GREENLEAF, Idaho — This story originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
Jim Bittick had a good life.
He’d wake up at 6, work his shift at Campbell Tractor Company, eat dinner with his wife, Loma, then together they’d go tend to the family farm. In his spare time, he’d help Loma coach volleyball and, as the years flew by, spend time with more and more grandkids. He achieved a life-long dream a few years ago when he was hired to coach a high school varsity basketball team. And the farm, which has been in the family since 1907, needed constant attention.
“Long days but fun days,” he said. “It was really happy.”
These days, Bittick doesn’t do much of any of that.
His brother-in-law comes over in the mornings to make breakfast while Bittick puts on his prosthetic legs and lays in bed for a while before getting up to start his day. Many routine tasks are more difficult now, given that Bittick had both legs amputated below the knee and lost eight fingers. He doesn’t cook much, instead eating microwavable frozen meals. He hired someone to help him take showers.
And Loma, his best friend and wife of nearly 42 years, isn’t around anymore. She was killed in a car crash, the same one that took away Jim’s legs, fingers and life as he knew it.
“Life has been totally upended,” Bittick said. “But you’ve just got to turn over and stand right-side up and get after it.”
• • •
The night of the crash — which occurred around 5:15 p.m. on Feb. 9, 2023 — Jim and Loma were driving to Greenleaf Friends Academy, a private Christian high school of about 45 students in the agrarian community of Greenleaf, triangulated between Wilder, Notus and Caldwell in Canyon County. Jim was the head coach of the school’s girls varsity basketball team and Loma was his assistant. The team had its best season in years, qualifying for the state tournament for the first time since 2011.
Before heading off to state, though, Greenleaf Friends had a district championship to play for. Jim and Loma were talking strategy on their way to the school, where they’d meet their players and head to Nampa for the big game.
Their daughter, Stacey Bittick, was at the family farmhouse about a mile and a half from the school when she saw her parents whiz by in their Ford F150. Not long after, she was notified that they had been in an accident.
A mile past the farmhouse, Jim and Loma were t-boned by a Volkswagen Jetta that ran a stop sign. Jim, who was driving, and Loma were both ejected from their pickup truck, which came to rest in a pasture off the roadway. The Jetta hit Loma’s side of the truck. She was officially declared deceased at the hospital, but Jim deduced that she was basically gone before being taken there.
None of the three people involved in the crash were wearing a seat belt.
Today, the scene — at the intersection of Friends Road and Lower Pleasant Ridge Road — is marked with “Loma” on a white cross, and some flowers beneath it. It’s one block south of the school.
“We’ve driven down that road thousands of times and never had any issues,” Stacey Bittick said. “But we’d also seen lots of times when people would run that stop sign or other stop signs on that road.”
The girls on the basketball team got word of the crash but didn’t know the extent of it, so they carried on and prepared to play. Once they found out that Loma had died, the game was declared a no-contest, and Greenleaf Friends and their opponent, Liberty Charter, were co-district champions.
“That’s amazing that teenage girls had that much guts to do that,” Jim says now, reflecting. “That’s what Loma would have wanted. That’s what I wanted.”
Jim doesn’t remember much from the crash. He can recall regaining consciousness in a field near the crash site, wondering where Loma was and how she was doing. He remembers a bystander at the scene telling him “Jim, it doesn’t look good for Loma.”
The memory that stuck with him is Loma’s scream just before they were hit.
“Probably one of the roughest things every night when I go to bed, I hear that scream when she noticed the car was going to hit us,” Jim said. “That, I don’t think, will ever leave.”
• • •
Jim was hospitalized for more than four months recovering from a dislocated right shoulder, compound fracture in his right forearm, a broken left clavicle and multiple head injuries. The medication he was on that was keeping him in stable condition cut off circulation to his extremities, and a few weeks into his hospital stay, his legs and fingers were taken.
“I remember waking up and looking at my left hand and I could see the ends of them were black, and I knew they were going to have to take them off,” Jim said, recalling fuzzy memories from his hospital stay. “I woke up and I had these plastic protector things on my legs and kind of looked at them and went, ‘yeah, they had to take my legs also.’”
Jim didn’t feel any pain during the crash, and it was minimal while he was hospitalized. Today, he has what he calls “ghost pains” — “it’s just kind of a vibration, nagging, it’s not really a pain,” he said. “It’s kind of like grabbing an electric fence and you get that little buzz and you let go.”
He’s slowly settling into his new normal — he goes to physical therapy once a week to walk with his prosthetic legs, and someday he’ll get prosthetic fingers. But everyday tasks such as making meals, doing laundry, showering and using the bathroom are exponentially more challenging. He said not having fingers has been harder than re-learning to walk.
One of his sons, Justin Bittick, estimates it takes 15 minutes for his dad to get his prosthetic legs and socks on.
Being less independent is hard for Jim, he said. At 65, he shouldn’t have to make lists of tasks for his grandkids to complete for him.
“Anything he does, it takes him about four or five times as much time to do it, if he can do it,” Justin Bittick said. “Sometimes there’s things he can’t.”
Jim can, however, still drive.
