The Great Physician

Man believes prayers revived him

By Erin McKeon
The Facts.com

Published December 8, 2008

ANGLETON — After Alfred Thane suffered a heart attack and passed out, he awoke smiling and surrounded by angels.

“When I woke up, I was feeling perfectly well, no pains or anything,” the 74-year-old Thane said. “The first thing in my mind was, ‘If this is the way the Lord wants me to go, this is the way I want to go,’ because I had no pain.”

Thane believes God was looking after him that day a week before Thanksgiving at Ginger’s Salon in Angleton, where a blocked artery caused him to slump in his chair while getting a haircut. He knows for sure the people in the shop saw to it the Lord was at hand.

A mix of salon employees and customers encircled Thane and prayed over him while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, salon owner Ginger Cooksey said. An unusual calm filled the normally bustling shop.

“There were like eight women that were surrounding him when I arrived, and I told them to back off of him so I could get to him,” said Angleton police officer Janet Heckler, one of the first people to respond to the 911 call from the salon. “I lost him. He was dead. I couldn’t get his pulse.”

Just after they got him moved from the chair to the floor so Heckler could start CPR, Thane’s eyes opened. Heckler said she hadn’t started compressions yet and has never seen a recovery from a heart attack like Thane experienced.

“I can’t even explain it because whenever he came to, he said, ‘I’m fine, I’m not hurting,’” Heckler said. “You would think that after you lost your heartbeat, you’d feel weak or something. It wasn’t me at all because I didn’t do anything. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

Thane fully believes the prayer of those eight God-fearing women saved his life, something not doubted by those who were there.

“I saw a miracle,” Cooksey said. “I saw corporate prayer in action. We didn’t do anything. The Lord worked through us, and it was unbelievable — the power of the Lord.”

Cooksey said every day the phone rings endlessly, but during Thane’s attack it didn’t ring once. That calm reinforces her belief there was a higher power at work.

“Our telephone rings every five minutes in that salon,” Cooksey said. “We’re a busy salon, but our phone didn’t ring for 30 minutes, and no one’s cell phone went off.”

Thane was taken to the hospital by ambulance, and a visit to his cardiologist proved he’d had a heart attack, he said. Doctors put a stent in his artery to clear up the blockage, Thane said.

A few days later, he was released from the hospital and says he feels fine now.