South Carolina father travels through Hurricane Helene to make it to his daughter's wedding in east Tennessee

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — The devastation from Hurricane Helene has made it hard for people to travel, with many roads blocked by debris or destroyed. But that didn’t stop one man from getting to Johnson City.

David Jones was determined to make it to his daughter Elizabeth’s wedding on Saturday when he got stuck in Erwin, Tenn. Jones left his car and decided to travel 27 miles, mostly on foot, to walk his daughter down the aisle.

“I just did what any dad would do,” Jones said.

Jones hit the road Friday night, heading from South Carolina to Elizabeth’s wedding.

“My dad was coming from South Carolina, and that’s usually a two-hour drive,” Elizabeth Marquez said. “It didn’t occur to me that there would be any trouble.”

“Normally when hurricanes come through here, it’s mostly just rain. So off I went,” he said.

But around 2 a.m., when Jones got to a crumbled bridge in Unicoi County, he got stuck.

“It’s incomprehensible, the destruction,” Jones said. “The just… the complete missing bridge and the gap and the rushing water.”

Jones is a marathon runner and he was determined to get to Johnson City, even if it meant walking the rest of the way to the church.

“I thought, 20 or 30 miles, I can do this, and so off I went,” he said.

He said he fell waist-deep into sand, losing his shoe momentarily. He climbed roots and trekked through mud and ran into state troopers who advised him to turn around.

Jones replied, “My daughter’s getting married at 11:00 and I’m going to be there to walk her down the aisle. I grabbed a reflector as I passed by and I thought, you know, I got my flashlight on my cell phone and this, so hopefully people will see me.”

And he did just that. 

Jones said he traveled about 17 miles on foot and hitched a ride from a trooper and a passerby for the remaining 10 miles, finally arriving at the church at 7:30 a.m.

“It’s transformed my faith to know what an earthly father would do, how much more love a heavenly Father has for us,” Marquez said. “So it’s just been eye-opening for me and the love that my father has for me and the love that our Heavenly Father has for us.”

Jones then presented the reflector to his daughter and her husband as a remembrance to be each other’s protectors. 

“I presented the reflector to them at the reception and just said, ‘Let this be a remembrance for you whenever you see it to be a protector for each other, especially in your darkest hours, because that’s when you need it the most, and to continue to be a reflection of God,'” Jones said.

“We’re very alike, and so it meant the world that could be side by side on that day,” Marquez said.

After the wedding, Marquez and her husband left for their honeymoon in Hawaii.