Remember the Miracle: West Side Baptist Church Explosion of 1950 - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

Zoneboy · 03-02-2010, 02:49 PM

Link

When Rowena Vandegrift thinks about the West Side Baptist Church explosion that took place 60 years ago today, she doesn’t think about the horror of that evening.

Instead, she remembers the wonderful feeling she had upon learning that no one was injured.

Rowena, who now lives in Wichita, Kan., is one of 15 members of the church’s choir who showed up to choir practice late that night, avoiding a natural gas explosion.

“It was an absolute miracle,” Rowena said. “It’s a reminder that God watches over all of us.”

Whether it was mere coincidence or divine intervention, the March 1, 1950 explosion has received national attention and was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1989.

In “Unsolved Mysteries,” Marilyn Paul Mitchell, a member of the choir whose mother was the choir director, said that members were always prompt and ready to sing by 7:25 p.m.

But at 7:27 p.m., when the explosion occurred, nobody was there.

“Mother expected all of us to be punctual,” Mitchell said. “Most often, everyone was there on time. I can’t remember a time where anybody came late.”

Vandegrift and her sister were late because their car had broken down and her alternate ride was late picking them up.

The pastor, his wife and his daughter were late because the daughter’s dress was soiled and the wife was ironing another. The pastor had actually lit the furnace earlier in the evening and had returned home.

One choir member was working on an important letter while another choir member and her daughter were late because they had to tend to matters at her mother’s house before arriving.

Another man was late because he was taking care of his two sons and did not realize until the last minute that he was late.

Mitchell, the pianist for the choir, had planned to arrive 30 minutes early, but fell asleep after dinner, causing her and her mother to be late.

Two high school students, who usually rode together to choir practice, were late because one had to listen to the end of a radio program.

And finally, Joyce Black, according to “Unsolved Mysteries,” waited until the last possible minute before leaving because of the cold weather.

Black lived across the street from the church.

“I was just plain lazy,” she told “Unsolved Mysteries.” “So I kept putting off going out the door. At last, I couldn’t put it off any longer and when I opened up the door, our church disintegrated.”

Black recalled sheet music and songbooks flying through the air after the explosion.

The explosion could be heard around Beatrice and caused power outages throughout the town.

Francis Maguire, who still lives in Beatrice, was an alternate actress for the local filming of “Unsolved Mysteries.”

She has particular interest in the event and has kept a scrapbook of it.

Maguire was nine when the explosion took place and lived near the church.

Her father was the fire chief who responded to the explosion and her brother was a volunteer firefighter.

“We heard the noise from the explosion and the lights went out, and of course we were little kids, so we thought it was the boogie man,” Maguire said. “We saw the church steeple in the street the next day.”

The church was eventually rebuilt, and 60 years after that night when tragedy was averted, the congregation continues to grow.

Current pastor Jon Palmquist said West Side Baptist Church typically has 60 to 90 people in attendance every Sunday and has even started a children’s and adult Sunday School.

Palmquist has been the pastor for three years and said the congregation typically reflects on the miracle of 1950 whenever the anniversary comes up.

“It’s something that we give thankfulness to God for that it wasn’t a disaster that night,” Palmquist said. “It was a miracle.”

Vandegrift said she returns to Beatrice at least once a year and still keeps in contact with a few other choir members.

Vandegrift thinks about all the children and grandchildren of the choir members who would not exist today if things had been different on March 1, 1950.

“I just think about the impact all these lives have had on other people,” Vandegrift said. “Each of our lives has touched other people in some way or form, which would not have happened if we had been killed in that explosion.”

dynoguy88 · 03-02-2010, 04:56 PM

Neat article. Thanks for posting it.

mozartpc27 · 03-02-2010, 06:10 PM

This has long been one of my favorite UM segments, because it is such a nice story, but there is one thing that has long troubled me about the segment as well. Now that I read this article and think about it some more, I'm afraid it casts some doubt about what time the Church really blew up, and thus on the idea that a miracle took place.

