It’s A Miracle: Real Life Inspirational Stories, Extraordinary Events and Everyday Wonders

HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published as It’s a Miracle and It’s a Miracle 2 by Bantam Dell, a division of Random House, Inc. 2001, 2002

This edition published by Element 2003

© 2002, 2003 by Clearlake Productions, Inc., and Questar, Inc.

Richard Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN 9780007279111

Ebook Edition © MAY 2015 ISBN: 9780008150471

Version: 2015-05-13

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

ROMANTIC PROVIDENCE

First Love

Wrong Number Marriage

Acting upon Fate

Miracle Reunion

THE SPIRIT OF STRENGTH

Jumping Life’s Hurdles

A Father’s Journey

Blind Ambition

ALL GOD’S CREATURES

Boris and the Big Apple

Rupert, the Parrot

Dog Angel

Woman’s Best Friend

REMARKABLE RESCUES I

Second Chance Angel

Lady in the Lake

Avalanche Rescue

Twister Survival

Pink Phoenix

THE GIFT OF LIFE

Danny’s Wish

Baby Sister Miracle

Shafeeq’s Gift

Divine Donation

DIVINE INTERVENTION I

Second Sight

Baby Hope

Thanksgiving Angel

911 Angel

Fate Fights Fire

Family Restaurant

LOVE FINDS A WAY

The Rosenblatt Love Story

Kidney in Common

Love at First Sight

Rescue Romance

Affair of the Heart

Heaven Sent

OVERCOMING THE ODDS

Sarah’s Story

Football Coach

Daughter Shot

Eye-Opening Sight

REMARKABLE RESCUES II

Mom’s Abduction

Captain to the Rescue

Bumper Ride Horror

COMPASSIONATE CREATURES

Patra’s Gift

Dog Rescues Cats

Elk Angels

Cat Finds Gas Leak

THE ULTIMATE GIFT

Adopted Kidney

Lucky Layover

The Nicholas Effect

DIVINE INTERVENTION II

Medical School Windfall

Message from Ted

The Other Boy

St. Theresa’s Twins

SECOND-CHANCE FAMILY

Mother and Child Reunion

Older Brother

Lost and Found Hope

Wrong-Number Miracle

About the Author

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

In 1998, when I was asked to host a new show on PAX TV entitled It’s a Miracle, I said to myself, “Great idea, but will anyone really care about all of this ‘good news’?”

Five years and hundreds of stories later, I have my answer; people LOVE good news, and yes, they DO care.

And I care. Every week I have gotten pleasure and spiritual sustenance from bringing these wonderful true stories to the television audience. I am very happy now to bring them to you in book form, and I hope they will touch you as much as they’ve touched me. I’m more convinced than ever of the abiding relevance and impact of narratives that reaffirm the essential worth and dignity of people – stories that tell about the mysterious but undeniable power of our spiritual lives. Whether these stories are about healings, separated and reunited loved ones, miraculous escapes from harm’s way, or simply about people reaching out and changing each other’s lives for the better, they all have the end result of affirming our shared humanity, and they all give us hope.

The world is, as they say, forever changing and forever the same. In the wake of September 11, 2001, life feels different. There is fear and anxiety, grief and anger. An imagined innocence has been lost; an imagined security has been shattered. But, in important ways, things remain the same. In the midst of disaster, people depended on and came through for each other in the enduring need for community. We are still looking for happiness and love, inner fulfillment and fellowship, as well as security and success. We still need each other, still reach out to each other, and the stories in this collection are evidence of that. One person helps another. A dream comes true. A second chance is given. The impossible comes to pass. So, no matter how dark the view may be from where we stand, we might try to remember that a miracle is always happening somewhere, and that – just as in these beautiful stories – something wonderful is always possible, for us and the people we love.

Enjoy!

– RICHARD THOMAS

FIRST LOVE

The Great Depression hit Otto Sloan’s family, like so many others, hard. When his parents separated, Otto was sent to live with grandparents in Colorado. But soon, economic hardships once again forced Otto to move.

“Back when I was, oh, ten or eleven years old, my grandparents sent me to live with and work for Mrs. Rowan and her husband. So I went there to help and worked there with them. And I did that for some time,” recalls Otto.

It was while living there that he met Betty Jean Hodge, the daughter of a neighboring farmer.

“My earliest recollection,” says Betty Jean, “was when I’d get on the school bus, and he’d be on the bus, already there. And then he would look up at me, with a kind of smile in his eyes.”

“She was a very pretty girl, I thought,” says Otto. “And I wanted to speak to her then. But I didn’t. I was very bashful, you might say. I never would look at her direct, into her face or anything like that. I always cast my eyes down. I still do that to this day.”

