The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
THE CHALLENGE OF HIS LIFE
Arborist passing on 33-year business after losing hand in freak accident
MIDDLEFIELD — Arborist Allan Poole is a determined, resilient and positive man. Still, his grievous accident with a wood splitter two months ago tested both his and his wife Nancy Winship-Poole’s resolve and view of the world in a way each never expected.
For 33 years, Poole has run Allan’s Tree Service on Jackson Hill Road. He lost his hand Sept. 22 when it was severed after the wood-processing machine he was using accidentally set off. Poole bumped his leg against the start button while removing a piece of bark that obstructed its operation, he said.
When Winship-Poole and Poole tell customers — many of whom have been with him for decades — why he’s retiring early, “one of the recurring things is ‘this is a horrible thing to have happened to you, Allan, but probably you’re the best candidate to be able to handle it,’ ” she said.
Still, Winship-Poole said, “It certainly isn’t the way he wanted to end his career.”
Poole, 66, knows the treetrimming business is a dangerous one, but he never anticipated a tragedy like this after decades in the business.
The 2011 Halloween nor’easter and Superstorm Sandy in 2012 left Poole with an entire hayfield at home full of wood from downed trees from his jobs.
“I didn’t know how I was ever going to get ahead of all that firewood,” Poole said, so he bought a wood-processing machine that cuts, splits and loads the wood onto his truck.
Poole had been using it for five years with no problem. The machine has an auto-split cycle and, when the user presses a button, it splits a log into pieces and drops them onto a conveyor belt, which deposits them into a truck.
“A piece of bark kept getting in the way of being able to split things properly, so I reached in, and at the same time, my leg bumped up against the button. In three or four seconds, my hand was cut in half and also cut off at the wrist, and my fingers were cut off from my hand,” Poole said. It was his dominant hand. “At first I couldn’t believe it happened,” he said, so he reached in with his right hand to grab what he thought was its cleanly severed hand.
It took a while for him to realize the gravity of his injury.
“I was in shock, but then I realized my hand wasn’t in one piece,” he said. “I held the hand against my chest and I had to walk through a path through the woods and over a brook to get back to my house.”
That’s when he saw his wife of more than 40 years working in the garden. Immediately, she took his belt and cinched it around his wrist to stop the blood flow, Poole said.
“I was in and out consciousness,” Poole said. “The pain was really awful.”
When he got to the hospital, the doctor walked into the operating room at Hartford Hospital
and assessed the situation. As soon as he spoke, Poole knew the prognosis was not good.
“He started addressing me with an apology, and I knew that probably meant they weren’t going to be able to save my hand,” he said.
Poole was discharged the next day at noon and had no complications, he said. That’s when the healing began, he and his wife said, on many levels.
“All my life, I’ve been a person who fixes things, designs things and makes things. It’s very hard because my whole connection with the world has a lot to do with my hands,” Poole said. “I’m grateful I’ve had the hand for so long.”
“I’m amazed at how strong and resolved Allan has been through this whole thing,” Winship-Poole said.
Challenges arise all the time, Winship-Poole said, that they haven’t considered. Recently, she put corn on the cob on the table for dinner.
“We both just looked at each other and I realized until he gets a prosthesis, eating corn on the cob is not going to be something that’s going to be easy for him to do,” Winship-Poole said. “But who would think of that?”
Since July, Peter Allard, who owns Pete the Tree Guy of Cromwell, has been working with Poole, ever since Poole began readying for his retirement next spring.
“It was very sad and very devastating news. He’s been well-loved by customers for a long time,” said Allard, who will be taking over the business. “He’s an all-around good guy. He knew the diseases, he knew the pests.”
Allard is also an arborist, something he said brings the expertise of both their businesses to the next level.
When Allard tells Poole’s customers that he’ll now be servicing them, he always tells them one thing: “You’ve got to nearly kill yourself to pay for the equipment, and then you’ve got to be careful that it doesn’t kill you while you’re using it.”
Poole is the sort of businessman who will be honest with people, Allard said, an ethic he shares.
“There’s a difference between an arborist and someone who just cuts a tree down for cash,” Allard said. “He doesn’t just do this for quick money. They know he’s a professional and they trust his judgement. Since they’ve worked with somebody like Allan, they’ll never take the alternative, the cheaper way, because they know it’s worth paying the extra money and get a professional arborist to do the job.”
Poole hopes to soon be approved by Medicaid for a prosthetic hand.
“The enormity of what happened and the impact it was going to have on our lives was not revealed to us all at once,” Poole said.
Winship-Poole said the path ahead is a simple one: “Take one day at a time and you keep moving forward, because what are your options? I know he will figure this out.”
An open house retirement party to thank former customers and celebrate Poole’s career will be held Dec. 23 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Indian Springs Golf Club, 132 Mack Road, Middlefield. His family is asking friends and customers to bring stories or photos if available to help create a book of memories for Poole. To attend, visit AllansTreeService.com. All are invited.
For information on Allard’s business, email petethetreeguy@yahoo.com or call 860-539-5879.