LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – One of the most beautiful moments in Louisville’s history has been made into a movie and there was a private screening of it on Thursday at Xscape Theater Blankenbaker.
It’s about people coming together in the paralyzing snowstorm of 1994 and shoveling a landing pad so a dying little girl could be airlifted to a lifesaving transplant.
In January 1994, the family of Michelle Schmitt got great news. A new liver was waiting for her in Omaha, Nebraska.
However, there was one problem, the weather was stopping them from getting there.
“She was crying, she said our call came for Michelle’s liver. And she says, ‘We can’t go, we can’t get out.’ I said, ‘Pack your bags, I’m getting you there,’” Sharon Stevens Evans said.
After a near-death experience, Stevens Evans said she had a calling to give back and do something more with her life.
She heard the story about Michelle and her sister Ashley, who needed help after some family struggles.
“And the little one, she was too sick to even smile,” Stevens Evans said.
Stevens Evans cared for and raised money for the girls for years. When she got the call that Michelle could get a liver transplant, she was determined to get her to Omaha.
She made some calls, and a runway was cleared for them to fly out. However, the weather was so bad they couldn’t even get to the airport.
“There had been two inches of ice in the ice storm,” former pastor of Southeast Christian Church Dave Stone said. “We had 17 inches of snow on top of that. We had had a couple days of -20 was the low temperature.”
So the decision was made to shovel out the parking lot of Southeast Christian, which was on Hikes Lane at the time.
That’s when Stevens Evans became the voice that launched a hundred shovels.
“They put me on the radio which alerted a lot of the church people and neighbors,” Stevens Evans said. “There were people who just grabbed a shovel and came out. People came from everywhere.”
Complete strangers showed up to help shovel the snow.
“I don’t have to know you to love you,” Stevens Evans said.
The group was able to get Michelle on the plane and to Omaha for the transplant. Dave Stone was the first one at the parking lot that day.
“As we were trying to get squared away on where we were going to do it,” Stone said. “And where we were going to clear. And there were people coming from every direction. And they had shovels, and it was a true moment of the community coming together.”
Years later Stevens Evans started writing a book about the situation, and eventually, she sold the movie rights to Lionsgate.
Now nearly 30 years later after the original event, the story is finally ready for the big screen.
“It just happened. Just like the rest of it,” Stevens Evans said.
The movie is called “Ordinary Angels” and it stars Alan Ritchson and Hilary Swank, who plays Stevens Evans.
“I could not get on that stage and play myself any better than she did,” Stevens Evans said.
At the private screening on Thursday, Stevens Evans and her son took their seats amongst friends, family, and members of Southeast Christian.
Looking back at what happened, she has one thing to say.
“When you get your calling, nothing’s going to stop you,” she said.
The movie will be in theaters October 13th and Stevens Evans’s book, also called “Ordinary Angels,” will be out in September.
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