Voices of the Western Dominican Province

What was left of the aircraft after the crash

ON BEING A BROTHER:
A CRASH LANDING

BY BROTHER DANIEL THOMAS, OP

In the late 60's I was introduced to the Anchor Rescue Mission in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. This store-front mission was operated by two black Baptist ladies, Sr. Josephine Drayton and Sr. Yvone Crook. They claimed that the Anchor Rescue Mission was the "ARM" of the church reaching out to help the homeless and street people of San Francisco's re-development area. They didn't see themselves as a denominational church but as a branch or "arm" of the church giving praise and honor to Jesus Christ by helping those most in need. Dominican Fr. Martin de Porres Walsh had asked me to accompany him and to commit to helping with the meals and the service. I was newly involved in the Charismatic movement and so I said that I would "pray about it."

My prayer led me to Psalm 41 which opens with the words, "Happy the one who considers the poor and the weak. The Lord will save him in the day of evil ... will help him on his bed of pain, will bring him back from sickness to health." I took that as a "sign" that I should take on this new ministry. I would go to the Mission on Tuesdays to help prepare the meal and take part in the service. There were three of us Dominicans who had became involved with the Anchor Rescue Mission and one of us would lead the fifteen minutes of singing, one would lead fifteen minutes of testimony and the other would do the 30 minutes of preaching. When the preaching began the front door was locked. A person had to be there for the preaching or miss the meal. The first time that I lead testimony I used Psalm 41 and spoke about the way I thought God had brought me to work there and how "God writes straight with crooked lines." I have so many happy memories of working at the Anchor Rescue Mission and so many first hand experiences of miracles to tell, but that's another story. In the meantime, we take a little detour to the mid-west.

In the fall of 1970 our Dominican Province reached out to a small group of cloistered nuns from the New York area who were trying to relocate on the west coast on their way to California. They were given temporary lodgings at the Central Dominican Province's former novitiate in Winona, Minnesota. Two of us were asked to fly back to the mid-west, pick up a rental truck and drive the meager belongings of the four nuns out to California.

Brother Gregory Lira and I flew into the Twin Cities where we switched to a smaller, tree-top airlines for the short hop to Winona. It was a cold and rainy day in November and it would be my first flight on such a small plane. I remember asking Brother Gregory to let us sit right up front so that we could see everything that was going on. There were 16 seats but only four passengers plus the pilot and co-pilot. When the gate agent got us seated she backed out of the plane, pulling the door shut as she left. It was the first time I had been on a plane with no flight attendant.

It was supposed to be a short, half hour trip. Halfway along, we were told that the weather was so bad the plane didn't meet the landing requirements for the Winona airport. From where I sat, I could lean into the aisle and look right over the pilots shoulder out the front window. I could see nothing due to the cloudy conditions. It was like flying a plane in a milk bottle.

The co-pilot leaned back and told us that we were going to fly on to LaCrosse, Wisconsin which was just across the Mississippi River from Winona. I couldn't understand how it could be that much different from one side of the river to the other but off we went. The difference turned out to be a matter of 100 feet. This made a significant impact on our landing.

Coming in on instruments, the flight crew did not know that they were 100 feet lower than they expected. The plane hit the trees on the outskirts of the landing strip. There was a crashing sound as the wings of the twin-engine DeHaviland Otter, which are above the fuselage, were ripped off. I was knocked out immediately and the plane slid off the runway into the sand and gravel of the banks of the Mississippi River. I have no memory of the actual crash landing.

The path of the aircraft through the trees.


The remains of the fuselage, sprayed with foam to prevent a fire.

The next thing I remember was someone asking me if I knew who I was. "There's been an accident. Do you know your name?" I don't think I responded and then I woke up four days later in a hospital bed with my head bandaged and my left arm in a cast. Brother Gregory was in the bed next to mine strung up in a device that kept his broken leg set in place.

It was November 12, 1970. I had been unconscious for four days and I was having trouble speaking. I had received a severe bump on my head and they told me that there was a bruise on the part of my brain that controlled speech. This would effect the forming of words and sentences but I was assured that as my injury healed my speaking abilities would return.

The hospital sent in a speech therapist to evaluate the extent of this injury. I could speak but it was difficult to find the words that I wanted to use. Often I would mix up two words, combining words like breakfast and lunch and end up saying something like 'blunch'. I was also asked to do some simple mathematical calculations. I really had to think to get the answer to 4 plus 4. When I was asked what 5 times 7 was I thought if I could write it down first I would have a better chance of getting the answer right. Hearing Brother Gregory laugh at me didn't really help.

