An Angel Spread its Wings

[jodywy]

I remember this day from 20 years ago...May 16, 1986 I was fixing fence agaist the forest and had the pickup doors open and the radio on.I stopped listen and cried(Yes I am a Man),Cokeville might be 50 miles away but in in our School district and County. I know alot of the families in that community.
http://www.trib.com/articles/2006/05/14/news/wyoming/d36aa853aa1a14498725716d0070b595.txt

'Somebody was taking care of us'
By WHITNEY ROYSTER
Star-Tribune staff writer Sunday, May 14, 2006





COKEVILLE -- More than being survivors, many of the former students and teachers at Cokeville Elementary School believe they were something else on May 16, 1986: witnesses to miracles.

The theme of being witness to miracles, and to a higher power, is so compelling in this predominantly Mormon community that a book of the same title has been published.

People held hostage at the school have stories of seeing angels, of being told by them what to do, and of divine intervention being unquestionably a part of that spring day.

JaNene Nostaja, the mother of a child held hostage, was serving as an emergency technician that day, and she remembers seeing the schoolroom where the kids and teachers were held hostage the next day.

"When I saw the shrapnel in all the walls, embedded in the ceiling ... and not one kid got hurt?" she said. "When we stood and looked at the wall -- there's no way."

There's no way, she said, there wasn't divine intervention.

Nostaja also said the day after the bombing, the entire room was caked in black. But on one of the walls was a white outline of Christ.

"There's some of all religion in Cokeville," Nostaja said. "Whatever religion, they knew they had been blessed and protected that day."

Kliss Sparks, a former teacher, said she, too, saw the white outline.

"I saw it, too," said Celeste Excell Jackman, now 32, then a sixth-grader at Cokeville Elementary.

Jackman doesn't particularly enjoy talking about the incident of 1986. She doesn't like to be in the spotlight, and says the hostage event is not the "main focus of my life."

But she is willing to share the story as a way to talk about God's love, and a way to talk about miracles.

Many survivors talk about seeing guardian angels in the schoolroom -- one for each person. The idea of angels protecting people was the subject of a book and a television movie, "When Angels Intervene to Save the Children."

Sharon Dayton, director of the Cokeville Miracle Foundation, said there were about 10 people who talked about angels in the room. Hostages received "instructions" from them, and feelings of peace and love.

Before the bomb went off, the angels surrounded the bomb to protect people, Dayton said.

Some people later recognized their angels in old photos, saying they were family members who had died years before.

"We're really talking about a Cokeville miracle," he said.

Karla Toomer, Cokeville mayor who was also instrumental in putting together the new book, said most everyone talks about "heavenly help."

"When they heard what was really going on and what was supposed to happen, everyone talks about heavenly help," she said. "Everyone says, 'Of course there was help.' Each kid getting out was a miracle. Angels being visible is a miracle."

Sparks said when she left the room after the bomb exploded, there were two boys in the hall whose hair was on fire.

"I put it out," she said. "I knew then, somebody was taking care of us. When I saw the bomb had not gone off in the way it should have, I knew then."

Jackman agreed. "I was being told what to do, or I wouldn't have known what to do."

 

[jodywy]

The day life changed
By WHITNEY ROYSTER
Star-Tribune staff writer Sunday, May 14, 2006



Angie Watson, 31, of Dingle, Idaho, kisses her son Jaden, 4, as she readies him for school while her daughter, Keesha, 5, keeps warm in a blanket. Watson survived the Cokeville Elementary School bombing in 1986. She was a fifth-grader then. Photo by Ryan Soderlin, Star-Tribune.


COKEVILLE -- Twenty years ago, Kliss Sparks was finishing reading a chapter of "Tom Sawyer" to her fourth-graders when she heard a knock at the door. It was a woman. She asked the class to come to a room down the hall, then left.

Sparks was not done with the chapter. She kept on reading. After about a minute, she decided to go out into the hall and see what the woman was talking about. She thought it was a safety exercise. There was no one in the hallway -- not even in the gym. Sparks thought she was late.

So instead, she took her students outside, and they sat on the lawn, finishing reading two or three pages.

This moment on the lawn would be one Sparks would regret.

She wonders now, at 78, if she should have taken the children and left the school. But how could she have known? How could she have known that the woman, now known as Doris Young, would come out to the group's reading circle with a gun, and order them back inside?

That is what happened with Sparks and her fourth-grade class. They were some of the 154 people held hostage in Cokeville May 16, 1986, by a madman claiming he was going to heaven and was taking all the children with him. It was among the first school-terror incidents in the country, a scenario now all too familiar.

The children who were held hostage that day -- all of whom survived, in spite of the detonation of a bomb -- are now adults, and many have children of their own.

