That Fateful Day (Page 1 of 3)

On the morning of May 24, 1952, Anthony Joseph Palmieri was driving east on Oklahoma’s highway 62. With him were Billie Hanson, who would soon be his wife, and his mother, Jane Hanson. It would be said that these three people embodied physical, mental and spiritual suffering.

Anthony had lost both legs in the Korean War. That day he was driving for the first time a new specially equipped Mercury Sedan. Billie was an alcoholic and most likely a schizophrenic, who had once tried to kill her mother with a kitchen knife. Devoted as she was to Jesus Christ, Jane didn’t know why her life had been so full of suffering. She prayed constantly for her troubled daughter and was glad that Billie seemed to have found happiness with Anthony.

Meher Baba with Mehera during His period of recuperation in Meherazad garden.

Billie and Anthony had met at a hospital in Oklahoma City, where she worked as a nurse. They were traveling east away from the city. The two-lane highway was slick from rain the night before. About noon, at the spot that is nearly the geographical centre of the United States, their car was climbing a rise where according to Anthony a mail truck was blocking the right lane. He pulled round the truck and into the path of an oncoming blue Nash with South Carolina plates. The Nash was just cresting a small hill ahead, approaching as he later said, at a very fast speed.

As the Mercury flew towards the Nash, a collision unavoidable, Jane cried out, “Please, God don’t let us die!” She had no idea that at that moment God, in the human form of Meher Baba, was stretching out his hand to point at the car.

As Anthony applied the brakes, the Mercury spun across the road and the Nash smashed head on into its side. Anthony, Billie and Jane were unhurt but Jane would later recall that after that day, things got worse for the trio. Billie and Anthony were married only to annul their union when Billie learned that Anthony already had a wife in Arkansas. Later, he ran off: Billie was devastated. As with all occurrences in the life of Meher Baba, this “accident: was anything but.”

In a circular sent out to his lovers on New Year’s Day, 1949, Meher Baba had warned of a great personal disaster to Himself. Shortly thereafter, He completed His Mast tours, spent most of the summer months in what he termed “The Great Seclusion“ and on August 15, again foretold of a personal disaster.

In October of that year, Meher Baba embarked on the New Life and on June 28, 1951, told of facing complete mental annihilation ( manonash ) , adding that he would “in the natural course of events, be facing physical annihilation as well, without actually seeking it”. When the New Life phase ended, on February 15, 1952, Baba made arrangements to visit the West in April.

He arrived in Myrtle Beach on April 20. The plan was to go on to San Francisco, Meher Mount in Ojai, California and Los Angeles. Baba had promised making the trip by plane but this proved to be too expensive, so travel by car was arranged. On May 20, most of the men mandali left for Meher Mount to prepare for Baba’s visit. It rained the following day. The cars transporting Baba’s party were not loaded until the sun broke through, at 2:30 p.m. Elizabeth Patterson, driver and owner of the Nash, was behind the wheel ready to go, when Baba asked if she had her insurance policy with her. She didn’t, but she knew where it was at her home. Baba told her to stop on the way and get it. She packed it at the top of her suitcase.