Arkansas United Methodists injured but safe at home after bus accident
04-02-2010Heather Hahn
Editor
Thirty-five Arkansas United Methodists suffered only minor injuries when their charter bus overturned on the night of March 23.
The group of mostly young adults from four Little Rock area churches and Philander Smith College was traveling to Jacksonville, Fla., for the annual meeting of Black Methodists for Church Renewal. Their bus carried 38, including two drivers and the son of one driver. Many of the passengers were asleep when shortly before midnight, their bus went off the side of a dirt road near Hollandale, Miss.
“All I heard was ‘Oh, God. Oh, God,’ and we flipped twice,” said Jeremy Carter, who was sitting in the middle of the bus at the time. “When I woke up, we were on a cliff over a river. If we had flipped again, we would have been in the river.”
The passengers were able to escape through windows on the top of the bus. The Washington County, Miss., sheriff deputies arrived soon after the accident, and the sheriff’s department officers transported everyone in the group to Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville, Miss.
“My chest caved in and my back hurt, but they checked me out and said I was OK,” Carter said. “The Delta Regional people were really helpful to us. They kept us calm.”
Carter, a Philander Smith College senior and member of Wesley Chapel UMC on campus, said a local United Methodist minister visited the hospital to check in on the group.
Some in the group had sustained arm and leg fractures. One broke her nose. Another dislocated her shoulder and needed surgery.
But by mid-morning the next day, all but a driver had been discharged from the hospital and most had boarded another bus to return back to Little Rock. The driver was in stable condition but remained hospitalized for another day of observation, according to Delta Regional Medical Center.
The bus arrived at Philander Smith College at about 1:45 p.m. to a crowd that included Arkansas Conference Bishop Charles Crutchfield and Walter M. Kimbrough, Philander Smith College’s president.
Kimbrough first learned of the accident when students began texting him at 11:30 p.m.
“I knew immediately that they were OK beyond some minor injuries,” Kimbrough said. “We just give thanks to God.”
In addition to Wesley Chapel, the passengers came from Hunter and Theressa Hoover United Methodist churches in Little Rock as well as First UMC in Sweet Home.
As they disembarked from their bus, many were still visibly shaken by their ordeal the night before. A girl rushed to embrace her boyfriend as he descended the bus stairs. Parents clasped tightly to their children. For most, it was a tearful homecoming.
Jo Webber, a Wesley Chapel UMC member, cried as she recalled how Philander Smith students helped retrieve her and her daughter from the bus.
“They immediately went into rescue mode, and got us all to safety,” Webber said. “We are so blessed.”
Maxine Allen, the Arkansas Conference’s minister of ethnic ministries, was already in Jacksonville, when one of the passengers first called her about the accident. She stayed up all night keeping church members back home and Black Methodists for Church Renewal leaders in Jacksonville updated on what was happening.
Throughout the night, she said, Black Methodists for Church Renewal members held a prayer vigil for the injured in the hotel room of BMCR president Ronnie Miller-Yow. Miller-Yow is also the Philander Smith College chaplain and senior pastor of Wesley Chapel UMC.
“We’re feeling relief that there was no loss of life, and the injuries are manageable,” Allen said. “But there is sadness too that they won’t be here.”
For many passengers, this would have been their first experience at a Black Methodists for Church Renewal national event, Allen said.
Carter said he plans to attend next year’s annual meeting. If anything, he said, the accident has strengthened his faith.
“It just reaffirms for me that God is in control of everything,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the devil wants to try. God is still in control.”