In the segment, Marilyn Paul Mitchell tells the story that is repeated in this article: her mother was the choir director, she insisted on promptness, and everyone was ALWAYS there at 7:25, ready to sing. This raises a very compelling question, which the segment doesn't answer: was Marilyn Paul Mitchell's mother there? The segment goes through every member of the choir, but is silent on the fate of the choir director; if you watch it again, where she was that night was never mentioned, even as we are offered an explanation for why her daughter was late. If the director was late too, no reason was given, but if she was on time, as you would expect the fastidiously punctual director of the choir to be, and was therefore trapped in the Church and died or was injured in the explosion, this isn't mentioned either. UM simply don't tell us anything about her, except that she demanded punctuality. Whatever became of her that night? The segment doesn't say.

I always thought that perhaps that the director was there, and was killed that night. If that were so, while the event would be tragic, it would nevertheless be very, very fortunate that ONLY the director was present at 7:27 p.m. Obviouisly, if NOBODY is killed, it makes for a better story, and so perhaps "forgetting" to mention that there was one casualty was UM's way of making a good story better, something they have certainly been known to do in the past...

But if the choir director herself was NOT there when the church exploded, the same choir director that the UM segment (and indeed every telling of this story) goes to great lengths to emphasize was oh-so-punctual herself and oh-so-demanding of punctuality from all her choir members, doesn't that suggest that the whole story might be flawed? If SHE wasn't there either, this person who supposedly DEMANDED rigid punctuality from her choir, perhaps the explosion happened, not at 7:27 as the townspeople assert, but anywhere from 5 to ten minutes earlier, say 7:20-7:22? Even a few minutes makes a difference here.

I would be less suspicious except, as I stated above, the segment tells us NOTHING about what was going on with the choir director that night (I'm not sure it even gives her full name). Every other choir member gets a mini-profile about why they were late; why is the choir director ignored? Could it be perhaps because she was either NOT late, and thus nothing all that special happened, or because she didn't really insist on punctuality the way the segment insists that she did, and so being a few minutes late really wasn't all that unusual? At the extreme, perhaps choir practice that night had actually been moved back by a few minutes or canceled altogether, and then later this group of people decided to "forget" that to make the story.

But there's something not quite right here. And I LIKE the segment.

mozartpc27 · 03-02-2010, 06:14 PM

Reading the snopes account of the story, it would appear that Marilyn's mother was late because Marilyn was late. So I guess this answers my question. This is weird, because I know that every time I watch this segment I am always listening to hear what happened to that choir director, and I always am left without an answer, or at least so I thought. This has bothered me for years, literally.

mah79 · 03-02-2010, 08:37 PM

Very interesting article; thanks for sharing! I forgot that yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the explosion. Does anyone know if any of the UM interviewees are still alive? I only had time for a quick read-through of the article, but will return and read it more thoroughly

mozartpc27 · 03-02-2010, 09:53 PM

In re-watching the segment, I see where I went astray: the segment does identify the choir's leader as "Martha Paul," and her daughter, Marilyn Paul-Mitchell, does refer to the choir director as her mother. However, when the segment covers Marilyn Paul's reason for being late, it refers to Marilyn as the choir's accompaniest, but makes no second mention that her mother was the choir's director. Indeed, Martha Paul's name is never mentioned again after the first minute or so of the segment, and is not mentioned at all when recounting the story of why each choir member was late. The segment does, of course, tell us why Martha's daughter was late - she overslept during a little catnap - but in so telling it never mentions her mother by name, nor does it remind viewers that Marilyn's mother was also the choir director. This has the effect of suppressing that information and its importance to some degree. Marilyn Paul's oversleeping of course made Marilyn late, but the segment fails to emphasize that this also made Martha Paul, the choir's director, late as well.

I'm guessing this little elision was made because, had they emphasized that the choir director was late because she didn't want to disturb the slumber of her teenage daughter, a choir member, it would have painted a very different portrait of exactly how demanding Martha Paul was of punctuality. If she was so hell-bent on everyone being on time every week, and made it a point with choir members that they MUST be on time if they wished to sing in her choir, why would she let her own daughter oversleep, causing herself to be late? That would be, among other things, the worst kind of double-standard.

