50 year Journey

50 YEARS OF INSPIRATION AND PREPARATION
Plane Crashed

The Plane Crash

In the black of night our plane rant out of gas...

After a few weeks of looking, John, our pilot, found a 1974 Cherokee in Kansas and flew there to make the purchase. He arrived back in Texas with our small plane and on that same day, I got a short ride in what was now our very first airplane.

The next day, Jose called and said he was ready to come back and get started on one of our early home sales. So John gassed up our Cherokee and flew to Lajitas, Texas to pick up Jose and fly back. Well things didn’t go as planned. It got late in the day and two other people asked for a ride back with them — a young woman and a man became passengers on the flight back.

Everything would have been fine but the woman forgot her little dog and spent a good hour and a half delaying the flight. Now it was getting dark and there were no lights on this basic stretch of runway. So rather than leave the next day, they used car lights to light the dark runway and took off for Arlington, Texas.

Well, being dark now with not enough visibility to see the mountains which had to be flown over, John gave full throttle and climbed to a height well above the Mountain range. After several hours, they found that too much fuel was used and planned to land in San Angelo for gas — but when they got near the airport, there was no beacon light shining. John knew he was running short on fuel and tried to locate the airport in the dark of night. No luck. Suddenly the right engine quit.

The fuel was now on vapors. John could only see lights on the roadways and little else. Then the left engine quit, and the plane quickly drop- ped into a restaurant parking lot. On the way down, the tail caught a telephone line and helped slow the craft onto the concrete parking lot. The crash was tremendous and flattened the plane like a pancake. All four passengers survived, but there were terrible injuries. The woman and the man both had their backs broken and John and Jose received nastly head injuries. The woman had lost her ability to walk and needed a wheel chair. The man’s back wasn’t as bad, and he eventually was able to walk again. All during this time, I was buying land and building and selling new homes. Eventually, our court date arrived and we traveled to Ozona Texas for our trial.

The trial lasted over two weeks. Each weekend we would drive the six (6) hours home and then back to the court house in Ozona, TX. It was a painful process. The attorney for the woman knew we had funds available and was determined to win this case. Finally, after two weeks of trial, the jury came out with their verdict. Though we had very good attorneys, Sheila and I were convicted of negligence and were given a $14,000,000.00 judgment.

My lawer bill came to $1,750,000.00 and Sheila’s attorney bill came to $500,000.00. Fortunately the law firms requested an outside law firm to evaluate the suit and determined that both our law firms were responsible for the attorney bills. But that left us with the huge judgememnt. It looked like we were going to file bankruptcy.

Our insurance company, which only had us covered for one million dollars, determined that we should file an appeal with the appellate court. So our attornies filed the claim with the appellate court in El Paso, Texas. After a 6-month delay, we sat in the appeals court and heard the case reviewed by three appeals attorneys. The judgment stood on three legal legs, and it was decided that one leg was not present. As a result, we were released from the now $21,000,000.00 (inflated with interest) judgment.

The burden of bankruptcy and the loss of our life’s efforts was removed from our lives.

Glory to God! Thank You Father!