Woman's Life Saved By a Tree She Planted 50 Years Ago ...

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When 95-year-old Alice Wright planted a young live oak in front of her home in Houston 50 years ago, nursing the feeble sapling into a towering tree, she had expected perhaps only to be rewarded with the coolness of its shade against the scorching Texas sun. Little could she have known then, however, that half-a-century later that mighty oak would actually play a critical role in saving her life.

Early this morning, Mrs. Wright was sound asleep when the driver of an 18-wheeler suffered a heart attack and lost control on the freeway in front of her home, sending the multi-ton 18 wheeler careening off the road on a collision course with her house. But as fate would have it, the tree she had planted years earlier was there to stop it, just a few feet from her bedroom window.

Surprisingly, the clamorous close-call wasn't even enough to stir Mrs. Wright from her slumber.

"My neighbor across the street called me and said, ‘Are you all right?’ and I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ and she said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Wright, you don’t know that truck is in your yard and could have come in your house?’”

In an interview with KENS 5-TV, Mrs. Wright credits her faith in God, and that stalwart oak tree she planted in the early 1960s, for saving her from near-certain tragedy: “I’m blessed, so thankful. Like I said, I ask the Lord every night to shield me from hurt, harm and danger. He puts hands around this old house, and that’s what he does.”