The obvious answer to that question, despite what the segment wants us to believe, is that reports of Martha Paul's unwavering insistence on punctuality were probably somewhat exaggerated. This makes me like her more as a person: after all, inflexibility over the trivial is hardly an admirable quality. But it also does point to a more prosaic explanation for why everyone was late that night: Martha Paul was not the clock-punching taskmaster the segment wants to have us believe she was. People wandering in closer to 7:30 than 7:25 was probably not nearly as uncommon an occurence as the segment and specifically Marilyn Paul suggest.

The people who were spared a terrible fate because they were late that night, of course, are no less fortunate than they were before, and their feeling of the presence of the hand of God in everyone's survival should not be diminished. Nonethelss, realizing that Martha Paul, the choir's director and the person supposedly responsible for maintaining strict punctuality among choir members was in fact willing to let her own self be late so her teenage daughter - the choir's accompaniest - could sleep a few extra minutes that day, suggests that Martha probably wasn't as inflexibly insistent on everyone always arriving 5 minutes early in order to be considered on time, and thus does tend to make the whole event appear somewhat less miraculous. And I am sure that is exactly why the segment was edited the way it was: to obscure that probable reality as much as possible.

Clockworkhigh · 03-03-2010, 03:13 AM

Yes, always liked this one, a feel good story. I guess it is kind of funny that a feel good story would involved a church exploding, but the surroundings of it and the fact that no one was hurt when they SHOULD have been is what always got me. This is one story that didn't warrant a conspiracy theory either.

mattc · 03-04-2010, 02:15 PM

Mozart: Good points, and you are a beautiful writer might I add!

I had never really noticed the lack of an explanation about why the choir director was late, but I always assumed that perhaps the rigid punctuality angle was a bit overstated. That being said, I still think the story is wonderful because, even if there was no demanding director that required everyone always show up on time, it's still cool that so many different members had their own, seemingly mundane reasons for being late.

In terms of the daughter oversleeping. Perhaps her mother was trying to get her up and, because she was sleeping, it just took a few minutes longer than normal; she got her daughter up, let's say, but she was slow to get ready, or wanted to get dressed, etc...

This is def. one of the best UM segments, and I'm sure that a group of clearly devote church goers will want to see this event through the prism of God's divine intervention, but it's hard to argue that, at the very least, almost a dozen people were very very lucky that day.

I also thought the filming of this segment was glorious, particularly when they showed the bible pages slowly blowing in the wind after the church exploded.

As I said, even if the punctuality angle was inflated, it still is a great story of amazing luck, as each member had his/her own reason for being just a few minutes late. Plus, even if the director didn't require promptness, human nature would tell us that at least a few members should have been there on time regardless, so I still say the story is fascinating.

One thing I did notice was that the article said that everyone usually is ready to sing at 7:25pm. That seems an odd time to start something. I have a feeling that the rehearsals actually started at 7:30, and that most people were normally there a few minutes early.

mozartpc27 · 06-16-2010, 12:16 PM

I'd forgotten I'd even made the above posts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattc

Mozart: Good points, and you are a beautiful writer might I add!

Thank you very much, mattc! How nice of you!

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattc

This is def. one of the best UM segments, and I'm sure that a group of clearly devote church goers will want to see this event through the prism of God's divine intervention, but it's hard to argue that, at the very least, almost a dozen people were very very lucky that day.

Very true, and nicely stated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattc

I also thought the filming of this segment was glorious, particularly when they showed the bible pages slowly blowing in the wind after the church exploded.

Also very true; I always thought so too, but never thought to comment on it. Well observed!

McBevis · 06-16-2010, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mah79

Very interesting article; thanks for sharing! I forgot that yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the explosion. Does anyone know if any of the UM interviewees are still alive? I only had time for a quick read-through of the article, but will return and read it more thoroughly

Re: Are any of the interviewees still alive?

Herbert Kipf (the guy preoccupied with the church bulletin) died in 1997 at the age of 76, but I'm not sure about any of the others.

colt45allstar · 06-30-2010, 04:59 AM

This was an intriguing segment, although being Atheist I don't know if I would necessarily believe that some higher power saved all the lives.

I also remember that lifetime used to play this segment over.. and over.. and over... and over again.

MegtheEgg86 · 06-30-2010, 04:12 PM

I think that's what makes this story so cool. No matter what you may or may not believe in, at some level you have to admit it's a fascinating turn of events.

And yes, I also recall Lifetime did play this one a million times over.

