The previous afternoon, Nov. 10, Huffman and her father, the Rev. Thomas Hamilton, took a wrong turn on the path just as it was starting to get dark. She felt compelled to follow as her father insisted on continuing to walk, moving deeper into the forest. They spent much of the night stumbling through the forest, losing their walking sticks, with Hamilton falling 10 times or more because of his poor balance.
“He was getting incoherent and wanted me to pick him up and carry him to the car,” Huffman said. “I couldn’t reason with him.”
They started crawling on their hands and knees until Hamilton collapsed, and they made a bed in the forest. “It was very cold, we were just chattering and shaking like leaves,” Huffman said.
Her father is thin — 5 feet, 10 inches and 164 pounds — but refused to huddle for body warmth with his daughter who is about 30 pounds heavier.
“He wouldn’t let me because it hurt too much,” she recalled. “There’s one advantage to being fat, because my hypothermia didn’t get as bad as his.”
Huffman arose before dawn, eager to take advantage of the daylight to find their way out. “I tried to help him up for three hours, and he still couldn’t move,” she recalled.
Finally she shook herself and said, “I need to get us help because I don’t think anyone knows we’re in here.”
She left her father expecting to be reunited later that day. It took another four-and-a-half hours, however, to make it to the park headquarters. And that was only the beginning of an exhaustive eight-day search involving, at its peak, several hundred rescuers every day who have scoured nearly 5,000 acres of the state park. About 80 searchers went out Thursday, which was scheduled to be the last day of the search effort.
Sgt. Clyde Doty of the Allegany State Park Police said all leads will continue to be investigated in the first known disappearance in park history.
Huffman has been questioned extensively, Doty said, “but no flags have been raised that it’s anything more than an unfortunate incident.”
Huffman noted, “They wanted to make sure I didn’t have motive to be Susan Smith II. After talking to people they found out I’m not interested in money, and that I have a very close relationship with my dad. They did what they had to do, and when I broke down they would comfort and hug me.”
Huffman has remained in New York throughout the search while her husband Carl is taking care of the household in Dayton.
Huffman’s sister, Marilyn Miller of Milan, Tenn., said she didn’t blame her sister. “Our dad didn’t have a great sense of direction even when he was younger,” she said. “Becky probably wanted to take one last hike with him before going back to Ohio. Dad got agitated and wanted to keep going. He must have felt, ‘I want to get out of here, it’s dark and uncomfortable,’ and of course she wanted to follow after him.”
It is the second very public tragedy for the family. Hamilton and his late wife Dorothy lost their youngest daughter Karen, 19, in 1970 in the crash of Air Canada Flight 621 that killed all 109 on board.
“Dad was always very caring, but he became extraordinarily caring about people after Karen died,” Huffman recalled.
It was only in recent years that Huffman learned that her father suffered from irrational survivors’ guilt after Karen’s death. Now she’s wrestling with the same emotion: “On top of the grief about my dad, I feel guilty.”
If only she had taken a flashlight. Or a state map. Or a cell phone (she doesn’t own one.) “I really blame myself for all the precautions I didn’t take,” Huffman said.
Father and daughter recently spent an idyllic three weeks in Dayton exploring every inch of the Five Rivers MetroParks system and walking at least two miles every day. Hamilton was still jogging as recently as five years ago. “It was wonderful,” Huffman recalled, yet the experience gave her a false sense of security about hiking in New York’s largest state park, boasting 65,000 acres. “I was treating this trail like a MetroParks trail, and that was a big mistake,” she said.
Doty said the odds of rescue would have been greater if they stayed closer to the main trail. “If you find yourself lost, stay where you’re at, even if it’s rough and cold,” he advised. “Our hearts go out to them because it’s such a freak occurrence.”
Huffman is still praying for a miracle, but doesn’t believe her father is still alive. She is sustained by her family, friends and her faith.
“Foxhole religion is fine, but it’s better if you have an established relationship with God,” she said. “I can accept if he has rejoined our mother. That’s only because of the faith that I got from my father.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209
or mmccarty@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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