In the late summer or early fall of 1954, James Kohler (my best friend) and I got into some fairly serious trouble and were placed in the county juvenile detention facility. We were expelled from school and were completely confined for a while. Then we were permitted to go to school but had to continue living in the detention home.
One Saturday, shortly after I was finally released to go back home, I drove to the Greene’s to pick Twila up to go to the movies. It really amazed me that she and her parents stuck by me through my problems when my own mother did not. Jack, my stepfather did – he was wonderful through the whole episode.
Anyway, we left to the movie early in the evening to take in the first show. When we arrived at the theater, there was a long line and we just didn’t feel like standing in line for ages.
We decided to pick up a burger, fries and coke at a drive-in and go somewhere and talk. I drove a couple miles north of town, headed back toward town on a frontage road to the expressway and parked along side the road about half way back to town. It could not have taken us more than 45 minutes or so to get there from the time we left her house. We ate and started talking about my recent escapade.
I told her I was sorry for the problems I had caused (Earl, her father, was no happier with me than was my mother) and the hurt that had come to her and her family because of it. I told her (probably playing for sympathy – I could admit that later) that I was no good and we should just break up so she could find a better boy friend – one that was better for her. By this time it was dark out. We had probably been gone from home maybe an hour and a half so it must of been around 8:30 or 9:00 pm.
She said that no one was all bad. That there was good in me and in everyone. She likened good and evil to light and dark and pointed out that if you lighted a candle in a room the light would spread to the whole room, pushing the darkness back, until there was some light in every part of the room. She said it might not be bright, but it was there, just as there was good in everyone that could overcome the bad or evil.
As she finished speaking, an extremely bright pin-point of light appeared in the night sky. It had the appearance of an extremely bright star or a modern day airplane landing light, but much brighter. It appeared stationery, not coming any closer or changing position in the sky but it started expanding in size. After what seemed like a couple of minutes, the light from the ‘star’ began to spread throughout the whole sky. As it spread, the intensity of the light source seemed to dim a little.
The light spread out over the sky similar to the way that waves spread out from the center when a stone is cast into a pool. You couldn’t see waves but the spread was similar. The whole sky did not light up at once – the light just seemed to push the darkness out of the way. It kept spreading until the whole sky from horizon to horizon was lighted brighter than night, but not so bright as day. As the light touched the mountains surrounding the Klamath Basin, the mountains became outlined with a bright ribbon of silver light.
At that moment I knew the meaning of the expression “sore afraid”. We were both frozen, unable to move. As the light spread I tried several times to reach up to turn the key in the ignition and couldn’t. I was frozen in place, unable to move. The spell was finally broken and Twila burst into tears, crying “Take me home, I’ve got to write it down, I’ve got to write it down. Don’t talk, just take me home.”
When we pulled up in her driveway, about a 10 minute drive, she ran out of the car and into the house. I was sitting in the car, still stunned and in wonder, when her mother, Vivian, came bursting out of the house, yelling at me, wanting to know what I had done to her daughter to get her crying like that and asking what I meant by bringing her home at this time of night.
I was taken aback and asked her “What do you mean, at this time of night? We didn’t even go to the movie and weren’t gone very long.” She then told me it was the middle of the night (somewhere between 2:30 and 3:30 – my memory falters). I couldn’t believe it. She was still upset and bawling me out so I told her again I hadn’t done anything to Twila, that we had an unusual experience and that she had ran into the house to write it all down. I asked that she just go talk to her and I left.
The next day, I called the newspapers, radio stations, weather station, Portland air control center, the police, sheriff and local ground observer corps post in the Klamath FAA control tower. No one had seen or reported any unusual sitings that evening. The weather was clear. There was no air traffic. I knew all of this, of course. I knew that we had experienced a light of knowledge and understanding from a heavenly source – I just did not know why or what it all meant.
In later years I would come to associate the feeling that filled me that night as an overpowering witness from the Holy Ghost that Twila was right. That there is good and light in everyone and that no one is all bad, except for Satan.
Since that night, if I am in doubt of something or seeking an answer to anything, I have but to make a decision and ask in faith if it is right and I will receive a witness as to whether or not it is. What a wonderful gift this is. If I had only learned to use this gift properly in my early years.
Twila and I ended up separating a short time later. I enlisted in the Navy in January 1955 and she finished high school eventually marrying James Metler. We kept in touch with them for many years. Dorie and I visited them after they married when Jim was attending UofC, Berekely and Dorie and I were living in Oakland.
One time when I was on leave from the Navy, I asked Twila if she could make me a copy of the pages in her diary where she had noted our experience of seeing the light. She said that she had looked for it a short time before and was unable to locate it.
Some years later Dorie and I visited her and Jim at their home near Henley, just South of Klamath Falls. During this visit I mentioned this occurrence to Twila and asked if she had ever located the diary. She said she had no idea what I was talking about and had no recollection of anything like this ever happening.
I have wondered from time to time what caused her to deny that this happened. I imagine that she had told others about the occurrence and not being believed, came to deny it. Me, I could never deny it, no matter who disbelieved me. I know what happened. I know we received a sign from Heavenly Father and no matter if others scoff, I know what happened that night.
The importance and blessing of being able to receive an immediate answer to my questions as to whether a thing was right or not was clearly revealed to me when two young men knocked on our door in St. Helens, Oregon in 1979 and introduced themselves as Elders Peterson and James from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This blog will be all about my life, my family and life in general.
