Miracle Story #18

“I remember most of it vividly, even though I was only in first or second grade.

We lived in Kingman, Kansas. That’s where my mother is from.

My dad got out of the service and my grandfather had gotten very ill, so we moved back to the farm.

My grandfather passed.

And we lived out on the farm with my grandmother, west of Kingman.

Dad worked at Cessna Pawnee, way out east from Kingman.

He drove there every day and then he came home and helped farm.

Farmed all weekend.

Took his vacations for harvest.

Farmed.

He was a neat man and we were very close to my grandparents.

One morning my brother and I got woken up early.

It was still really dark out. Too early to get up for school.

And we were sent over to our neighbors house next door.

They had four kids and we always played together, so the mother was kind of like an aunt to me.

And one of the boys, Ray, said, “Do you know your dad might die? He’s been in a wreck.”

And I remember crying, and then their mom coming in and talking with me.

She told me it was okay, stuff like that, to calm me down.

And then that evening we talked with mom.

She explained that there had been a wreck as they had gone out of Kingman and toward Wichita.

There were four of them carpooling to Cessna.

It was in the winter time and it was very icy. The driver had hit a slick spot and just kind of lost control.

And they hit a tree.

Dad had been sitting in the back seat, right where the car hit it.

So he was the only one that was really hurt.

They took him to the hospital. They said that he had a broken neck and several other injuries.

The main thing was his broken neck.

Now I’m fifty-four years old, so that was a while ago.

Back then kids didn’t really get to go to the hospital to see people, things like that. And I remember when mom said that we could go see him.

Later on in life I learned that they said we could go see him because they felt that he wouldn’t make it.

My brother was four years older than I was, and him and I and mom went and talked with dad.

And I remember standing beside his bed.

He had the halo, you know with two holes drilled into the side of his head and the weights in it. The big halo to stabilize his head and neck.

I remember talking to him.

Mom was emotional.

He was emotional.

I was little and I didn’t understand it at the time.

Later on, I don’t know if it was a few weeks because again, I was a child...and mom and dad are gone now so I can’t really ask them specific times.

But mom was saying that dad was better and that he was going to be coming home.

And I thought, great.

At the time I didn’t know any different anyways.

I found this out when I got a little bit older...from my mom and from aunts, neighbors, adults in my life that were important to me.

I just remember over the years, everyone talking about it...

At one point while dad was in the hospital, they had asked mom to leave the room while they moved him.

There was a little team of doctors, nurses, and interns that moved him from one bed to another.

They all had to move him the same way and put him over onto another bed so they could change his sheets and bathe him.

All that.

And apparently there was a new nurse that mom had never seen before, had never met.

So mom was out in the hall and all of a sudden she heard a scream come from dad like she had never heard before.

My dad was always a strong man.

So she was worried, of course.

When they came out of the room, one of the nurses was crying and they were all bustling around.

Doctors came in.

And what had happened was...when they all said, “push” or “pull”...whatever the case was, the nurse at his head did the opposite.

Mom never saw her again.

She assumed she got fired.

But she tried to track her down through the hospital, to thank her.

Because what happened was...that actually pulled my dad’s neck into place.

It saved his life.

The doctors had said that he would be paralyzed for life, or die.

And they really didn’t think that he would live.

So it was just really crazy.

Mom told us later on that it was just a miracle...that that nurse had to have been an angel.

Something.

It just still gives me goose bumps.

Still.

I almost cry.

Mom passed twenty-one years ago and we still talked about it every once in a while, and how it really affirmed that she believed the nurse was an angel.

She just believed that it was God.

Because really at that time, without dad’s income and presence...it would have been really, really hard.

Mom was working for an attorney, as a secretary.

And of course, just him being around to raise us.

They were married almost forty-two years.

She passed one week before their forty-second anniversary. And like I said, it was just always talked about.

It was just really, really neat.

As a small child even, it had a huge impact on my life.

I always believed that there is a God.

This is real.

He just truly works in mysterious ways.

It's just a neat story in our family.

And thank God, literally, that it happened.

Dad did some rehab and all that.

Came home.

Made a full recovery.

Went back to Cessna.

I think it was like six months, but he went back to work and he worked there moving forward.

He passed away five years ago, from a heart attack.

They didn’t get to him for like fifteen minutes, so he had severe brain damage and things like that.

He was a great dad.

I have a great family.

I’m very thankful.

Mom always said he had nine lives. (laughs)

One year when I was in high school, while he was at work at Cessna, a guy was messing around with one of those huge staple guns and shot it.

He shot dad right in the eye.

He went to the hospital, had his cornea replaced and everything.

And then he had better vision in that eye than before. (laughs)

He didn’t talk about any of it much at all. He was just a neat guy.

He was the silly, fun dad.

But you know, once in a while he did.

And he would say that in no uncertain terms, he just knew and believed that it was God.

He never doubted a moment, from that time.

I know that some people could say, ‘Well that was just an accident.’

But everybody said, “push” or whatever...at the same time.

They had very serious and firm instructions.

And the thing is, mom trying to find her and thank her, you know?

She just never could find her. Her name...anything.

That was just strange.

We believe it was God.

It was a miracle.

Mom believed she was an angel.

And I truly believe that.

My dad truly believed that.”

© 2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.

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My name is Janie, and I live in Wichita, Kansas.

In the midst of my dad's spinal cord injury, I AM Miracle Story #18.