Normally all of the good choir people came to church on Wednesday night to practice, and they tended to be early, well before the 7:30 starting time which is early for us Baptists. But one night, March 1, 1950, one by one, two by two, they all had excuses for being late. Marilyn, the church pianist, overslept on her after- dinner nap, so she and her mother were late. One girl, a high school student, was having trouble with her homework. That delayed her, so she was late. One couple couldn’t get their car started. They, and those they were to pick up, ended up being late. All 18 choir members, including the pastor and his wife, were late. All had good excuses. At 7:30, the time the choir rehearsal was to begin, not one soul was in the choir loft. This had never happened before. Now for the rest of the story. That night, the only night in the history of the church that the choir wasn’t starting to practice at 7:30, was the night that there was a gas leak in the basement of the West Side Baptist Church. At precisely the time at which the choir would have been singing, the gas leak was ignited by the church furnace and
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