She was simply trying to get home.

But the story of what happened to her in the process — and the story of how the people around her responded — has carried lessons for four decades that continue to be taught in medical schools and wilderness survival courses and on podcasts and in articles like this one.

The body held.

The margin was thin.

The medicine worked.

And in the working of it, something was learned that has helped, in ways that cannot be precisely quantified, to save the lives of people who did not freeze on a porch in Lengby, Minnesota, but who needed the principle that Sather applied that morning to be believed and practiced wherever severe hypothermia is encountered.

Jean Hilliard survived.