people were just the most important thing in his life. He was the most naturally Christian person I have ever known. I have even thought sometimes that his short life made him closer to God while he was here. This is so true, as has been so often  corroborated by anyone who ever met him, that when I see the popular W.W.J.D. (for "What Would Jesus Do?") bracelet, I often think how you could almost as easily use the "J" for "Jeff."

Between the funeral and the visitation, three different people who did not know each other approached Jeff's parents (I don't even think they all knew Jeff) and independently told them an identical, shocking story...that they had each had a dream where they saw Jeff's accident happen. Not one had not heard Marty's detailed account of it all, and they hadn't had any opportunity to speak to each other, yet they all told the same story of how they saw Jeff sliding on the white ice, heard only wind rushing past as he slid, and that Jeff made no sound. All three told these same details, and Marty said that this was all true - exactly - as we already knew because Marty had told us so many times. More amazing, though, is that all three people also said that they saw Jeff scooped up by angels as he cleared the cliff before the long drop below. I believe that God spared Jeff the pain of death in this way, and I believe He wanted Jeff's parents to know that He did, through those three people.

The years have passed, but I can still hear Jeff's voice and his laugh with perfect clarity. They were unique, after all, and so was he. So much was written about him and said about him after his death, relating the stories of how he had touched lives and shown his great charity - his giving spirit. His story even inspired writer Michelle Hiskey to write a feature article on Jeff and his trip to Mt. Whitney. The story won her a national journalism award, and it appears below.

In 1999, I went to Mt. Whitney myself and climbed it so that I could see the accident site for myself and video it for Jeff's family. Marty went with me and guided me to the spot where he saw it all happen. It was perhaps the most emotional experience of my life, the altitude and remote environment lending even more impact to the scene. Except for a nagging and ominous cloud (produced by the memory of Jeff's accident) that occupied a part of my brain the whole time, Marty and I spent most of the trip feeling much the way we always did when we had climbed together in Yosemite or Seneca, or on dozens of other trips. We enjoyed the mountain, but when we got to the accident site, that all changed. I don't know how long we lingered there, but we did. When we got back down to the tents at the base of the East Face (still very high and remote), we called our wives on cell phones and that was emotional too. Both ladies had been against our going, and all four of us were glad Marty and I were down and out of possible danger. The cloud was lifted.

I played the video of the trip - with the accident site - at a few of my slide shows so that I could tell other climbers about my friend; and I showed it at the dedication of his memorial stone dedication at Berry College. It sits today on the ropes course where he and I learned how to belay. Michelle Hiskey even came down for that. We were all touched that it had not just been a story for her that she moved beyond after it was published. Even from beyond, Jeff had touched her life too. 

• The Michelle Hiskey feature on Jeff that appeared in the Atlanta-Journal and Constitution

• Jeff lived his life for The Most Important Thing. He'd want you to know about it.

The gazebo behind us in this picture is in the center of the Winshape ropes course at Berry College where Jeff and I started climbing. Berry College has added three additional ropes courses to the campus, and this one is now known as "The Wingo Course" to differentiate it from the others. Thanks, Berry and Winshape, for so honoring the memory of one of your own.