TJ · 10-02-2023, 07:56 PM

Lamont At Large traveled to Beatrice, Nebraska, to visit the rebuilt West Side Baptist Church and the grave of Joyce Larimore who was interviewed in the segment.

This Church Explosion Was Featured On Unsolved Mysteries

dynoguy88 · 11-16-2023, 09:14 PM

Even though Lifetime overran this segment, I always thought it was a great story. What's puzzling is UM, in presenting this amazing story, didn't mention all the choir members who were also late.

- The segment mentions Royena Estes (who was ready) but couldn't get her car started. Royena had a sister named Sadie who was also in the choir.
Apparently, the sisters had car trouble all day long but when it was time to go to rehearsal, it wouldn't start at all. They called Ladonna Vandegrift for a ride. Ladonna was the teenager who was struggling with a geometry equation and didn't want to leave until she figured it out. Ladonna eventually picked them up and that was how the Estes sisters were able to get to the explosion site. That was something I always wondered about.

- Dorothy Wood was another teenager in the choir. She lived next door to Lucielle Jones, the girl who got hooked on listening to 'This is your Life,' on the radio that night. The girls always went to choir practice together and Dorothy didn't want to go alone, so she waited for Lucielle. That was why Dorothy was late.

- Mrs. Leonard Schuster had gone to her mother's house that night to help her prepare for a missionary meeting and she lost track of time, so she was late.

- Harvey Ahl was home with his two young sons. His wife was out of town and the boys were keeping him distracted from the time. He eventually looked at his watch and discovered he was already late for rehearsal.

Not sure why UM didn't mention all these people who were a part of the story. It wasn't obvious at first but I eventually figured out that Marylin Paul, the accompanist who was so tired and took a nap, was the daughter of the choir director. That was why the director was late.

03-02-2010, 02:49 PM	#1
Zoneboy RIP, I'LL NEVER FORGET YOU :( Moderator Forum Superstar Join Date: Jul 13, 2003 Location: AT HOME WISHING ALL THIS WAS JUST A DREAM AND THAT I'LL WAKE UP FROM THIS NIGHTMARE. Posts: 34,349	Remember the Miracle: West Side Baptist Church Explosion of 1950 Link When Rowena Vandegrift thinks about the West Side Baptist Church explosion that took place 60 years ago today, she doesn’t think about the horror of that evening. Instead, she remembers the wonderful feeling she had upon learning that no one was injured. Rowena, who now lives in Wichita, Kan., is one of 15 members of the church’s choir who showed up to choir practice late that night, avoiding a natural gas explosion. “It was an absolute miracle,” Rowena said. “It’s a reminder that God watches over all of us.” Whether it was mere coincidence or divine intervention, the March 1, 1950 explosion has received national attention and was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1989. In “Unsolved Mysteries,” Marilyn Paul Mitchell, a member of the choir whose mother was the choir director, said that members were always prompt and ready to sing by 7:25 p.m. But at 7:27 p.m., when the explosion occurred, nobody was there. “Mother expected all of us to be punctual,” Mitchell said. “Most often, everyone was there on time. I can’t remember a time where anybody came late.” Vandegrift and her sister were late because their car had broken down and her alternate ride was late picking them up. The pastor, his wife and his daughter were late because the daughter’s dress was soiled and the wife was ironing another. The pastor had actually lit the furnace earlier in the evening and had returned home. One choir member was working on an important letter while another choir member and her daughter were late because they had to tend to matters at her mother’s house before arriving. Another man was late because he was taking care of his two sons and did not realize until the last minute that he was late. Mitchell, the pianist for the choir, had planned to arrive 30 minutes early, but fell asleep after dinner, causing her and her mother to be late. Two high school students, who usually rode together to choir practice, were late because one had to listen to the end of a radio program. And finally, Joyce Black, according to “Unsolved Mysteries,” waited until the last possible minute before leaving because of the cold weather. Black lived across the street from the church. “I was just plain lazy,” she told “Unsolved Mysteries.” “So I kept putting off going out the door. At last, I couldn’t put it off any longer and when I opened up the door, our church disintegrated.” Black recalled sheet music and songbooks flying through the air after the explosion. The explosion could be heard around Beatrice and caused power outages throughout the town. Francis Maguire, who still lives in Beatrice, was an alternate actress for the local filming of “Unsolved Mysteries.” She has particular interest in the event and has kept a scrapbook of it. Maguire was nine when the explosion took place and lived near the church. Her father was the fire chief who responded to the explosion and her brother was a volunteer firefighter. “We heard the noise from the explosion and the lights went out, and of course we were little kids, so we thought it was the boogie man,” Maguire said. “We saw the church steeple in the street the next day.” The church was eventually rebuilt, and 60 years after that night when tragedy was averted, the congregation continues to grow. Current pastor Jon Palmquist said West Side Baptist Church typically has 60 to 90 people in attendance every Sunday and has even started a children’s and adult Sunday School. Palmquist has been the pastor for three years and said the congregation typically reflects on the miracle of 1950 whenever the anniversary comes up. “It’s something that we give thankfulness to God for that it wasn’t a disaster that night,” Palmquist said. “It was a miracle.” Vandegrift said she returns to Beatrice at least once a year and still keeps in contact with a few other choir members. Vandegrift thinks about all the children and grandchildren of the choir members who would not exist today if things had been different on March 1, 1950. “I just think about the impact all these lives have had on other people,” Vandegrift said. “Each of our lives has touched other people in some way or form, which would not have happened if we had been killed in that explosion.”
	__________________ 'Twas The Night Before Christmas And All Through The Full House Not A Creature Was Stirring, Not Even Mighty Mouse. All My Children We're Nestled All Snug In Their Beds While Visions Of Sugarbakers Danced In Their Heads.

