It’s A Miracle: Real Life Inspirational Stories, Extraordinary Events and Everyday Wonders. Richard Thomas

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      “We told each other we loved each other every day…. I mean, every day, like twenty-five times a day,” says Elsa.

      In spite of their tender age, Roberto and Elsa believed they would spend their lives together. But a tragic event tore them apart. Elsa’s father was the innocent victim of a botched robbery attempt. And now, his family was in extreme danger.

      Elsa’s mother had identified the man who killed her husband and was receiving death threats. The FBI moved in to take control of the situation. Elsa had only enough time to briefly call Roberto before she and her family were rushed out of the country, into the Witness Protection Program.

      “I explained to him that we had to leave,” Elsa recounts. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell him where we were going. I just kept telling him how much I cared for him and not to blame me for what I was going to do…. It was out of my control.”

      Elsa spent the next few years moving around the United States. But she never forgot her childhood sweetheart.

      “I thought about him all the time,” Elsa admits. “I would sometimes close my eyes and see an image of him. He was really thin and tall and just smiling all the time. As time went on, I sort of assumed he had his own life. I just imagined him settled and married….”

      In November of 1996, Elsa’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She had always felt responsible for separating her daughter from her childhood sweetheart. On her deathbed in the hospital, she made a startling request, urging Elsa to find her lost love.

      “Find Roberto,” Elsa’s mother told her. “He’s the man for you.”

      “So I asked, ‘How am I going to find him?’ And she said, ‘You should find him.’ And so I kind of brushed it off,” says Elsa.

      And then, a few months after her mother’s death, Elsa had a sudden, unexplainable urge to attend a Yankees baseball game.

      “It was as if something was just pushing me,” describes Elsa.

      Whatever was pushing Elsa to the stadium, got her there an hour early that day—just in time for a pre-game event. The Yankees were celebrating Hispanic Heritage Day, and there in center field, accepting an award for his father, was Elsa’s long lost love—Roberto Clemente, Jr.

      “It was really strange,” Elsa recalls with wonder. “I thought, What is he doing there? I haven’t seen him for all of these years and all of a sudden I see him at the park.”

      After the ceremony, Roberto disappeared from the field. Elsa spent the next nine innings of the game desperately trying to locate him, but without success. The boy she had never forgotten … the man her mother begged her to find … was closer than he’d ever been in over fifteen years, and still he was out of reach. Finally, a security guard gave her a possible lead, the phone number of a local sports cafe. Elsa called and left a message, and the next day Roberto returned the call and arranged to meet again the woman he had been separated from so many years ago.

      “I felt like I had just seen her yesterday,” declares Roberto. “Like I had just been with her in school the day before. And the feelings that I had for Elsa were so strong. My friends, everybody, knew about Elsa. It was something that I just … I kept her alive in my heart.”

      On Valentine’s Day, 1998, Roberto and Elsa made their reunion complete when they married in New York City. Today, they still marvel over how powers far beyond their own made the dying wish of Elsa’s mother come true.

      “I truly believe that our parents had a meeting in heaven and said, ‘Wait a second … let’s do something here,’” Roberto says. “I believe that it was meant to be, and I truly believe that it was a time where our parents’ souls got together and said, ‘Let’s just make our two children happy.’”

      For Roberto and Elsa, a tragic separation has ended happily with a miraculous second chance.

THE SPIRIT OF STRENGTH

JUMPING LIFE’S HURDLES

      As a collegiate athlete, John Register was at the top of his form. He ran on four championship teams at the University of Arkansas and held three all-American titles in track-and-field.

      “I had a great year in 1987, but in 1988 I really put my athletic career on hold to get my degree and get out of school. So my track-and-field career suffered a little bit during that time.”

      After graduation, John married his childhood sweetheart, Alice Johnson, and they soon became the proud parents of a son, John Register, Jr. But it was the dream of Olympic gold that led John to the U.S. Army and their world-class athlete training program. His road to the Olympics, however, would soon take an unexpected detour.

      “I got called up to serve in the Gulf War. And so I went and served with the 5th and 27th Field Artillery in Operation Desert Storm.”

      Seven months later, John returned from the war and resumed his quest for the Olympic gold. But with only limited training time available, he failed to make the 1992 team.

      “I wasn’t dejected by that at all, and I started calculating almost immediately. I said, If I can just improve three places each year, I can be on that team in 1996.”

      So he intensified his training, and his performance steadily improved. It seemed his dream would become a reality … until the end of one fateful training session.

      “I decided to take one more pass down the track before shutting it down. I was just too tired to save my energy for the next day.”

      He cleared each of the hurdles with room to spare, until suddenly he fell short.

      “I knew it was going to be difficult to make the thirteen steps for the next hurdle, but I got across it, and when I landed my leg popped out of the socket. I saw that my left leg was crossed over my right leg with my foot pointing back toward my face. And I just turned away from it. I couldn’t look at it anymore. Then the pain hit. It was tremendous. I felt like the whole leg was just on fire, was just exploding.”

      John was taken to the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas. Alice and John junior rushed to his side.

      Alice remembers, “When I walked in I didn’t see my husband. I saw a man, but he didn’t look like John.… It was as if every muscle from head to toe were hurting.”

      Doctors discovered that John’s popliteal artery had been severed, preventing blood from circulating to his lower leg. Gangrene had set in, forcing them to remove the infected muscle tissue from his calf, but John’s prognosis was bleak.

      Alice says, “The doctor said, ‘You can keep your leg and you will walk with severe pain and a limp for the rest of your life, or we can amputate your leg and you can rebuild your life. It’s not a decision I need right now, but we’re gonna need it soon.’”

      John says, “I knew that it had to come off. I just knew that it had to be done. The answer was clear. Let’s get rid of the pain, and then we can deal with the other stuff later. I could not see myself living with either a wheelchair or a walker and being in pain. Especially the pain that I was feeling at that point in my life.”

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