Eric Hess battles arthritis. There’s no cartilage in his shoulders. He also has a prosthetic hip.
Yet the Hayden man, 54, pumps iron at least six to seven days a week.
“Being in the gym is my therapy,” he said. “It always has been and it always will be.”
All the weight the bodybuilder lifts now, however, dwarfs in comparison to what he’s endured. In 1994, a 5-foot, 11-inch tall, 240-pound Hess was nearly crushed to death by a 56,000-pound dump truck. He highlights the harrowing incident in his newly published memoir, befittingly titled “56,000 Pounds.”
Hess, then 21, was installing a sanitary line in Bainbridge, Pa. At some point, Hess knelt down beside the massive truck when the driver didn’t see him and began to accelerate. The truck, soon dragging the young Hess over stones as he hung on to its front bumper, eventually rolled over part of his body.
Hess said he was conscious the entire time.
“I just watched the tire drive up my legs, over my knees, upward to my pelvis and it eventually stopped around my belly button and torso,” he said. “(The driver) had seen one of the guys in the backfill crew running down the street waving, ‘Back off, back off!’”
Ensuing X-rays showed Hess had an unrecognizable pelvis. Pumped full of morphine, Hess’ doctors told him he might never walk again.
“I had six fractures around my pelvis. Both of my sockets were completely shattered,” Hess said. “Best way to describe it is if you took a hammer and hit a pane of glass and it just shatters, that’s what my pelvis looked like. You couldn’t tell by looking at an X-ray what you’re looking at.”
Hess then found himself lying supine in his father’s house in Quarryville, Pa, for eight weeks. A friend of Hess would come over regularly with VHS cassette tapes to help distract him from the trauma, he said.
But despite the incredible injuries and multiple surgeries, Hess defied the odds.
Less than two years after the accident, doctors having surgically removed any final residual hardware from his body, Hess was back lifting weights and body building competitively while he opened his own gym.
By 1997, in fact, Hess broke a powerlifting juniors world record in bench press. He would also be featured in Muscle & Fitness Magazine for his triumphant comeback.
It was about 12 weeks ago when Hess, who moved to North Idaho between 2001-2002, decided to write a book about going from crushed to cranked. He said he’d wake up around 4 every morning, write, go to work as a real estate agent, then stay up until midnight writing some more. When Hess finished the final product, he had a story detailing his decades of recovery, resilience and his journey into fatherhood.
According to Hess, he wants his readers to not only become inspired by this arduous voyage, but to better understand life’s hardships.
“I want them to feel motivated,” Hess said of his readers. “I want them to feel hope, that they’re not alone. Many people in the gym now, they’re battling things that we have no clue about. Some big, some small.”
In addition to his real estate career, Hess spends his free time in the gym with his 12-year-old son, Hudson. Meanwhile, he said wellness is always going to be a part of his life, “because if I don’t exercise, I hurt.”
“Pain motivates me,” he said.
Paperback and e-book copies of “56,000 Pounds” can be found on Amazon online at a.co/d/02OVlVe6.
Eric Hess, of Hayden, performs a curl at Planet Fitness in Coeur d’Alene.
The cover of “56,000 Pounds,” a new book authored by Hayden local Eric Hess.