Our accident was one of the biggest things that had happened in LaCrosse, Wisconsin in some time and we were front page news for several days running. A local Catholic family, upon learning that two Dominican Brothers were stranded away from home and in a hospital, made a commitment to visit us. Doris and John Kleinschmidt and one or another of their five children would come to the hospital to cheer us up each day. As a special gesture of thoughtfulness, they made arrangements on Thanksgiving Day to bring an entire turkey dinner to us in the hospital.

Our beds were rolled into a lounge and we all enjoyed a nice dinner and gathering. The Kleinschmidts made our 28 day stay in the hospital just a little more bearable.

This kind family also picked us up when we were discharged from the hospital, took us to their home for another nice meal and saw us to the airport for our trip back to California. We were quite a sight, hobbling out on the runway: Brother Gregory on crutches and me with my arm in a cast. When the flight attendant asked us what happened we just said, "Oh, we were just in a little airplane crash!"

I was wearing the stocking cap that my mother had knit for me and mailed to me in the hospital. I think she thought that I had had brain surgery or something like that and this would cover over my shaved head and the horrible stitches and scars that she imagined made me look grotesque. When we arrived at the San Francisco airport we did look like refugees coming back from years in a prisoner of war camp. We were met by friends, family and our Dominican friars and glad to be home and alive. We carried with us the packets of "get-well-cards" that we had received while in the hospital. We realized how fortunate we were to have so many people praying us through what was a very traumatic time.

Bob and Suzzie Fern, good friends of mine through the Charismatic movement, heard about the accident almost as soon as it happened. Bob immediately wrote to the Miracle Evangelist, Kathryn Kuhlman, and asked for her prayers. I still don't know how his letter, written in the afternoon of Monday, November 9th got back to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania so quickly. I treasure her letter to Bob which was dated November 12th just four days after the accident in which she assures him of her "prayers for the brothers." Four days is exactly how long I was unconscious.

When the Anchor Rescue Mission people heard about the accident, they immediately fell on their knees in prayer. They had confidence that God hears the prayers of his faithful servants and I am convinced that their prayers helped us in our hour of need. I was told that they asked all the street people, gathered at the mission for the evening service and meal, to join them in prayer. Friends later told me that Sr. Crook prayed for a few minutes and then boldly stood up announcing, "He's OK. He'll be alright. Let us praise God and get on with the service!"

I was OK when I finally got home, but I still had my arm in a cast. It was broken in two places close to the wrist and was repaired in surgery with the aid of metal brackets and screws. But the fracture line was not healing. X-rays proved this to be fact when I had been to the doctor the week before. As an enthusiastic Charismatic I prayed for a healing. The doctor said that there was no reason to take another x-ray since it was obvious that the fracture was not healing and we should begin to make plans to do the bone graft surgery.

I asked him to please take x-rays one more time which he did, and to his surprise, the fracture was healed over. He said, "I don't know what to say. Take up your cast and go home."

News of my "miraculous healing" eventually got back to the mid-west. A letter I had written about it found its way to the attorneys for the pilots who then claimed, "If he was miraculously healed, how could he also claim financial remuneration." The final settlement of our law suit was severely diminished by this turn of events. Our attorneys wrote to us, happy that I had been healed, but asking that God also give me the gift of discretionary silence.

The final segment in this story happened some time later when I was sent to a speech therapist in Phoenix, Arizona to determine if there was any residual effects of the accident. The therapist ask me if I could begin to speak a kind of monologue as she timed me and counted the words that I used. When she wondered if the counter and stop-watch would bother me I told her no. I began speaking as fast as I could. She began timing and counting as fast as she could. After a short time she stopped, saying, "Who told you that you had a speaking deficiency? I can't even click the counter fast enough to keep up with you."

God has given me many gifts and abilities and my speaking voice is one that I will never take for granted. God kept me alive through that plane crash and surrounded me with good, faithful friends whose prayers strengthened me in a time of need. I still keep in touch with the Kleinschmidt family but have lost contact with some of the others who were so helpful to me by their prayers.

Although almost thirty years have rolled by since this accident I will never forget the people at the Anchor Rescue Mission and Psalm 41 that led me to them and all the miracles that I experienced there. I have seen over and over again how "God writes straight with crooked lines."

Be sure to look for the next chapter which will continue with "Kathryn Kuhlman and the Miracle Years."

At the time of this posting, Br. Daniel Thomas was the Director of St. Benedict Lodge, a Dominican Retreat and Conference Center in McKenzie Bridge, Oregon. This is his fourth article in the series "On Being a Brother." He can be reached through his email.

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