Cokeville, Wyoming
Some alleged divine interventions just leave us scratching our heads. They either occurred as they were described at the time or they are the product of conspiring minds to spiritually defraud. Can Wyoming children reporting independently of one another the saving hand of God to avert a disaster be anything but true? Cokeville, Wyoming tells us that miracles don’t stop at the Catholic or Orthodox door; God doesn’t impose any limitations on his grace because of our individual theological positions.
In May of 1986 a heavily armed deranged man and wife entered Cokeville’s elementary school, took 136 children and 18 teachers and adults hostage, and herded them into a 30 by 32-foot classroom. The wife was connected to a homemade bomb and inadvertently detonated it. The explosion engulfed her in flames and burned many nearby children. The bomber husband had been in the restroom at the time of the explosion, and when he emerged he shot and killed his wife. Students and the adults frantically exited the building, with teachers helping many of the children escape through the windows. The bomber then killed himself. He and his wife were the only two fatalities.
Investigators found that the bomb’s blasting cap wires had been mysteriously cut before detonation and that a gasoline leak prevented explosive powder from setting the air on fire. Moreover, despite a great deal of shrapnel, no one had been hit. The blast should have leveled the entire wing, but instead had gone straight up.
So far, it sounds like everyone was just lucky. But when we examine the explosion and hear what the children independently tell of that day we again see the divine protecting the most innocent and least pretentious. While no one was killed, an extraordinary event by itself, the real miracles were not revealed until later. Children separately began to describe to their parents, police, and counselors how events unfolded and how angels and deceased relatives protected them.
One example: Ron Hartley was the lead investigator for the Sheriff’s office. His six-year old son was one of the hostages. The boy had confided to a psychologist that he had seen angels. Hartley tried to set the boy straight. In his own words:
“I came home with the intent of factually proving to him that he couldn’t have seen angels,” Hartley recalls. “I asked him who he saw, and he said, ‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me her name, but I think it was Grandma Meister.’ This was exactly what I was looking for. I told him, ‘It wasn’t Grandma Meister because she’s alive and living in Pinedale.”
But the young boy insisted that his story was true. That’s when Hartley asked his wife to get out the family photo album.
“We put it on the table right in front of him, and I started flipping through the pages. I flipped to one page when suddenly he put his little hand on a photo and just beamed,” Hartley shares.
“When you do interrogations in law enforcement, you watch for body language. You can tell through physical reactions when someone is lying and when they are not,” he continues. “When my son saw that picture, he just brightened up and said, ‘That’s her! That’s my angel!’ And it wasn’t Grandma Meister—it was my Grandma Elliott. How do you argue that? She’d been dead for three or four years.”
Hartley’s son told him there were angels for everyone in the room that day, and just prior to detonation, the angels joined hands around the bomb and went up through the ceiling with the explosion.
“When he said that, it lined up with the physical evidence. That, in addition to the fact that he picked out Grandma Elliott, is evidence I can’t deny,” he says.
Other children gave detailed accounts of how the angels or other spiritual beings directed and saved them just prior to the explosion and during the chaotic fireball and immediate aftermath. Detailed accounts are easily accessible on the internet. Since the Cokeville children were predominately Mormon, it is not surprising that a complete description of what they saw is written on an LDS (Latter Day Saints or Mormon) website. Finally, you are encouraged to watch the film, “The Cokeville Miracle,” which presents a dramatic telling of the events of that day.
Some websites and references
Last modified June 16, 2019