In 1950 the folks of Beatrice, Nebraska experienced a miracle
Or perhaps it was just luck. Whatever the case, 17 people should have been inside of the modest Baptist church for choir practice when it exploded. None of them were.
Timeline
Wednesday – March 1st, 1950
5:00 pm – Reverend Walter Klempel leaves home to turn on the church furnace. The church is less than a half mile from their home. Choir practice begins in two and a half hours. The temperature may get down near the single digits.
7:10 pm – Reverend Klempel is ready to leave. His wife, Eunice realizes that their daughter’s dress has become dirty. She begins to iron a different dress for baby Marilyn Ruth.
7:15 pm – Sixteen-year-old Royena Estes and her eleven-year-old sister Sadie are frustrated that the family car will not start. Royena calls her friend, fifteen-year-old Ladona Vandergrift to ask for a ride. Ladona mentions that she’s having problems with her geometry homework but as soon as she’s finished she’ll have her parents pick them up. The girls understand that they will be late since they live four miles from Ladona and the church.
7:15 pm – After dinner, eighteen-year-old Marilyn Paul had decided to take a nap. After at least one unsuccessful wake up attempt, her mother Martha finally roused her out of bed. With Marilyn being the pianist and Martha being the choir director, it was important for them to be there in a timely manner. Despite running late, Marilyn asked for a few extra minutes to put herself together.
Everyone seems to be behind
7:17 pm – Ruth Bernice Schuster packs up her one-year-old baby, Susan and heads for choir practice. On the way, she remembers that she needs to stop by her mother’s house to help her with something.
7:20 pm – Herbert Kipf worked as a lathe operator and was typically early for practice. He had been putting off an important letter but decided to begin writing it then. “I can’t think why,” he said.
7:22 pm – Thirty-three-year-old Joyce Black had worked a long day as a stenographer. It was cold out and she was feeling particularly lazy that day. She’d leave soon.
7:24 pm – Eighteen-year-old Lucille Jones and seventeen-year-old Dorothy Wood are best friends and neighbors on South La Salle Street. The church is practically right across the street from them. Dorothy stops at Lucille’s house, ready to go, but Lucille asks if she can stay to finish listening to her radio program that ends at 7:30 pm. Dorothy agrees to wait for her.
7:30 pm – Choir Practice should be starting
7:31 pm – Harvey Ahl’s wife was out of town for the week which left him in charge of his two sons, Harvey Jr. (10) and Steven (6). The three were talking about their days and lost track of time. Harvey looked down at his watch and saw that he was already late.
7:32 pm – A gas leak around the church reaches the furnace and causes it to explode. Windows in nearby houses and businesses are blown out. The steeple falls through the power lines causing neighboring KWBE to go off the air for two hours.
Making Headlines
Lives Spared
The paths that all of them took to the West Side Baptist Church.
Many were high school aged
Life Magazine takes notice
On March 27th of 1950 Life Magazine ran a multi-page article featuring pictures of each of the potential victims. The miracle in Beatrice, Nebraska was now known nationwide.
Divine Intervention or Coincidence?
The choir members were hardly ever late and certainly not all at the same time. Snopes.com even checked in on the facts of the story. The article reads, “It is impossible to calculate precise odds for all these events occurring at once. But past performance indicated that each person would be late for practice one time in four — producing a one-in-a-million chance that the entire choir would be late that night.”
In searching for records of the folks involved, a majority of them went on to lead long, happy lives. A new church was built on the same grounds as the original and is still there today.
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