As the years passed, Otto’s and Betty’s paths continued to cross.

“There were occasions when Otto would come down with the horse and he would round up the cattle,” says Betty Jean, “and I would always beg him to let me ride the horse.”

Otto wasn’t sure about that, however. “I said, ‘No, the horse is a one-man horse,’” recalls Otto. “I said, ‘It’d be better if you didn’t.’”

But Betty Jean persevered. “I had asked him and pleaded with him so much that Dad finally said, ‘Otto, you might as well let her on it, because she won’t give up until you do.’”

“So he was hoisting me up on the horse,” says Betty Jean. “And he wasn’t sure just how to go about doing that, because he was afraid he might touch me in an immodest place on my body. He was very careful of that,” she remembers, laughing. “He wanted to be precise in getting me on the horse.”

“So I finally ended up making a stirrup out of my hands, and had her put her foot in it,” says Otto. “I raised her up that way—and the horse just flew, it seemed to me, full blast for home.

“I hollered at her, ‘Drop the reins, drop the reins!’ She wouldn’t drop the reins,” Otto says, laughing. “If she would’ve dropped them, the horse would’ve stopped.”

The horse finally came to a stop at the end of the field.

“And I looked up at Betty, and you could see that there was fright in her eyes,” recalls Otto.

“I kind of leaned over and he put his arms around my waist,” adds Betty Jean. “And I think I was probably trembling a little bit. He said, ‘It’s all right, you’re all right.’ And then he took me back home,” she laughs.

From that day on, Betty and Otto were inseparable.

“I thought our relationship at that time … he was kind of like a big brother to me. Then in 1941 we started dating. And our dating meant going to basketball games together, or roller-skating,” says Betty Jean.

As their dates continued, Otto’s and Betty Jean’s feelings for each other deepened.

“We’d been roller-skating several times together, and a friend of mine then had a little Model A with a rumble seat in it,” says Otto. “Well, Betty and I were in the back in the rumble seat, and I reached over and kissed her. I really felt that that was what was supposed to be done. And that’s what I did,” he chuckles.

“I’ll never forget the emotions I felt when he kissed me. He held me close and kissed me so gently,” says Betty Jean. “And that just stayed with me for years. I never forgot it.”

But the love that was blossoming between them was suddenly interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. And like so many other young men, Otto followed the call to battle.

“The last time I saw him, he came down to our place,” Betty Jean remembers. “To see him go, it felt like I’d never see him again.

“It was hard. It was hard to see him go.”

“I went into the navy in July of 1941. And they shipped us out of San Diego after we finished training, to Pearl Harbor,” says Otto.

It was there that Otto would come face-to-face with the horror of war. On December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese bombers attacked the island in two waves of destruction.

By the time the surprise attack ended two hours later, 21 ships were destroyed and over 2,400 people lay dead. Otto’s division of 122 sailors did not escape unscathed.

“There were only seventy-some of us left. So I lost a lot of good friends at that time. It was quite a blow,” says Otto.

The only thing that helped ease the pain was Betty Jean’s letters.

“And though he wasn’t much of a writer, I would write constantly because I felt it was important to keep his morale up,” says Betty Jean. “I would write about incidents that happened, the funny things that happened, and I would send jokes and letters and things.”

The letters kept their love alive during the lonely months at sea. And then, just before Betty Jean graduated from high school, a special package arrived.

Betty Jean recalls, laughing, “I was practically tearing it apart on my way to the house. I got to the house and opened it up, and there was a little jewelry box, and inside the box there was a string of pearls. My first reaction was that he must have thought a lot of me to get me a string of pearls,” says Betty Jean. “It meant a lot to me to think that he cared that much, and I think that it was his way of trying to tell me something that he … that he just couldn’t express in words.”

Betty Jean was right. Otto was in love and he was ready to ask for her hand in marriage. He eventually wired her to meet him in California when he returned to the States on leave, so that they could finalize their plans.

“But then her dad said no. He said, ‘I don’t think you should do that,’” says Otto. “I was really upset at the time about it.”

“I was very, very disappointed that I didn’t get to see him then,” says Betty Jean. “After that was when things began to slow down a little bit. I didn’t hear quite so often from him after he went back to sea.”

As the war intensified, and Otto’s letters stopped arriving, Betty Jean feared the worst.

“I had thought that he had been killed, because I hadn’t heard anything from him after that. So,” she says, emotionally, “I felt like he was gone. I felt that way for years.”

