That Fateful Day

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.

Baba sat in the Nash beside Elizabeth. Mehera, Meheru and Baba’s sister, Mani were seated in the back. Following them was a station wagon being driven by Sarosh Irani, with passengers Dr. Goher Irani, Kitty Davy, Delia DeLeon and Rano Galey. They spent the first few days sightseeing, spending nights in Columbia, South Carolina and Murphy, North Carolina.

The Prague Clinic photographed by one of Meher Baba’s disciples in 1952. It was here that Dr. Burleson treated Meher Baba and His injured mandali members.

On May 23, they visited Ruby Falls, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, and spent that night at the Pond Crest Motor court in the Ozark Mountains. Baba and the Eastern women stayed at the motel and dined on bread and milk. Sarosh and the Western women were sent out to a small restaurant. The next morning they arose early as usual, and Baba again sent Sarosh and the Western women out to eat while he stayed with Mehera, Meheru, Mani and Goher.

Kitty Davy would later write, “I think of Baba, knowing what was to happen before the day was over, spending the last few hours with that small, close group whom He had known since they were children and who had loved Him for so many years, finding in their presence the comfort and love He so much needed in that fateful hour.”

After breakfast the group stood waiting in front of the motel for Baba’s signal to get into the cars. But Baba delayed the start, standing for a long time on His doorstep. Kitty remembers, “He was sad, withdrawn and unusually still.” There were no last minute questions, no hurry to be off. Finally after ten minutes, He walked to the car with the Eastern women.

The Emergency room at the Prague Clinic, photographed by Kendal Jackson in 1992, is exactly the way it was in 1952.

As He had many times before, Baba admonished Sarosh to follow closely and not lose sight of the lead car. Referring to an occasion earlier in the trip when He had been forced to wait for the station wagon in the intense heat, Baba warned, “If this happens again I will not forgive you.” When Sarosh asked if his group might stop along the way for drinks, Baba answered, “Yes, but do not linger.”

They had driven only a short distance when Baba had Elizabeth stop the car. He got out and paced up and down the right side of the road without explanation. Delia Deleon remembers, “He seemed very depressed and haggard. He walked ahead with his head bent, seeming very far away.”

Later, Sarosh and his passengers stopped in a small town for coffee and cold drinks. “We then put on speed to meet Baba at the appointed place,” Delia recalls. “We could see no sign of His car and were beginning to get worried. It was about 10:05 a.m. We heard an exclamation of alarm from Sarosh. We turned our heads to the right. At first we could not take in what had happened; we could not see clearly from the car. We saw people standing ‘round Baba who seemed to be lying on the ground. The women were lying in various directions.’ Sarosh exclaimed, “Oh God, there’s been an accident.”

“With lightning speed we jumped out of the car and rushed forward. The anguish of that moment in unforgettable…Baba’s face with blood pouring from His head, the extraordinary expression on Baba’s face, His eyes just staring straight ahead as if into unfathomable distances. He made no sound or sign… just lay there motionless…Elizabeth was in the car, doubled over the wheel. Her first question had been, “Is He alive?’”
The rain that had made the road so slippery also made the road’s shoulder soft and muddy, cushioning the impact of Baba and the Indian women.

A local farmer heard the terrible sound of the collision and rushed to cover the victims with blankets. The farmer’s wife was so distraught by the sight of the victims that she retreated back inside her house.
The first car to pass was that of a man who was taking his wife to the Prague clinic, seven miles away, to have a baby. He summoned a pair of ambulances to the scene.

When Sarosh and others arrived, they comforted the injured and administered first aid. Delia placed her pillow beneath Baba’s bleeding head. (This blood stained pillow, unlaundered, is at the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.)

Seven miles east of the accident site and 50 miles east of Oklahoma City, in the small agricultural community of Prague, Dr. Ned Burleson was making his rounds at the clinic he had founded and maintained since 1950. The first person brought into the clinic happened to be Elizabeth. By the time the doctor determined that she had broken her arm and eleven ribs, Mehera was brought in. Hers was the most critical injury of all. In 1970, Dr. Burleson said she had suffered “the worst skull fracture I’ve ever seen. Like an egg you’ve dropped on the floor.” He didn’t expect her to live.

The spot where Meher Baba’s head lay (left) and His body (right). He lay in a shallow ditch in the foreground. The ditch flows into a metal pipe that goes under the driveway. -Photos by Kendal Jackson in 1992

(Meheru recollected the accident recently: Baba was badly injured, sustaining injuries to His face and fracturing His left arm and left leg. Though Baba did walk again with the same graceful and easy stride as before, some lingering pain remained. It was the second accident in which His right hip was shattered. Mehera’s head wound was a frontal fracture of the skull, probably caused by the metal door when she was thrown from the vehicle. Along with Goher and Mani, I attended Mehera and we would not let any man touch her until Baba permitted it. He gestured to us to let the medical corps do what needed to be done for Mehera in the medical field. The first medical helpers, who came from Prague in an ambulance, lifted Mehera onto the stretcher and drove her to the hospital. Baba was also taken to the hospital in the same ambulance.)

