The Lost Lockerbie Gospel
April 24, 2007 12:36 PM Subscribe
One dark and stormy Sunday morning, I heard a gospel song about a woman in the Lockerbie plane crash on the radio...
I never thought I'd be posting a songfilter question, but this has been bugging me for too long. Sometime around 1995 I was driving through Ohio in the middle of a tremendous rainstorm and listening to a gospel radio station.
The "song" that I remember was about a young woman who was the first in her family to go to college and then go to medical school on the East Coast and after medical school she got a prestigious job at a hospital in New York, and was about to get married, but before she started this job, she decided to take a vacation in Europe. All of this is sung in classic call-and-response, with many praise the lord's from the congregation. And her family goes to JFK to meet her as she returns home to the United States, but airline officials take the family aside and tell them that they have terrible news - there was a bomb on the plane and it has gone down with no survivors. The family is crushed and the congregation together with the preacher cry out in pain and sadness at the loss of their daughter, but they pray and pray and when they get home there's a message on the answering machine - she missed the plane and she's coming home on the next flight. The family (and the congregation) rejoices and hallelujahs. I'd say all this took at least 30 minutes to tell/sing.
Listening to this at the time I had to pull over because I was starting to cry and I still get a little teary-eyed just writing it down.
Question: Does this exist as a recording somewhere? Was it just a sermon being broadcast on the radio? Is it an urban legend put to music and prayer?
I never thought I'd be posting a songfilter question, but this has been bugging me for too long. Sometime around 1995 I was driving through Ohio in the middle of a tremendous rainstorm and listening to a gospel radio station.
The "song" that I remember was about a young woman who was the first in her family to go to college and then go to medical school on the East Coast and after medical school she got a prestigious job at a hospital in New York, and was about to get married, but before she started this job, she decided to take a vacation in Europe. All of this is sung in classic call-and-response, with many praise the lord's from the congregation. And her family goes to JFK to meet her as she returns home to the United States, but airline officials take the family aside and tell them that they have terrible news - there was a bomb on the plane and it has gone down with no survivors. The family is crushed and the congregation together with the preacher cry out in pain and sadness at the loss of their daughter, but they pray and pray and when they get home there's a message on the answering machine - she missed the plane and she's coming home on the next flight. The family (and the congregation) rejoices and hallelujahs. I'd say all this took at least 30 minutes to tell/sing.
Listening to this at the time I had to pull over because I was starting to cry and I still get a little teary-eyed just writing it down.
Question: Does this exist as a recording somewhere? Was it just a sermon being broadcast on the radio? Is it an urban legend put to music and prayer?
If you ignore the part about medical school, this story by Anne Applebaum matches up.
posted by acoutu at 2:51 PM on April 24, 2007
posted by acoutu at 2:51 PM on April 24, 2007
It's a longshot, but perhaps if the station still exists, someone there might know the song?
posted by tomble at 5:01 PM on April 24, 2007
posted by tomble at 5:01 PM on April 24, 2007
This list of radio stations in Ohio might help? If you know roughly in Ohio you were, you could sure narrow it down some.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:16 AM on April 25, 2007
posted by Happy Dave at 4:16 AM on April 25, 2007
Response by poster: Hm.
Acoutu, I didn't know the Syracuse-Lockerbie link or Anne Applebaum's story or other connections. All interesting. Thanks. But not what I was looking for.
Dave, I wish I could remember what the radio station was or where I was, but that's long gone from my memory.
Thanks for the efforts though...
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 6:12 AM on April 26, 2007
Acoutu, I didn't know the Syracuse-Lockerbie link or Anne Applebaum's story or other connections. All interesting. Thanks. But not what I was looking for.
Dave, I wish I could remember what the radio station was or where I was, but that's long gone from my memory.
Thanks for the efforts though...
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 6:12 AM on April 26, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by acoutu at 2:37 PM on April 24, 2007