An update on Phil Beatty, the man who credits his Kromer as a life-saver.

“I tell everyone I know to buy a Kromer. You never know how much it could mean to you.”

Phil Beatty couldn’t tell you a thing about the accident that nearly killed him. Which is good because, well, it nearly killed him.

You see, he was driving along a winter roadway last January, when an oncoming snowplow kicked up a road reflector—right through the windshield and into Phil.

We wrote a blog about it, not just because it was a miraculous story of survival, but because he survived thanks to a Stormy Kromer Original cap.

“My first Kromer was a red-and-black plaid Rancher, but that’s not my favorite one,” said Phil, who is happy to be back out on the road again. “My favorite Kromer is a green Original with a hole in the front. That’s where I got hit.”

Doctors weren’t sure how Phil would fare, but they certainly didn’t expect him to get back to work in under a year or two. He was back at it, though, in seven months.

“No one can explain why I’m doing so well,” added Phil. “They are all amazed.”

It wasn’t an easy road back, however. Phil was in a coma for three weeks. He doesn’t remember anything from the first seven weeks—even the night he tried, successfully, to escape from the hospital. He only knows he wasn’t in his right mind.

“My friends tell me I was like a six-year-old, and even though the accident was in January, I wasn’t thinking like myself again until June. I tell you: when you have trauma like that, you have to start your life all over.”

Now that he’s back to better-than-ever, we have to ask: Was it really the Kromer that saved him?

“I give God the credit for my recovery, and I have to thank the snowplow driver—who is an EMT—and the woman in the car behind him—who is a trauma nurse. It was those two—and the Kromer who stopped the reflector from going any deeper—that saved my life. I am thankful for them all.”