03-02-2010, 04:56 PM	#2
dynoguy88 Member Forum 3000 Club Member Join Date: Apr 01, 2000 Location: Michigan, USA Posts: 3,672	reply Neat article. Thanks for posting it.

03-02-2010, 06:10 PM	#3
mozartpc27 Vigilante Logician Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 09, 2006 Location: Philadelphia Posts: 924	This has long been one of my favorite UM segments, because it is such a nice story, but there is one thing that has long troubled me about the segment as well. Now that I read this article and think about it some more, I'm afraid it casts some doubt about what time the Church really blew up, and thus on the idea that a miracle took place. In the segment, Marilyn Paul Mitchell tells the story that is repeated in this article: her mother was the choir director, she insisted on promptness, and everyone was ALWAYS there at 7:25, ready to sing. This raises a very compelling question, which the segment doesn't answer: was Marilyn Paul Mitchell's mother there? The segment goes through every member of the choir, but is silent on the fate of the choir director; if you watch it again, where she was that night was never mentioned, even as we are offered an explanation for why her daughter was late. If the director was late too, no reason was given, but if she was on time, as you would expect the fastidiously punctual director of the choir to be, and was therefore trapped in the Church and died or was injured in the explosion, this isn't mentioned either. UM simply don't tell us anything about her, except that she demanded punctuality. Whatever became of her that night? The segment doesn't say. I always thought that perhaps that the director was there, and was killed that night. If that were so, while the event would be tragic, it would nevertheless be very, very fortunate that ONLY the director was present at 7:27 p.m. Obviouisly, if NOBODY is killed, it makes for a better story, and so perhaps "forgetting" to mention that there was one casualty was UM's way of making a good story better, something they have certainly been known to do in the past... But if the choir director herself was NOT there when the church exploded, the same choir director that the UM segment (and indeed every telling of this story) goes to great lengths to emphasize was oh-so-punctual herself and oh-so-demanding of punctuality from all her choir members, doesn't that suggest that the whole story might be flawed? If SHE wasn't there either, this person who supposedly DEMANDED rigid punctuality from her choir, perhaps the explosion happened, not at 7:27 as the townspeople assert, but anywhere from 5 to ten minutes earlier, say 7:20-7:22? Even a few minutes makes a difference here. I would be less suspicious except, as I stated above, the segment tells us NOTHING about what was going on with the choir director that night (I'm not sure it even gives her full name). Every other choir member gets a mini-profile about why they were late; why is the choir director ignored? Could it be perhaps because she was either NOT late, and thus nothing all that special happened, or because she didn't really insist on punctuality the way the segment insists that she did, and so being a few minutes late really wasn't all that unusual? At the extreme, perhaps choir practice that night had actually been moved back by a few minutes or canceled altogether, and then later this group of people decided to "forget" that to make the story. But there's something not quite right here. And I LIKE the segment.
	__________________ "You can't say the words that the rock makes you feel like." - Patty Johnson

