Joe Levangie of Wendell was a bicycle distributor building his house on Rush Road in 1984 when he was literally jolted into believing lightning was more than “just something up in the sky.” The moment it struck him, he was sitting in a screened tent next to the camper trailer parked in his yard.
“It hit the trailer, and then went for the ground, and the best ground was through me, because I’m 8
0 percent water. It went through my left elbow, my chest and down my right leg, burning my elbow and my foot. I was out for a minute or so, and when I came to, I went screaming like a Banshee.”
His brother-in-law, sitting beside him, described being sprayed by lightning as feeling like he’s been sandblasted. It took three months before a three-generation lightning protection company he knew from Dedham could install the protection system he ordered that day, “and every time a storm went by,he was a nervous wreck.”
Levangie, who also got hit that day with an entrepreneurial idea, in 1988, set up Quabbin Lightning Protection, which he said has installed thousands of systems around northern New England.
“Lightning just wants to go to ground. There’s no telling what it’s going to do,” he said. “It’s just a roll of the dice when that bolt is going to release.”
Lightning lore rolls off his tongue like the downpour that accompanies some thunderstorms.
