In the annals of improbable survival, the tale of Jack Lohrke stands out, punctuated by a twist of fate that hinged on a journey not taken. Imagine a baseball team, the Spokane Indians, their bus swallowed by the night as it traversed the rain-soaked Cascade Mountains. Suddenly, chaos erupts – a swerve, a skid, the sickening crunch of metal against guardrail before the bus plunges into the abyss, tumbling 350 feet down a mountainside. Fire engulfs the wreckage. This was no fictional nightmare, but the stark reality for the Spokane Indians on a fateful night.
Six players perished instantly. More succumbed to their injuries in the ensuing days. Yet, amidst this carnage, one name was conspicuously absent from the casualty list: Jack Lohrke. Why? Because Jack Lohrke, against all odds, didn’t travel anywhere with his team that day, at least not on that ill-fated bus journey.
Just hours before the tragedy, Lohrke received life-altering news – a promotion. The team owner, eager to relay this opportunity, contacted the State Patrol. In a scene straight out of a movie, a patrolman intercepted the Indians’ bus, not amidst a dramatic chase, but at a humble truck stop where they paused for hamburgers. A message was delivered, hasty goodbyes exchanged, and Lohrke embarked on a 175-mile hitchhiking trek back to Spokane, eastward bound while his team continued westward. Forty-five minutes later, their bus met its catastrophic end.
“Lucky Lohrke,” the headlines proclaimed, a moniker that resonated far deeper than the media initially grasped. Years before his near-miss with the bus crash, Lohrke’s life had already been a tapestry woven with threads of extraordinary escapes. As a soldier in World War II, he landed in Normandy shortly after D-Day, wading through the brutal campaigns across France and Germany. In four separate instances during the war, the men beside him fell, victims of conflict, yet Lohrke remained unscathed, a ghost dancing with death but never embraced by it.
His luck wasn’t confined to the battlefield. Years later, post-discharge and yearning for home in Los Angeles, Lohrke was bumped from an Army transport flight at the eleventh hour to accommodate a higher-ranking officer. Annoyed at the delay, especially as he anticipated his first airplane flight, he reluctantly stepped off. That flight, carrying his would-be fellow passengers, crashed, leaving no survivors. Again, by not traveling anywhere on that plane, Lohrke had unwittingly cheated fate.
Despite these brushes with destiny, Karen Kaiser, Lohrke’s daughter, grew up in the sun-drenched suburbs of Southern California in the 1950s and 60s largely unaware of her father’s extraordinary past. After retiring from baseball in 1953, following a modest major league career, Lohrke embraced a quieter life as a security guard. As a father, Kaiser remembers a man of few words, somewhat distant and reserved. His humor was dry, his affections understated. Yet, in the eyes of his solitary, artistic daughter, moments of connection shone brightly. She cherished playing catch, even with his fastball that stung her hand, and the rare instances he’d defend her artistic pursuits against her more sports-oriented siblings.
The bus crash remained a closed chapter in Lohrke’s personal narrative. His war stories, when recounted, were sanitized anecdotes, tales of minor discomfort, never the harrowing realities of combat and loss. “Not a word about watching his friends die,” Kaiser recalled, “Not a word.” It was only later, after moving to Spokane for art school, that Karen Lohrke began to piece together the legend of her father. In Spokane, her last name wasn’t just a name; it was a key, unlocking a flood of recognition and whispered stories of the “Lucky Lohrke,” the man who, through a twist of fate and perhaps more, was spared because, on that fateful day, he didn’t travel anywhere with his team.
