We usually just don’t know: your flight gets cancelled, so, plans ruined and still angry, you go to your friend’s weekend barbecue. You meet a girl there who joins in the conversation about how crappy the airlines are, the conversation moves on to dating, the two of you get married, which leads to an extended line out into human history from that one accident. Or fate. There is no proof of either, but both you and your wife know it was ordained, don’t you? We all have these coincidences that are so meaningful to us that we simply have to believe they were due to fate, even though our justice system would throw those cases out for “insufficient evidence.” But sometimes the consequences of unlikely events are so great we that we almost have to believe, dragged kicking and screaming if necessary.
Such is the case of one George Strake (all information below from the book The Fisherman’s Tomb, by John O’Neil). Born in 1894 in St Louis, he and his siblings slipped into extreme poverty when both their parents died, the eldest being just old enough to care for the younger ones, including George. He had to leave high school to work, but in off-hours kept up his fascination with engineering mechanics to such an extent that he was awarded a full scholarship to the local university. Upon graduation, he became a wireless operator with the US army during WWI. And so the technical stage was set. After the Service, he became involved with a rich girl from Florida, but he would not marry her while he was still poor. She suggested that he go to Tampico, Mexico, in the employ of Gulf Oil to explore the area for oil. He did so, and in short time became the head of the Tampico office.
Then the personal stage was set. While on vacation in San Antonio, he met the woman he would soon marry, Susan Kehoe (I only wish she were a known relative!) After the nuptials, she moved with him back to Tampico, where she would often babysit for an old Yankee family, the William Buckley’s, the children including the to-become-famous William F. Buckley Jr. After cementing ties, William senior suggested that George leave Gulf Oil to explore on his own, with the help of money he would obtain from banks in NYC. Thus George Strake became a “wildcatter.” With those profits, and his knowledge of the wireless, he would also invest in a small start-up company called RCA, which then started the broadcast company, NBC. George would continue to reap profits from these for years to come.
Alas, but not surprisingly, Mexico fell prone to violent revolution again, so George left for greener pastures, selling cars in Cuba until the Great Depression. With what little money they had left, they moved back to Houston to be close to Susan’s mother, who had become seriously ill. While in the area, inquisitive George the wildcatter noticed some strange things about an area just 40 miles north of Houston, in the township of Conroe: the streams went the wrong direction from all other areas close by, and the cattle refused to drink the water. To make a long story short, he invested his last dollars in oil exploration there, and with the second test, went deeper than anyone else had done before to find the third largest oil field in America at the time. George Strake instantly became one of the richest men in the world.
A problem did arise, however – some wells in the area owned by others caught fire and exploded, creating a massive burning pit of the whole area. The fires could not be stopped, and the field was doomed to burn out. In desperation, George hired a man, George Eastman, to put it out with his new technique for horizontal drilling. He was successful, and Eastman’s technique would go on to be used in fracking, opening a new era for oil in America decades later and lessoning its dependence on the whim of international despots. At the time, it made Conroe into one of the few “Depression-proof” cities in the US in the 1930’s.
Connections, effects, and more connections. On top of all that, George was an extremely religious Catholic, who claimed that he had a partnership with God who always held the controlling interests (of course). Because of this, George gave generously to the Church, never allowing, as the Gospels would have it, his name to be mentioned. He frequently told his family that he expected to give away his fortune, his last dollar going out on his death bed. The Catholic Church, as one might expect, was ready to take advantage of such good fortune, especially after an incident following the death of Pope Pious XI in 1939. Then, the pope had requested to be buried beneath St Peter’s Cathedral, where legend had it that Peter “the Rock of the Church” had also been buried (on Vatican Hill, before construction of the Cathedral, of course) after his execution by the Romans around 65 AD. As workers dug beneath the foundation for his burial site, they broke through a ceiling and fell into a vast underworld of Roman family crypts that had once dominated Vatican Hill. In one place near the center of the cathedral, they found evidence of a Christian woman who had been buried there around 150 AD. This was significant, as Christians then were killed by the state. Had Vatican Hill become a secret graveyard for Christians? And if so, why?
The reason, some in the Vatican hoped, was because they knew that Peter had been buried there. The Vatican wanted to explore more, but needed lots and lots of money. It was the Depression, though, and WWII was starting up, so money was tight. The Vatican also did not want the world to know of the exploration because a failure to find Peter’s remains would cause more harm to a church already in decline. They needed a very wealthy anonymous donor. After the Vatican’s emissary, Father Walter Carroll, paid Strake a visit, the Vatican was given an anonymous blank check. The search was on.
As WWII progressed, Mussolini, and then the Germans, began to round up the Jews for deportation to the death camps. Partly because of the hidden construction site and Strake’s funds, Father Carroll, along with others, was able to hide and save some seven to eight hundred thousand Jewish lives. And, although the story was long and filled with controversy, the Church was also finally able to credibly establish that Peter had indeed been buried at the very center of the Cathedral (or rather, the Cathedral had been built directly over his site). The forensic evidence, site inscriptions, and historical data all showed that the myth had actually been a reality, and that the Church had been built, in every way, on Peter, who Jesus had proclaimed to be the Rock, or foundation, for advancing his teachings.
Again, we might see all this as a string of coincidences – but the sheer luck of it all, of one man finding that oil when all others had failed, one man who was so devout that he could give his fortune to a belief that not only verified the reality of the founder of the Christian Church but also saved nearly one million people’s lives – we kind of have to start thinking it was ordained. That last point, I might cautiously add, could be more important than even saving 800,000 people from execution, for such stories help convince us that, 1), there is a god, and 2), that this god actively cares about us, even as we screw things up. Such evidence might save thousands from suicide, and millions from pointless, desperate lives. Think: if one truly believes that we are made by divine powers for a purpose, how could we have long-lasting despair? We would no longer need to grope after power or distractions or things to fill our need for a reason for being. We would know that it is already in place, and we only have to live with trust – with faith - that our reason will be revealed, both in the outside world and within ourselves. That, indeed, was the wisdom and revelation given us in the New Testament, the true fulcrum for humanity’s turning point.
And part of this truth came to light after a wildcatter discovered oil in Texas. Amazing and true, and maybe even a revelation of divine origin. Such revelations might be within each of us, tailored to our own personal reason for being. It might not be a bad idea to start living as if this were true. We may not strike oil, but we could well strike it rich.