He uses a lift to get into his pickup and pushes the heel of his shoe to the ground to help lower his foot onto the gas pedal. A tri-pin handle is attached to the steering wheel to help him grip it — “my wrist goes in between two pins and then I hold onto the third pin and that keeps my wrist on the steering wheel,” he said.
Jim completed a lengthy process to regain the ability to drive, and though he was driving when his life suddenly changed forever, he said the activity doesn’t give him the anxiety he thought it would.
He is more cautious now when behind the wheel.
“When I come to an intersection, it doesn’t matter where, I make sure that nobody’s coming,” he said. “Whether it’s a stop sign, stop light, whatever.”
Jim’s injuries effectively forced him into retirement, and he no longer coaches at Greenleaf Friends Academy. He’s still involved with volleyball, though, as a referee assignor for prep games in the Treasure Valley.
And he still invests time into the farm. Not like he and Loma used to, but the best he can for right now — “my brother-in-law, he actually takes care of the water, irrigating and stuff on the farm, so I go out … and kind of buzz around the farm, looking to make sure the crops look all right,” he said.
His other son, John Bittick, stressed the importance of his dad staying busy. It helps distract his mind, if only temporarily, from all that he’s lost.
“I have work to take my mind off of things, my wife has our three children to take her mind off of things,” John Bittick said. “Dad doesn’t really have any distractions.”
Jim now lives in the house on the farm, the same farmhouse where Stacey Bittick was the night of the crash. It’s the house Loma grew up in, the house where Jim and Loma were going to spend their retirement.
He has family all over the valley, and he sees them often. But retirement, and living on the old family farm, aren’t the same without Loma.
“He has visitors,” John Bittick said. “But not the one that he wants.”
• • •
After the crash, the Bittick family received an outpouring of support from the “whole state and across the country,” John Bittick said. It came in the form of phone calls, text messages, cards, prayers, food, gas money, help on the farm — “you name it,” John Bittick said.
Loma coached volleyball for more than three decades all over southwestern Idaho, from Middleton to Marsing to Homedale, Greenleaf, and even Ontario, Oregon. Jim estimates that there were 700 people at Loma’s funeral.
“Mom and Dad have touched a lot of lives,” John Bittick said. “It’s amazing how far Mom’s reach had went.”
The man driving the Volkswagen Jetta that hit the Bitticks’ Ford pickup, Shawn Stacy, pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and was recently sentenced — two years fixed, plus 15 years indeterminate. Stacy, 28, has a long list of driving violations and was cited twice after the crash that killed Loma: once for driving 89 mph in an 80 mph zone and passing other vehicles at 89 mph in a 65 mph zone; and again for following too closely and causing a four-vehicle crash, according to online court records and audio of his Aug. 8 sentencing hearing. The manslaughter conviction was his fourth felony.
Audio of Stacy’s sentencing hearing plays a call Stacy made while he was in jail that was intercepted by the prosecution. In it, Stacy admits to frequently running the stop sign at the intersection where the deadly crash happened.
“Since I had the stop sign, they had the right of way,” Stacy says on the recording. “It was on a country road. I would never fully stop, I (rolled through) it all the time. I would look, look, look, look, and would be good. Somehow I missed a red (expletive) truck. And they (expletive) t-boned me.”
Crash reconstructors estimated that Stacy was driving between 45-55 mph when he hit the Bitticks’ truck, the court audio says.
Following his prison sentence, Stacy’s license will be suspended for 20 years, with the first year absolute — meaning that Stacy may be eligible for restricted driving privileges one year after his release. He was also ordered to pay a $5,000 civil penalty to Jim Bittick.
“He will never make enough money to reimburse my dad for what he’s lost,” Justin Bittick said. “They could’ve settled in court for a dollar and we would still feel the same way.”
Stacy’s case was mediated, meaning the prosecution and defense came to an agreement on what they felt was an appropriate punishment, though it was still ultimately up to a judge. It was determined that it would be hard to prove Stacy acted with gross negligence, which could have lengthened his prison sentence, since Jim and Loma were not wearing seat belts.
During the sentencing hearing, Stacy’s defense attorney noted that Stacy “was fighting for his life” after the crash, having suffered a head injury, broken “a lot of his ribs” and his leg. He also pointed out that Stacy was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash and “made a tragic and horrible error in judgment.”
“To the loved ones of Loma, I am deeply remorseful, regretful and ashamed of my negligent actions that have sadly brought us here today,” Stacy said, in part, during the hearing. “... I will utilize any time of my incarceration to reflect and better myself, because anything less would only disrespect the memory of Loma.”
Those words rang hollow to Jim Bittick.
“There was absolutely no emotion whatsoever in his voice,” Jim Bittick said. “So I really don’t believe that he was remorseful at all. ... I think the only thing that he was sorry about is that he got caught and now has to spend time in jail.”
Jim went to a corner of the courthouse and cried “for a while” after the sentencing hearing was over. It brought some relief and closure, he said, and also ended a process of reliving a horrific event.
He may never forgive Shawn Stacy for running the stop sign that night. But he tries to harness Loma’s good nature in hoping that Stacy betters himself while he’s in prison and comes out a safer driver.
Even though that won’t bring her back.
“I’d give both my legs again and all my fingers again,” he said, “if I could feel that touch on my shoulder one more time.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