As the war in the Pacific stretched from months into years, Otto made the difficult decision to stop writing his girlfriend so that she could get on with her life. And when the letters stopped coming, Betty Jean had no choice but to face the facts.

“When I came to the realization that I would probably never see Otto again, I realized that life would have to go on, though I hadn’t heard from him. And I began to date others,” she says. “Then I met my husband, Clarence, and we married and had five children.”

As the years passed, Betty Jean would often wonder what had happened to Otto.

“He was always there in the back of my mind, like a piece of my heart that had been tucked away and hidden for a while,” she reflects.

Life continued for Betty Jean, and in June of 1995, she and Clarence celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

“The years just literally flew by, and then came the time when I lost my husband. He’d been ill for some time. And then, my thoughts went to Otto. I could not get him out of my mind, wondering if he were alive. Just wishing I could hear something,” Betty Jean says.

And then, as if someone heard her prayer, Betty Jean received a letter from one of Otto’s cousins, Lila, with an old photograph inside.

“It had my three sisters and me in it, and it was taken in 1938,” she describes. “A grade school picture.”

“I was so excited and so exhilarated when I got that, that I just had to get in touch with Lila and thank her for it,” recalls Betty Jean. “And I said, ‘Incidentally, have you ever heard from your cousin Otto?’”

And in reply, Cousin Lila sent her Otto’s phone number.

Betty Jean called him up, saying, “Otto Sloan? This is a gal that you probably won’t remember.”

“And I couldn’t believe it, but I recognized her voice,” declares Otto. “It’s Betty Jean,” he said.

“How did you know who it was?” she laughed.

“I’d recognize that voice anyplace,” Otto replied.

The call could not have come at a more perfect time, for Otto had also lost his wife of nearly fifty years. And he too had never forgotten his first love. Soon they were writing and talking on a daily basis, and fifty-eight years of separation quickly vanished.

“You just don’t realize how many times I’ve wondered where you were and what you were doing. And if you were all right,” Betty Jean told Otto. “You’re probably looking just as young as you ever did.

“And then the talks got a little more personal,” Betty Jean reveals. “We told each other our strengths and weaknesses.

“We just talked about everything there was to talk about. It was just like we were face-to-face,” she laughs. “And then it became apparent that we were discussing marriage possibilities.”

“It was unbelievable that we could feel so much love for each other just by talking on the phone like we had,” says Otto.

“We had made definite plans just over the phone, practically. We’re getting married. If anybody had been there to pronounce us man and wife, we would’ve accepted that,” laughs Betty Jean.

In the summer of 1999, after not seeing each other for fifty-eight years, Otto and Betty Jean were reunited.

“My heart was pounding so hard that I could hardly keep it in its place,” says Betty Jean, laughing. “He just took my hand and hung on to it for dear life. And I whispered to him, ‘Don’t ever let go of me again. Don’t ever let go of me again.’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’”

Otto kept his promise four weeks later when he pledged to take Betty Jean as his lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, so long as they both should live.

“Betty Jean is still the little girl that I used to love, and still love,” says Otto.

“He’s the same as he was when he was a boy,” says Betty Jean. “And I’ve even told him that. I said, ‘You look just like you were.’ When he puts his head down and looks up at me like that, I just see him all over again, sitting there on that school bus when I’d get on the bus. I probably wasn’t sure at the time what that really meant, but I found out later—fifty-eight years later,” she laughs.

“And we feel that our getting back together was a miracle; our lives are like a dream. It’s something that you just maybe would dream of but not ever expect to happen.”

She adds, laughing, “I think we’re living happily ever after.”

WRONG NUMBER MARRIAGE

Dana Herring and Dennis Dunbar first met in 1973 while attending high school in Los Angeles. At the time, they were just casual friends.

“After initially meeting Dana, I just felt that she had no interest in me,” remembers Dennis. “So I felt that it was just something that would not be worthwhile pursuing.”

“Dennis was going out with a friend of mine, and I was going out with another person,” recalls Dana. “It was just not convenient.”

But nine years later, Dennis and Dana met again, at the wedding of mutual friends. And this time, the chemistry between them was different.

“I thought he looked pretty handsome in his tuxedo,” says Dana. “There was an attraction that night at the wedding, and we talked for a long time. We ended up pretty much staying together that whole night at the wedding. And that was it.”

“We had a good time, and we just enjoyed each other’s company,” agrees Dennis.

Dana and Dennis began dating, and over the next few months their romance blossomed. As it became more serious, they made plans to go away together for Memorial Day weekend. But before he picked her up for their getaway, Dennis stopped by the home of his newlywed friends.

It was a decision that would change all his plans.