"I can't even fathom the thought of them being in a building and we are out there," said Angie Nostaja Weston, a fifth-grade hostage, now 31. She lives in Montpelier, Idaho, close to Cokeville, and her kids have "survival packets" in school containing items including food, handi-wipes, clothing and contact information in case of emergencies.

"Some parents might think it's a hassle," she said. "But I'm quite aware of how things can happen out of the school."

While much has changed in the two decades since the bombing, memories are vivid for many of those involved in the incident. And to make sure they don't fade, people in this small western Wyoming community have organized "Remembrance Day" events Tuesday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the bombing.

An organization called the Cokeville Miracle Foundation also has published a new book with nearly 200 accounts from teachers, students, emergency personnel and investigators involved in the incident.

Lasting impressions

For Weston, the feeling of being fortunate, even "blessed," to survive the ordeal has grown over the years.

"I've always known since the minute after," she said. "But you realize how different it could have been as the years go by."

The incident, of course, changed her life. As an adult, she sometimes has pangs of anxiety with simple tasks such as plugging in the vacuum cleaner or hooking up a propane tank for fear it might explode. She also has anxiety about going on trips away from home.

Fellow former-student Jamie King agreed, saying she doesn't "trust people," and also has anxiety about going on trips.

"I was still being held hostage," she said.

Celeste Jackman, a sixth-grader 20 years ago, said when she goes into a new room, she always looks for a seat so she is facing the door, in case she needs to get out.

For Sparks, the incident made her grateful.

"I knew I had to pay the Lord back as much as I can," she said.

Still there

A few teachers and staff members who worked at the elementary school that fateful day in May 1986 are still holding their posts today.

Janel Dayton taught first grade in 1986, and now teaches kindergarten.

"I think life kind of goes on," she said. "We remember the day with respect and thanksgiving, but life has kind of gone on. It was a hard time, a very hard time. But I think that it was an indication that goodness prevails over evil, because the perpetrator had evil designs and good overcame."

Tina Cook was the first hostage taken in 1986, and still works as a school secretary today. For her, every year is a "personal struggle" as the anniversary approaches.

"The thing I really want to always take out of it is the miracle that I'm still alive," she said. "The day that it happened, we knew there was no way we would ever come out of it alive. Now it's 20 years later; I'm still alive. I got to raise my children and enjoy my grandchildren."

For Cook, who still becomes emotional when talking about the incident, life changed on that day.

"You learn to appreciate life a whole lot more because you realize how fragile it is," she said. "You cannot go through anything like that and not respect life more, and be grateful."

Reporter Whitney Royster can be reached at (307) 734-0260 or at [email protected].



http://www.trib.com/articles/2006/05/14/news/wyoming/00b5511f4316ef9f8725716e001d6e87.txt

 

[jodywy]

http://www.trib.com/articles/2006/05/14/news/wyoming/e1949a07d62fa9d18725716d007199a5.txt
What happened
Sunday, May 14, 2006





On May 16, 1986, David Young, a former marshal in Cokeville, and his wife, Doris, entered the Cokeville Elementary School. They carried guns and a homemade gasoline bomb in a kind of shopping cart.

They went room to room and told teachers, staff and students to gather in a small room -- a room that exists today as the school's computer room.

In the room, Young demarcated a square in the middle with tape. No one other than he and Doris was to enter the taped area that held the bomb.

Young apparently chose Cokeville because it was familiar to him, and because the children were bright and the close-knit community would likely, he thought, give in to his demands.

As he saw things, according to diary entries, he was seeking a "brave new world" in which he would die along with more than 100 children, and in the afterlife, he would rule over these children with what he considered his superior intellect.

He also demanded $300 million in ransom, which he thought could be obtained through Congress.

The bomb exploded in the classroom after Young left to go to the bathroom at about 3:30 p.m., according to the book "When Angels Intervene." He had tied the bomb's trigger to Doris, who perhaps inadvertently responded to a teacher's comments of having a headache, and pulled her hand to her forehead in gesture, triggering the bomb.

The explosion blew out a window and filled the room with black smoke. Several students were burned in the explosion; everyone was covered with soot.

Investigators later determined only one of the bomb's three chambers exploded. According to reports, connecting wires to a lower set of blasting caps had been cut clean through, preventing a more devastating outcome.

Doris Young was badly burned in the explosion, and when Young returned, he killed her with a bullet to the head. He then went into a bathroom and killed himself.

All the children, teachers and staff survived.

According to a 1996 Associated Press story, if the other two gasoline-filled milk jugs had exploded, half of the students in this western Wyoming town's kindergarten class and all students in grades one through six would have died.

-- Whitney Royster

 

[jodywy]

http://www.trib.com/articles/2006/05/14/news/wyoming/93d41d61fc82cf798725716d00715510.txtWhat some survivors say