Things happen in life that pass unremarkably, and then other things occur that make history. This story would be unremarkable except for an incident that occurred connected to it one winter evening in Annberry Massachusetts. There are events, that when you’re involved in their unraveling, you are scared and awed at the same time. On June 12th 1998, such an event presented itself to the people of Annberry, brought to them in the form of a mother of three, named Pamela Strauss.
Annberry was a little town tucked away in a leafy place deep in urban America. There was buildings downtown that had been there since the days of the depression. The Star Theater had shown early Betty Grable films and now you could see the last chapter of "Star Wars." Time had not changed all that much there, or turned things over like it can do. The trains took the same path they traveled during the Second World War. Even the station remained the same; the only difference was the state-of-the-art junk food machine in the passenger waiting room.
The cemetery was unremarkable. It was called "Crest Cemetery" and was well tended, subsidized by merchants in the town. At its center was a pool where an angel stood, giant wings spread over the water. The head stones showed the historical progression of cemeteries through the years, with standing crosses and slabs in the old part, metal nameplates in the new one. When winter came, the entire town was muffled in its pervasive whiteness. It settled nicely into the season as the Christmas lights came out to color the night and mark the season. The cemetery looked its best in winter.
All of this is quite unremarkable, and I can see where you might be wondering what could be so interesting about this story so far. But while we’re looking at the cemetery, I want to walk you over to a gravesite, and while we’re standing there tell you a story about Pamela Ann Crane.
She grew up feral some would say. Teachers couldn’t keep her under control and many times her little hand felt the swift judgment of a terse ruler. Yet even as a child, she showed this unique ability for healing. She brought wounded owls home and healed them to liberation, squirrels rose from the dead under her care. Sick kittens that had no hope of survival lived to be rangy barn cats growing to a ripe old age for outdoor feline years.
When she graduated from Annberry high in 1965 she began an apprenticeship with the local veterinarian, Albert Strauss, a nervous, over-caffeinated sort of man who took care of local farm stock and various pets of the citizens of Annberry. He specialized in cats. Pamela took to the care of his charges very quickly and it could be said that these furry patients were the thread that kept her marriage intact long enough to raise three children. She and Strauss were "hitched" in the sitting room of his veterinary office, the Justice of the Peace barely heard above the din of howling dogs and meowing cats. They both settled in to the routine of the office and their new state of matrimony soon, and Strauss eventually paid for Pamela’s
veterinary training. The marriage turned into a partnership. Time passed, and things happened that occur in the lives of most people, events that barely merit mention.
That is until the storm came in 2000. It rose from the sea. The winds were clocked at 90 miles an hour. It knocked out power to the town. The traffic lights fell into the streets. Roof material flapped hysterically at the sky before being ripped away and spun into the adjoining yards. The old buildings groaned and gave up the ghost many times as the storm exacted its fury.
Children caught in the storm at Bell Elementary had been told to crawl under their seats by Mrs. Starfire as the winds pounded on the window glass. She recalled cold war drills in case of an atomic bomb attack and thought this was the time to exercise them. And yet we would all discover that it wasn’t enough to avert disaster that day.
The walls of the school weren’t up to withstanding the buffeting of the weather. As parents were arriving to try to retrieve their kids everyone gasped as Mrs. Starfire stood in a doorjamb signaling the children to remain under their desks until their folks could get them, and then the school roof and windward site of the wood and plaster building collapsed.
Fathers leaped from their trucks and cars and mothers streaked across the strewn yard to rescue their children. Mrs. Starfire died instantly, her hand pointed in the direction of where the children had been buried in the debris as if trying to save them even in death. Fathers hunched their backs and clawed at huge chunks of building trying to take care in the fierce winds not to injure anyone buried in the wreckage. When word finally got around about the disaster men left their own families to go to the school and help.
One by one, the mangled children were pulled from the debris. They were taken to an empty metal storage hut at the back of the post office, its thick walls protecting the place from the wind. The hospital in Walthrop was trying to keep its generators running and patients stable and could spare no one, so there was no relief coming, and Dock Sunstrom was nowhere to be found. Last reports of him saw the roof of his garage collapse just as he entered it to retrieve his car. That was when the Strauss’s arrived at the scene.
Albert and Pamela were veterinarians, but they were all the town had right now. With jaw, set and eyes fixed on the task at hand Albert began to move among the wounded children and adults. He patched this, stopped the blood flow on that but he didn’t have anything to treat the wounds, just what could be rummaged among the wounded. Many were bandaged with their own clothes. The children especially, were cut with glass and wood splinters. Some were too injured to cry.
Pamela was trying to remove a glass shard from a calf and the little boy was saying "Mommy" over and over again when she stopped, got up and walked to the shed door, opened it and went outside in the wind. There, a police car flashed its lights, as it lay crushed under a large tree and a handful of men with chain saws tried not to cut each other as they attempted to get the officer and an elderly woman out. Pamela sunk to the ground saturated with rain and began to weep. This was too much.
