(First in a three-part series chronicling Angela Alexander’s incredible story which led to a book, a ministry and now, a documentary.)

MIRACLE: “An unusual or wonderful event that is believed to be caused by the power of God,” is how Merriam-Webster defines it.

For most parents who have lost a child the word miracle would never enter their minds, but most parents are not Angela Alexander. Miraculously, she received immediate peace.

A retired Reservist from March Air Reserve Base, Alexander learned that her husband and four children had been in a bad car crash while she was on annual tour in Japan in April, 2000. Her two 8-year-old sons, Murice and Roger died in that accident.

Alexander’s husband, Surie, was driving on Interstate 215 in Southern California with his children when he was cut off by another vehicle, causing him to hit the center divider and fall 25 feet onto two, occupied, parked cars, she said.

She recalls that day in Japan, sitting in a small office with her commander, a colleague and a priest, when she was told that her husband and two daughters were in the hospital, but okay. Then she was told that her two sons had died.

“When he told me, I couldn’t believe how much peace I had,” Alexander said. “Immediate peace.” Alexander, who retired in 2005 after 20 years of service, said that immediate peace was something she didn’t understand at the time.

She remembers how she kept pinching herself during the flight home because, given the nature of the news she had received earlier, she still knew the alphabet and what day it was. She had not gone crazy as she had predicted she would have, given the situation.

“It wasn’t until later that I realized why God gave me that instantaneous peace,” she said. “The reason was (that) as a result of my sons passing, my ministry (Miracles in Action) was birthed, and if I had gone crazy it wouldn’t have happened.”

During that flight home from Japan, Alexander remembered a letter Murice had written to his parents shortly before his death which eliminated any guilt she could have harbored over what had happened to him.

She clearly remembered the day Murice came running into her bedroom exclaiming, “Mommy! Mommy! Daddy! Daddy! I wrote you a letter!” she said. That letter expressed to them that Murice loved them and explained why he loved them. After reading the letter, Alexander said she told her son it was a love letter and thanked him. He immediately ran off to his room and wrote another letter, just for her.

One line in that second letter in particular stood out to her she said. “If I got to choose a Mom, I would chose you,” Murice wrote. That line reminded her that it was all in God’s order. “Maybe not my order, but God’s order,” she said. That enabled her to focus on the tasks that awaited her at home in California.

Upon her arrival there, she was immediately thrust into a cyclone of activity. She had to take on the role of mom and dad for her 10 and 11 year old daughters while Surie was recovering in the hospital. Add to that the additional stress caused by the State of California automatically charging Surie with vehicular manslaughter, and the occupants of the other vehicles filing lawsuits against him too. There was also a steady stream of family and friends cycling in and out of their home and worst of all, two of her babies were now gone forever.

In the midst of the chaos, Alexander was able to maintain her focus and sanity, in large part because of the letters Murice had written. But, she realized she needed to know that her other son, Roger, had been visited by the Holy Spirit and was okay too, she said.

“God I need to know that you are in control of this hot mess,” she prayed. “And he laid one word on my heart, ‘search.’”

For the next four hours that’s exactly what she did, but she said she didn’t find anything. Later that day she decided her daughters needed some normalcy, so she left the swirl of people in her home and took her girls to their school’s open house.

All four of her children attended the same elementary school and it was that open house that would lead her to what she was searching for.

The answer to her search will be addressed in part two of this three-part series in next week’s Beacon.

The U.S Air Force Auxiliary Civil Air Patrol awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to five veterans of CAP World War II service in at ceremony at March Air Museum in March.  Five other Gold Medals were awarded posthumously or in absentia to family members who attended the event.

Lt. Col. Jeri Truesdell, now 100 years old, served as a pilot in CAP’s Illinois Wing from 1942 to 1944 before joining the U.S. Navy program Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES).  She had been a private pilot who joined CAP immediately after its formation December 1, 1941. “The plane I learned on and soloed on was a Curtiss Fledgling. It was a huge biplane,” said Truesdell after the event. She said “there probably weren’t very many” women in CAP at that time. “We were just proud to be women and be in it.” By 1945, girls and women constituted 20 percent of CAP cadet and senior women, according to CAP public affairs.

George Mitchell joined the Pennsylvania Wing in 1942 and participated in CAP’s courier service, transporting industrial parts to Midwest factories. “They attached the Pittsburgh Group to the the 6th Air Force. We did an awful lot of drilling, organized parades, and participated in bond drives,” Mitchell recalled.

Brigadier Gen. Howard Brookfield flew coastal, border and pipeline patrol missions out of San Francisco’s Squadron 3 on the Presidio, and operated a Link Trainer. Brookfield was only cadet age in 1942 when he joined Civil Air Patrol; he served as CAP’s national commander from 1982 to 1984. “I mostly flew [Piper] L-4s and [Stinson] L-5s,” Brookfield said. In the interim he served in the U.S. Air Force as an Air Police and air base defense instructor from 1950 to 1953.

Other living recipients of the Gold Medal included Lt. Col. Marie Oliva, who started the Norwalk, Conn., Composite Squadron in 1943 and later founded the L’L Gabriel Band Squadron in California Wing in 1960; and Genevieve Guiffrida, who joined the Worcester, Mass., squadron as a cadet in 1943, then later moved to California.

Family members accepted the Gold Medal on behalf of Lt. Col. Virgil McCarron, Sgt. Melvin McCarron, 2d Lt. June Karelius Millard, Lt. Col. Orville Sandaker and 1st Lt. Edward Sieger.

Col. Jon Stokes, commander of CAP’s California Wing, presided over the awards ceremony, which included a color guard provided by March Field Composite Squadron 45.

In 18 months of combat flying in 1942 and 1943, CAP’s coastal patrol reported 173 enemy submarines, attacked 57, and is thought to have disabled two, all the time using light aircraft dropping depth charges and bombs. That effort earned 800 CAP members an Air Medal issued in 1948.  The Congressional Gold Medal signed into law May 30, 2014, honors other members of the World War II service.