Steven Walker Carter, 75

Steven Walker Carter, 75, of Bruington, Virginia, formerly of Woodbridge and Triangle, Virginia, passed away on March 1. 2020 after triple by-pass heart surgery in Doctor’s Hospital, in Richmond, Virginia.

At the age of 13, Steve, son of Charlotte and Buck Carter, became the 13th known case in the world to survive Cryptococcus Meningitis after spending many months in National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.

In the mid-sixties, as a student at Garfield Senior High School in Woodbridge, Steve was an unforgettable character, well-known among all students as a “fun guy”, taking chances and sometimes getting hurt. He could often be heard saying “Life is a Joke!”

After an “all-nighter” on Memorial Day, 1964, at the drive-in Woodbridge theater, his so-called friend that he arrived with left him when Steve went into the snack bar to use the restroom. It was after Midnight and dark. Steve had no transportation to get home. Dreading to call home for fear of his dad’s temper, he found another driver he knew slightly, who had six other teens in his car. However, they made room for Steve in the car to take him just a few blocks to home.

Steve was severely injured riding in the back seat of this car driven by a drunk driver as it careened up and over an embankment along a narrow, two-lane Featherstone Road, landing in a yard on the other side of the road, upside-down on top of a nearby parked car with Steve left lying on the ground below the rocking vehicle.

With a painful broken back and a severally broken ankle, he was not able to crawl away from the threat of the car falling on him. As other occupants of that vehicle crawled out, there was an attempt to hide Steve’s battered body in the gutter across the road covered with leaves and debris. He was left there as the remaining six kids from hat car fled when sirens of an ambulance were heard a few blocks away. Ultimately, Steve was found in the ditch by rescuers from Occoquan Rescue Squad. After several weeks in the hospital and major surgeries, Steve eventually lost the leg with the broken ankle and spent the rest of his life struggling with an artificial foot and leg.

Several tough months later, while completing his studies in the hospital, it was June 1965 and time for graduation from Garfield High School in Prince William County, and a reason to celebrate this achievement, hopefully the beginning of a better life with family and friends.

As he strolled on crutches along with his fellow graduates the full length of the football field to collect his diploma, the entire crowd of the several hundred friends and relatives of the graduates stood giving him a rousing ovation in recognition of his long-lived courage and determination.

Steve retired from Quantico Marine Corps Base as a base-housing inspector. He and his wife, Mary sold their home in Triangle and moved to live near Richmond, in Bruington, VA. He was an avid reader of the stories of WWII and became an excellent writer, contributing to a collection of family-related stories– yet to be published. A few years later, they divorced.

After a well-planned funeral ceremony befitting this unique, one-of-a-kind individual, a group of loving and devoted friends paid homage to Steve as his ashes were sprinkled on a private pond in a peaceful, green valley in Millers Tavern, Virginia.

He leaves his sisters, Marsha Carter North-Riley, her husband, Bob; and Sherry Garbarini Carter, all of Fernandina Beach, Florida; brother, Michael Carter of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and devoted niece, Lori North Beatty of Cape Canaveral, FL.