At this point, I suppose I could embellish the moment with what I thought happened inside her then. I could speculate what came upon her that made her suddenly stop crying, and look up into the millions of raindrops blasting downward on those fierce winds. But even now, years later, few people when they tell this story, can in all honesty say what really happened next and explain it in a way that rational people would understand.
Pamela stood up, and those who saw her say she held her hands as if they weren’t a part of her any more. She looked at them as if they had been attached at the wrists but didn’t belong there. They said she looked scared and determined at the same time, and many admitted being frightened of her for some reason. (Although later, they couldn’t explain why).
She walked back into the shed and when she did, people looked up at her as if waiting for her to speak. She glanced around for a moment, her face washed with rain, her hair plastered to her forehead and neck. Then she knelt down at the first cot where a child lay dying from a severe stomach wound. Someone had given the poor little thing a damp Teddy Bear. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling of the shed; her lips pressed together, her skin waxen and pale.
Pamela’s hands drifted over the wound for a moment, and then like a vapor descend to rest inches above it. Her arms seemed to vibrate from the elbows down as the hands hovered over the dying child. The handful of people around the cot all swear even to this day that color came to the little girl’s face almost instantaneously. Her eyes lost their sunken, fevered look. She turned them on Pamela. But she was standing now, shivering with the cold or with what had just happened no one could say. She turned and fixed her eyes on a little boy with a head wound, walked over and knelt beside him, again…the hands hovering over his wound. People watched all this in muted fascination. No one spoke.
"What’s wrong with her Al?" Jeff Stone asked about Pamela as the veterinarian knelt to look at the little girl’s stomach wound. He turned back the blanket and his hand went to his mouth. His eyes widened behind his thick glasses. "Nothing," he croaked. The wound had completely healed.
From cot to cot Pamela moved, the parents and volunteers stepping back to let her kneel before each storm victim. Some people wept. Some praised God, crossed themselves, and gave thanks. Some were afraid. But as Pamela moved from person to person, the spectators were all witnesses to each miracle. The air in the shed was electric. Those who were there said they could feel something that moved through them and it was frightening and comforting at the same time; many prayed.
A mother who had an injured daughter, reached up as Pamela passed and touched her wet sleeve. Pam tuned to look at her and put her hand over the woman’s. The mother’s other hand rested on the wounds of her child. The woman later reported that when she regained normal consciousness, the lacerations on her daughter’s arms were gone.
I can only tell you what I know about that night, and what I’ve picked up from stories told later. But there was not one instance where Pamela’s laying on of hands didn’t produce a cure. Every child that was brought to the shed that night, walked away from there healed. Soon the word spread and people were bringing their wounded family members from all over the county. The streets not choked with debris were crammed with farm trucks and cars. Pamela worked into the small hours of the morning, Albert following her in stunned amazement, trying to record what he was seeing…his pen scribbling on the pages of his dampened pocket notebook.
At five in the morning, the winds died down and the rain reduced to a drizzle. Pamela got up from a cot and walked outside. People standing there said she knelt in the mud and wept into her hands. Albert joined her, stood, and stroked her hair as he looked at the crowd. One of their children was clutching his arm. The other two were asleep in the cab of the veterinarian truck. No one said anything for a long time. Then Sheriff Bob Anderson broke the silence.
"What the hell happened here?" he said.
You’ll notice that the stone we’re standing next to right now is Pamela Ann
Crane’s. It was bought and erected by the town of Annberry. She divorced Albert in 2002. He’d taken to drink and had become abusive. They both parted amicably, and Pamela went to work for a horse doctor in the adjoining county. She died in 2005 from cardiovascular complications while being treated for arrhythmia. It was estimated that over 3,000 people attended the funeral. She was greatly missed. She never repeated what went on in that shed. She never spoke about it either.
You’re probably wondering why I brought you here to tell you this. It seems that there are things in this world we can’t be so sure we know. Don’t you think? We need to let some things just be "unexplainable." I’m all right with that. Are you? Even doctors have to step back from their years of school and hands-on experience, and be amazed at the healing ability of the human body, the healing capacity of the soul, its ability to transcend our known world and reach into Infinity to tweak the gears.
If you look around you’ll notice a water fountain near here, and compared to everywhere else in this cemetery, you can find the most benches at this location. Over there you’ll notice a place where people have left notes, flowers, and little gifts. Look around you and you’ll see that the paths here are well traveled, especially the one where we stand now.
What I’d like you to do is step over there and touch the angel on Pam’s tombstone. I understand that you have a need for healing, so she’s ready for you. Breathe easy, and step forward. Go on, it’ll be all right. She’s waiting.
Who am I? My name is Albert Strauss.