Dr. Burleson was picking glass out of Mehera’s frontal bone when Dr. Goher rushed in and frantically urged him to come and see Baba. Dr. Burleson would later recollect, “They were saying ‘Baba this, Baba that.’ I didn’t know what they were talking about. I had no idea who Baba was and barely heard Dr. Irani because of the concentration on what I was doing. We had been compelled to give Mehera pentothal in order to keep her quiet, while we attended to her, and I wanted to get through that job before the anesthetic wore off so that I would not have to give her anymore.”

When Dr. Burleson finally got around to attending to Baba, he was most surprised: “As soon as I came in the doorway, he started grinning at me and smiling away, so I figured he can’t be hurt too badly. Till I found out later… I was also astounded to find that he did not speak or make any sound denoting discomfort. I assumed that he could not, but was soon informed that he did not speak because of a willful act. I knew we were going to have to give him a general anesthetic (pentothal, also known as the “truth drug”) to set his fractures and I suspected that he would say something at that time but he didn’t.”

Dr. Ned Burleson with his wife, Julia Wallace, photographed in the 20s.

Meheru had minor fractures in both hands, while Mani who had been sleeping at the time of the accident was the only one unhurt. Baba and His party turned the clinic upside down. Elizabeth and Mehera were placed in the only room available, with Kitty there to attend to them. Baba was moved into the surgeon’s private study, attended by Rano and Goher. Specialists were summoned from Oklahoma City. The men mandali arrived from Meher Mount and stayed in a local motel. Ivy and Charmian Duce came, as did Margaret Craske, who helped Baba with muscle exercises. The townspeople brought flowers and gifts for the unusual visitors. The group stayed in Prague for 13 days before returning to Myrtle Beach in an ambulance, attended by a local nurse.

In a message Meher Baba dictated on June 13, He said, “The personal disaster for some years foretold by me at last happened while crossing the American continent, causing Me , through facial injuries , a broken leg and a broken arm, much mental and physical suffering. It was necessary that it should happen in America. God willed it so.”

Why was it necessary that it happen in America , and what was its spiritual significance to the world? Regarding America perhaps a clue lies in the statement Baba made 20 years before: “America forms the best foundation for the spiritual upheaval I will bring about in the near future. America has tremendous energy, but most if this energy is misdirected. I intend to divert it into spiritual and creative channels.”

As for the spiritual significance of the Avatar suffering and shedding blood for His creation, Baba said in the message of June 13, “It brings to fruition the first part of the circular that until July 10th ( in the Complicated Free Life ), weakness would dominate strength and bindings would dominate freedom; but from July 10th, in my Full Free Life strength would dominate weakness and freedom would dominate bindings and then from 15 November in my Fiery Free Life, both strength and weakness, freedom and bindings would be consumed in the fire of Divine love.” It would be folly to think we could understand Baba’s whys and wherefores in connection with the accident in Oklahoma. Baba would often tell us not to try to understand Him, just try to love Him.

Documents of the accident from the archives of the Highway Patrol. Courtesy: David Fenster

Its doubtful that Dr. Ted Burleson had much understanding of who Baba was, but he seems to have fallen in love with Him, nonetheless writing in 1953: “I was not prepared for all of the compliments and courtesy and the good manners of everyone in the party, but especially Baba. He made me feel like I was the greatest doctor on earth. Sarosh Irani also embarrassed me with his compliments. My wife told me that if I were around them much longer I would get the ‘big head’.

“The most attractive quality of Baba’s personality that first day was the way he would look at me with those big brown eyes, as if he were reading my mind. Later I determined that the most astounding quality was that something which made it possible for him to receive such profound devotion and loyalty from so many free and educated people. That quality cannot be forced. Such devotion can only be possible because he deserved it or earned it.”

Many years before the accident at Harmon-on-Hudson in New York, Baba had given Elizabeth Patterson a small pink wildflower and instructed her to remember the date. It was not until years after Baba dropped His body that she found it pressed into her Bible where she’d written “May 24, 1932,”exactly 20 years before the accident. Elizabeth said “Through the experience of sharing Baba’s suffering to a degree, I feel my life, instead of being nearly cut off, was extended for a purpose; the gift of the little flower was grace from the Master to be treasured in the heart.”
The gift of the flower, like the accident itself, was but one tangible thread of the Beloved’s compassion…one thread in the vast invisible tapestry that sustains the Universe.

This article first appeared in Broken Down Furniture Newsletter.