03-02-2010, 09:53 PM	#6
mozartpc27 Vigilante Logician Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 09, 2006 Location: Philadelphia Posts: 924	In re-watching the segment, I see where I went astray: the segment does identify the choir's leader as "Martha Paul," and her daughter, Marilyn Paul-Mitchell, does refer to the choir director as her mother. However, when the segment covers Marilyn Paul's reason for being late, it refers to Marilyn as the choir's accompaniest, but makes no second mention that her mother was the choir's director. Indeed, Martha Paul's name is never mentioned again after the first minute or so of the segment, and is not mentioned at all when recounting the story of why each choir member was late. The segment does, of course, tell us why Martha's daughter was late - she overslept during a little catnap - but in so telling it never mentions her mother by name, nor does it remind viewers that Marilyn's mother was also the choir director. This has the effect of suppressing that information and its importance to some degree. Marilyn Paul's oversleeping of course made Marilyn late, but the segment fails to emphasize that this also made Martha Paul, the choir's director, late as well. I'm guessing this little elision was made because, had they emphasized that the choir director was late because she didn't want to disturb the slumber of her teenage daughter, a choir member, it would have painted a very different portrait of exactly how demanding Martha Paul was of punctuality. If she was so hell-bent on everyone being on time every week, and made it a point with choir members that they MUST be on time if they wished to sing in her choir, why would she let her own daughter oversleep, causing herself to be late? That would be, among other things, the worst kind of double-standard. The obvious answer to that question, despite what the segment wants us to believe, is that reports of Martha Paul's unwavering insistence on punctuality were probably somewhat exaggerated. This makes me like her more as a person: after all, inflexibility over the trivial is hardly an admirable quality. But it also does point to a more prosaic explanation for why everyone was late that night: Martha Paul was not the clock-punching taskmaster the segment wants to have us believe she was. People wandering in closer to 7:30 than 7:25 was probably not nearly as uncommon an occurence as the segment and specifically Marilyn Paul suggest. The people who were spared a terrible fate because they were late that night, of course, are no less fortunate than they were before, and their feeling of the presence of the hand of God in everyone's survival should not be diminished. Nonethelss, realizing that Martha Paul, the choir's director and the person supposedly responsible for maintaining strict punctuality among choir members was in fact willing to let her own self be late so her teenage daughter - the choir's accompaniest - could sleep a few extra minutes that day, suggests that Martha probably wasn't as inflexibly insistent on everyone always arriving 5 minutes early in order to be considered on time, and thus does tend to make the whole event appear somewhat less miraculous. And I am sure that is exactly why the segment was edited the way it was: to obscure that probable reality as much as possible.
	Last edited by mozartpc27; 03-02-2010 at 10:19 PM.

06-30-2010, 04:12 PM	#12
MegtheEgg86 Member Forum Veteran Join Date: Jun 19, 2008 Location: The Volunteer State Posts: 5,156	I think that's what makes this story so cool. No matter what you may or may not believe in, at some level you have to admit it's a fascinating turn of events. And yes, I also recall Lifetime did play this one a million times over.
	__________________ "Why is she lying?, it makes me wonder. What is she hiding?, it makes me wonder." Go Vols!

03-02-2010, 06:14 PM	#4
mozartpc27 Vigilante Logician Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 09, 2006 Location: Philadelphia Posts: 924	Reading the snopes account of the story, it would appear that Marilyn's mother was late because Marilyn was late. So I guess this answers my question. This is weird, because I know that every time I watch this segment I am always listening to hear what happened to that choir director, and I always am left without an answer, or at least so I thought. This has bothered me for years, literally.

