Inside the Life of the Man Known as the ‘Spark Ranger’

The life and death of Roy Sullivan, a park ranger for Shenandoah National Park who was struck by lightning seven times:

“A gentle rain fell on April 16, 1972. The Spark Ranger was in a small guardhouse atop Loft Mountain, registering carloads of visitors who were arriving at the campground. Not so much as a coo of thunder riffled the air. Then … KABOOM! Lightning annihilated a fuse box inside the guardhouse. ‘The fire was bouncing around inside the station, and when my ears stopped ringing, I heard something sizzling,’ Sullivan told a Washington Post reporter who contacted him a week later. ‘It was my hair on fire.’”