Story of the Week 3/13/09

Posted by admin

March 13, 2009

Hello, angel friends. Just wanted to remind you that with Easter approaching, our people in Arkansas (the JoAnn Cayce Charities) will once again be arranging an Easter egg hunt for the children there, if they receive anything to give away. I always send some stuffed bunnies from summer garage sales, but if it’s too late for that, a little gift certificate to WalMart or a color book and crayons are always so welcome.

These children are the poorest of the poor, and rarely have a chance to enjoy a party, and of course JoAnn has been the beneficiary of our angel group for many years. If you’d like to get involved, just contact JoAnn at 403 South Second St., Thornton AR 71766. Here’s the story:

Luke Baird, then fourteen, was running late to meet his best friend. He was pedaling his bike at top speed on a fairly busy street (and, his mother Doreen says, at six feet tall, Luke could work up a pretty good head of steam). As Luke approached an intersection, his bike chain slipped and jammed his back wheel, stopping the bike dead in the street. Luke, however, tumbled over the front of the now stopped bike at a very high speed. “He remembers rolling head to feet, over and over again, so fast that he actually rolled to his feet, only to crash to the street again,” says Doreen. Luke finally came to rest in the middle of an intersection. A car had been approaching, but the driver was able to slam on her brakes in time.

“The driver, bless her, got out and helped him out of the street, and called our home because Luke was shaking so hard that he couldn’t hold her cell phone,” says Doreen. Luke’s older brother was the only one home, and he had just received his learner’s permit, but he jumped in the family car anyway, and drove to pick up his brother.

At the emergency room, doctors discovered that Luke, having caught his hand in a storm grate while tumbling, has broken several fingers. His shoulders and knees were badly gouged, and he had some serious “road rash,” visible even a few years later. And since Luke had had back pain almost all of his life, it was assumed that some serious problems would show up there too.

But his head and face were completely protected, and he even still had his baseball cap on his head without any debris on it. When Doreen finally saw him, she couldn’t help wondering if something or someone had cushioned his back too, for he was not having any pain. As it turned out, he never did, and has had a normal life ever since.

How did Luke emerge almost unscathed from that spooky, fast potentially deadly fall? Doreen thinks she knows.
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