“This girl had come down from San Francisco,” Dennis recalls, “and they wanted to set me up with her. They knew that I was going out with Dana, but they probably didn’t realize how serious the relationship was at the time.

“They talked me into breaking my date with Dana,” Dennis says.

Dana, understandably, was quite upset. “I was upset because we did have plans. And, you know, he called at the last minute to cancel,” she says. “I was really angry at the time. I just hung up on him, and that was it.”

“She didn’t deserve that,” says Dennis. “And I felt like an idiot. I never talked to Dana after that.”

Dennis ended up marrying the woman who was his blind date that day. But after ten years together the marriage failed, and in 1997, Dennis was once again a bachelor.

At that time, Dennis owned his own pest control business, and on Labor Day 1997, he was sitting in his office, calling clients to confirm appointments for the following day.

“There was one customer in particular that I called, left a message that I’d be out tomorrow to take care of her account, left my name and my phone number like I always do, and said if there’s any problem call me back,” recalls Dennis. “The next day I went out to service the account, and for some weird reason, the customer had never gotten my message.”

But someone else had.

“I came home from out of town, checked my messages, and one of them struck me as strange,” remembers Dana, “because it was from a man, and he said, ‘Hello, Terry, this is Dennis Dunbar calling from Dunbar Pest Control.’ And I thought the voice sounded very familiar.”

“That evening the phone rang,” says Dennis, “and it turned out to be a girl who asked if this was the Dennis Dunbar who has a brother named Dan, which I do.”

Dana recalls, “And I said, ‘This is Dana Herring.’”

Dennis was shocked to hear from her, and asked how she got his number. “And she said, ‘Well, you called me,’” he remembers. “And it hit me, Wait a second! This other customer didn’t get the message I left. So I got my customer’s card and I repeated the number, which had a 960 prefix. At which point Dana said, ‘How funny. That’s very close to mine. Mine is 906.’”

He had transposed two numbers. “What a coincidence,” said Dennis.

“I was literally shaking,” he recalls.

“One of the first things she said after we chitchatted a bit,” Dennis remarks, “was, ‘If I remember it right, didn’t you stand me up?’ And I was like, ‘Well, but that was a long time ago. I hope you’re not still mad,’ “he chuckles.

“And he said, ‘You do remember what happened?’” says Dana. “And I said, ‘Yes, I do remember.’ I said, ‘You broke a date with me, and then you married her,’” she laughs.

Dennis told her about his divorce, and Dana revealed to him that she’d never gotten married.

“So we talked a little bit longer, and I was saying how weird this was,” Dennis says. “She said, ‘Well, if you like, you can give me a call sometime, and maybe we can get together.’” Dennis told her he’d love to, and that was the end of that conversation.

“When he called me the next day at my office, between ten and eleven in the morning, and my secretary said, ‘Dennis Dunbar is on the phone,’ I was shocked,” says Dana. “I was like, Well, gosh, he’s already calling? We set a date for Friday night, and he showed up with flowers, and we sat and talked for about four hours when we were supposed to go out to dinner.”

“I haven’t talked to somebody like the way I talk to Dana for years,” declares Dennis. “It just really felt good. It was completely different than any relationship I had ever been in…. It felt like it was meant to be.”

“We feel that we were brought together for a special reason,” Dana proclaims.

And thirteen months later, Dennis and Dana became husband and wife. For them, their marriage is nothing less than a miracle.

“The miracle is how the whole thing happened,” says Dana. “How he happened to transpose that one number and reach me of all people, out often million people in Los Angeles.”

“Timing was everything in this, because the area codes had already changed out there,” says Dennis. “If I had dialed that number two months later, I don’t think I ever would have run across Dana again.”

“I think I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life right now. I am just glowing,” says Dana.

“It’s heaven,” agrees Dennis. “You know, this is the person that I’m going to be with for the rest of my life, and I’m looking forward to it.”

ACTING UPON FATE

From the time she was a young girl growing up in Oklahoma, Cyndi Steele was stagestruck. But it wasn’t only the lights and costumes that fascinated her. She had a mad crush on one of the local actors, nineteen-year-old Chris Harrod.

“She was always there,” recalls Chris. “She had these little glasses on and little braces. She was just, really cute, and I remember thinking, What a cute kid.”

In 1992, Cyndi left Oklahoma for New York City to pursue her dream of acting, and it paid off when she landed a role in a stage production of Bye Bye Birdie.

“It was kinda cool to get a chorus thing right off,” Cyndi says. “’Cause I didn’t do that kinda work. And I thought, All I can do is get older and do the character roles, so this was great.”