Читать книгу It’s A Miracle: Real Life Inspirational Stories, Extraordinary Events and Everyday Wonders - Richard Thomas - Страница 10

When Elsa Amador was twelve years old and living in Puerto Rico, she met a young boy who was the son of Roberto Clemente, the legendary baseball player who had been tragically killed in a plane crash. Elsa and Roberto junior instantly felt a strong attraction to each other.

“We told each other we loved each other every day…. I mean, every day, like twenty-five times a day,” says Elsa.

In spite of their tender age, Roberto and Elsa believed they would spend their lives together. But a tragic event tore them apart. Elsa’s father was the innocent victim of a botched robbery attempt. And now, his family was in extreme danger.

Elsa’s mother had identified the man who killed her husband and was receiving death threats. The FBI moved in to take control of the situation. Elsa had only enough time to briefly call Roberto before she and her family were rushed out of the country, into the Witness Protection Program.

“I explained to him that we had to leave,” Elsa recounts. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell him where we were going. I just kept telling him how much I cared for him and not to blame me for what I was going to do…. It was out of my control.”

Elsa spent the next few years moving around the United States. But she never forgot her childhood sweetheart.

“I thought about him all the time,” Elsa admits. “I would sometimes close my eyes and see an image of him. He was really thin and tall and just smiling all the time. As time went on, I sort of assumed he had his own life. I just imagined him settled and married….”

In November of 1996, Elsa’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She had always felt responsible for separating her daughter from her childhood sweetheart. On her deathbed in the hospital, she made a startling request, urging Elsa to find her lost love.

“Find Roberto,” Elsa’s mother told her. “He’s the man for you.”

“So I asked, ‘How am I going to find him?’ And she said, ‘You should find him.’ And so I kind of brushed it off,” says Elsa.

And then, a few months after her mother’s death, Elsa had a sudden, unexplainable urge to attend a Yankees baseball game.

“It was as if something was just pushing me,” describes Elsa.

Whatever was pushing Elsa to the stadium, got her there an hour early that day—just in time for a pre-game event. The Yankees were celebrating Hispanic Heritage Day, and there in center field, accepting an award for his father, was Elsa’s long lost love—Roberto Clemente, Jr.

“It was really strange,” Elsa recalls with wonder. “I thought, What is he doing there? I haven’t seen him for all of these years and all of a sudden I see him at the park.”

After the ceremony, Roberto disappeared from the field. Elsa spent the next nine innings of the game desperately trying to locate him, but without success. The boy she had never forgotten … the man her mother begged her to find … was closer than he’d ever been in over fifteen years, and still he was out of reach. Finally, a security guard gave her a possible lead, the phone number of a local sports cafe. Elsa called and left a message, and the next day Roberto returned the call and arranged to meet again the woman he had been separated from so many years ago.

“I felt like I had just seen her yesterday,” declares Roberto. “Like I had just been with her in school the day before. And the feelings that I had for Elsa were so strong. My friends, everybody, knew about Elsa. It was something that I just … I kept her alive in my heart.”

On Valentine’s Day, 1998, Roberto and Elsa made their reunion complete when they married in New York City. Today, they still marvel over how powers far beyond their own made the dying wish of Elsa’s mother come true.

“I truly believe that our parents had a meeting in heaven and said, ‘Wait a second … let’s do something here,’” Roberto says. “I believe that it was meant to be, and I truly believe that it was a time where our parents’ souls got together and said, ‘Let’s just make our two children happy.’”

For Roberto and Elsa, a tragic separation has ended happily with a miraculous second chance.