EDMOND—Philadelphia Church of God member Doris Blank has experienced things that few people ever have, and has lived to tell her tale. Through a series of near-death experiences in her younger days, the 93-year-old Minnesotan has seen God’s hand in sanctifying and preserving her for decades before finally calling her to the truth.
Doris Blank voraciously read Worldwide Church of God literature leading up to her first wcg service in 1965. “I was so surprised by the stories,” she recalls. “I ran to the bedroom to tell my husband. He listened. So astonishing [to find out] what the world was like.”
Blank was baptized in 1967, followed by her husband, Bernard, a week later. Her ties to God’s Church go back half a century.
But she should have been dead at age 2.
Drowning
Doris was born of Joseph and Mary Longbody into a Chippewa family in 1924, the youngest child of 11. She grew up in Minnesota on the banks of Lake Superior, one of about 500 people on a small Indian reservation. When she was 2 years old, she fell off the dock behind her house. Instead of sinking, she floated, drifting farther and farther away from home.
“I remember having a lot of fun on the water,” Blank says.
That is, until she swallowed too much water and passed out. Her mother, who was doing chores around the house, went outside to check on her but saw no one. Scanning the horizon, she noticed a tiny floating body in the distance. She could barely swim, but she dog paddled out into the icy lake and rescued her daughter.
By the time young Doris was carried ashore, her face was turning blue. Her mother rolled her onto her belly, and water poured out of her mouth. But then Doris woke up and begin to cry. This harrowing experience earned little Doris the nickname “Calm Water Lady” from a local Indian chief.
Running Away
Compared to almost drowning, the next 10 years of Blank’s life were fairly uneventful. At age 3, she wandered off to a nearby creek, sending her mother into a panic once again. After that, she explored only her yard, a rope around her belly to keep her close by.
“I just went as far as that rope,” Blank says, laughing.
Blank’s father worked as a cook on passenger ships sailing on the Great Lakes and as a wilderness guide in Canada for railroad builders heading west. The railroaders paid him handsomely to help clear trees for new railroads, to ensure they wouldn’t get lost, and to put his cooking skills to use. They affectionately called him “Indian Joe.” But Joseph’s work kept him away from home for as many as five months at a time. Young Doris often sat by the window and watched for him to return.
When Blank was about 12, U.S. federal government officials took her into custody, along with her cousin and some other children from the reservation. The upheaval was part of a program aimed at teaching American Indians to assimilate into European-American culture. The children were separated from their parents and sent to a Catholic mission school in Red Lake, then to a government school in Pipestone, and then to federal land near Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Extremely homesick and fed up from moving so often, Doris and her cousin Leena decided to escape by tying bedsheets together and climbing down from a second-story window. They had nothing but the clothes they were wearing, but they began a 400-mile odyssey homeward.
Since it was September or October when the girls escaped the federal property, winter was coming fast. To speed up the trip and beat the freezing cold, the girls sometimes hitchhiked or snuck aboard trains. They slept in a sawdust mill, gleaned from a cornfield, picked watermelon from a garden, and stole milk from the front steps of a house.
One night, the girls saw wolves ahead of them on the path. They crafted makeshift torches out of sticks and scarves, and then lit them with matches. The flames scared off the predators.
Surviving a Coma
On the wild and rugged path toward home, the girls were nearly kidnapped and assaulted. While hitchhiking, they overheard the two men who picked them up discussing stopping the car in the country and taking advantage of them. As the car sped down the road, Doris and Leena leaped headlong out of the right rear door and tumbled down the hill.
The men stopped the car and searched for the girls for about an hour, but the girls remained frozen and silent in the bushes. The men finally gave up and drove away, but the girls stayed in their hiding spots for another hour to make sure they did not walk into a trap.
Later on the treacherous journey, Doris and Leena got caught in a heavy rainstorm. It was so dark that they could not see the way home except when lightning flashed. Both girls fell ill with colds and fevers. After Leena broke away to go to her home, Doris spent an hour groping in the dark for the path to her own house.
Minnesota pcg member Melody Aldrich said that Doris and Leena pursued their goal with resourcefulness. “I think it is a good example of the seven laws of success,” she said, “as well as showing how children back then were a lot tougher than they are now.”
Finally, Doris spotted the trail and found her way home. Reunited with her family, the famished youngster ate the entire apple-pumpkin pie that her father had been baking that night.
Soon after arriving, her sickness worsened into pneumonia, and then into a two-week coma. Her mother sat with her during the entire coma, drizzling water into her mouth. Eventually, young Doris recovered.
Several weeks later, a federal government worker stopped by the house, inquiring about the runaway Doris. Her father did not divulge her whereabouts, and nobody ever came searching for her again.
Witnessing Death
Doris Blank got married to Bernard Blank about eight years later, at age 20. Not long after both were baptized as members of the Worldwide Church of God in 1967, tragedy struck.
Blank and her husband were cutting trees in the backyard one day. Bernard had worked as a logger and acquired skill in the trade. But this time, he made a mistake.
“We were cutting trees in the backyard, and one fell on him,” Blank recalls. “The tree was too heavy for me to move, and he was trapped underneath it. I was with him when he died. There was nothing I could do. We told each other, ‘I love you,’ and then he died. It’s wonderful to know that he died in the faith.”
“She has remained a steadfast grand lady of Israel all these years since becoming a widow,” said Illinois Preaching Elder Eric Anderson, Blank’s local minister. “She never seems to be lonely, and she always keeps a positive mental attitude.”
Life Today
Doris Blank lives alone in Two Harbors, Minn., just across the street from Lake Superior, four miles from the Canadian border. Each winter, a bone-chilling wind sweeps across the water and greets her at the front door. Last year, she was honored as the oldest of the Native Americans on her reservation. She still drives her car around the local area and only requires occasional assistance from her neighbor, a social worker.
One of Blank’s biggest adventures these days is her commute to Sabbath services. The trip is approximately three-and-a-half hours each way, and it takes her parts of two days to complete. Sometimes, she stays overnight with her sister, who does not attend services, before catching a ride with her 27 miles southwest to the home of a pcg member in Duluth. The member then drives her 180 miles from Duluth to Chaska, just outside of Minneapolis, for services. Other times, her social-worker neighbor drives her all the way to Minneapolis the night before, where she stays in a member’s home until services the next day.
Depending on her ability to find transportation, Blank usually attends services about once a month. She also attends every holy day and church picnic.
Members in the Minnesota congregation say that Blank has impacted them positively since she started attending with the pcg in August 2011.
“I am inspired by Mrs. Blank in so many ways,” member Candy Fiskewold said, calling her “a loving person. She is so kind and thoughtful. She went to the Feast with me last year in Edmond. She did not miss any service or event [even though] she walks with a walker and cannot stand up straight at all; she is chronically bent over and has no balance without her walker or a cane.”
“Mrs. Blank is a remarkable woman who came out of the Laodicean church alone with God,” member Kristy Pepin said. “In spite of being in her mid-80s at the time and with no husband or children to help her, she was still determined to make the nearly 700-mile round trip drive to services. … She never complained about the distance or her aches and pains of old age. She always has a smile and is a very interesting conversationalist.”
Blank says that she is thankful to God for protecting her for nearly a century. Now, she looks to the future, which she hopes will be a tad less harrowing.