On the evening of Aug. 2, 2003, in excruciating pain, Manley Butler drove himself to the emergency room at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital.

His daughter, then 13, rode with him.

Butler had suffered a dissecting thoracic aortic aneurysm, a potentially life-threatening condition in which there is bleeding into and along the wall of the aorta, the major artery leaving the heart.

Emergency surgery followed. Butler spent the next four weeks in an induced coma. While under sedation, his kidneys shut down temporarily.

The same aortic condition killed actor John Ritter, whose family filed and then settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the California hospital that had treated him.

Butler said a "truly gifted team" -- including an emergency room physician at Roanoke Memorial, a cardiologist and cardiac surgeon -- saved his life in Roanoke.

"So, in our midsized town in the mountains of Virginia, I got better care than a famous actor in Hollywood," said Butler, president of Butler Parachute Systems in Roanoke.

But his problems weren't over.

In late 2003, physicians determined Butler had suffered a stroke sometime since the August aneurysm.

Today, lingering effects include some slurring in speech, a moderate seizure disorder (controlled by medication) and a slight problem with balance.

The slurred speech and balance challenges sometimes lead people to assume he is drunk.

Then, on Jan. 14, 2004, Butler experienced a grand mal seizure and suffered at the same time a compression fracture in his back. He was hospitalized again. For eight weeks, he wore a custom molded "turtle shell."

Today, Butler said he believes it is a miracle he is alive and "pretty much whole and functional."

And although anyone who knows him well, including his staff at Butler Parachute, would not rank Butler among the saints, he says the trials deepened his faith.

To friends, he wrote, "The fact that I did not die in front of my little girl while sitting in the car is all the proof that I need that there is a good and benevolent God."