03-02-2010, 08:37 PM	#5
mah79 Member Frequent Poster Join Date: Oct 03, 2009 Posts: 141	Very interesting article; thanks for sharing! I forgot that yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the explosion. Does anyone know if any of the UM interviewees are still alive? I only had time for a quick read-through of the article, but will return and read it more thoroughly

03-03-2010, 03:13 AM	#7
Clockworkhigh Member Forum Regular Join Date: Apr 29, 2009 Posts: 604	Yes, always liked this one, a feel good story. I guess it is kind of funny that a feel good story would involved a church exploding, but the surroundings of it and the fact that no one was hurt when they SHOULD have been is what always got me. This is one story that didn't warrant a conspiracy theory either.

03-04-2010, 02:15 PM	#8
mattc Member Frequent Poster Join Date: Nov 16, 2008 Location: Virginia Posts: 273	Mozart: Good points, and you are a beautiful writer might I add! I had never really noticed the lack of an explanation about why the choir director was late, but I always assumed that perhaps the rigid punctuality angle was a bit overstated. That being said, I still think the story is wonderful because, even if there was no demanding director that required everyone always show up on time, it's still cool that so many different members had their own, seemingly mundane reasons for being late. In terms of the daughter oversleeping. Perhaps her mother was trying to get her up and, because she was sleeping, it just took a few minutes longer than normal; she got her daughter up, let's say, but she was slow to get ready, or wanted to get dressed, etc... This is def. one of the best UM segments, and I'm sure that a group of clearly devote church goers will want to see this event through the prism of God's divine intervention, but it's hard to argue that, at the very least, almost a dozen people were very very lucky that day. I also thought the filming of this segment was glorious, particularly when they showed the bible pages slowly blowing in the wind after the church exploded. As I said, even if the punctuality angle was inflated, it still is a great story of amazing luck, as each member had his/her own reason for being just a few minutes late. Plus, even if the director didn't require promptness, human nature would tell us that at least a few members should have been there on time regardless, so I still say the story is fascinating. One thing I did notice was that the article said that everyone usually is ready to sing at 7:25pm. That seems an odd time to start something. I have a feeling that the rehearsals actually started at 7:30, and that most people were normally there a few minutes early.

06-30-2010, 04:59 AM	#11
colt45allstar Member Occasional Poster Join Date: Mar 09, 2006 Posts: 69	This was an intriguing segment, although being Atheist I don't know if I would necessarily believe that some higher power saved all the lives. I also remember that lifetime used to play this segment over.. and over.. and over... and over again.

10-02-2023, 07:56 PM	#13
TJ Site Owner Administrator Forum Star Join Date: Feb 03, 2000 Location: Marietta, GA Posts: 10,668	Lamont At Large traveled to Beatrice, Nebraska, to visit the rebuilt West Side Baptist Church and the grave of Joyce Larimore who was interviewed in the segment. This Church Explosion Was Featured On Unsolved Mysteries

11-16-2023, 09:14 PM	#14
dynoguy88 Member Forum 3000 Club Member Join Date: Apr 01, 2000 Location: Michigan, USA Posts: 3,672	Even though Lifetime overran this segment, I always thought it was a great story. What's puzzling is UM, in presenting this amazing story, didn't mention all the choir members who were also late. - The segment mentions Royena Estes (who was ready) but couldn't get her car started. Royena had a sister named Sadie who was also in the choir. Apparently, the sisters had car trouble all day long but when it was time to go to rehearsal, it wouldn't start at all. They called Ladonna Vandegrift for a ride. Ladonna was the teenager who was struggling with a geometry equation and didn't want to leave until she figured it out. Ladonna eventually picked them up and that was how the Estes sisters were able to get to the explosion site. That was something I always wondered about. - Dorothy Wood was another teenager in the choir. She lived next door to Lucielle Jones, the girl who got hooked on listening to 'This is your Life,' on the radio that night. The girls always went to choir practice together and Dorothy didn't want to go alone, so she waited for Lucielle. That was why Dorothy was late. - Mrs. Leonard Schuster had gone to her mother's house that night to help her prepare for a missionary meeting and she lost track of time, so she was late. - Harvey Ahl was home with his two young sons. His wife was out of town and the boys were keeping him distracted from the time. He eventually looked at his watch and discovered he was already late for rehearsal. Not sure why UM didn't mention all these people who were a part of the story. It wasn't obvious at first but I eventually figured out that Marylin Paul, the accompanist who was so tired and took a nap, was the daughter of the choir director. That was why the director was late.