Even though it happened many years ago, lots of Americans remember Dec. 7, 1941, as Pearl Harbor Day. It was the day Japan attacked the U.S., without a declaration of war, and killed thousands of Americans and destroyed so much of our naval force and air force at Pearl Harbor.

In the days following the attack, both Japan and Germany declared war on the U.S. It was a very bleak time for Americans, as they were now entering a huge world war. What would the outcome be? Victory or defeat? Would we even have our own nation anymore, or would somebody else take away our blessed liberties and rule over us?

In early Dec. 1941, with all the death and destruction, nobody knew the answers to these questions. Many, though, prayed and trusted God – and two-and-a-half weeks later celebrated the birth of our Lord and Savior. It may have been in a more subdued way, but they still celebrated His birth, which was most certainly the right thing to do.

Now, I wasn’t alive back in 1941, but on Dec. 7, I usually think back to that terrible day in American history and thank God He brought us through victoriously as a nation. And it was on Dec. 7, just a few years after we bought our farm here, we had our own “Pearl Harbor Day.”

On that day, I headed out to the barn to milk and feed the cows. It was windy, and bitter cold out, -20ºF. Little did I know what waited for me on the other side of the barn door. As I opened the door and stepped in, I was horrified at what I saw. There were so many of our beautiful cows lying dead in their stalls and gutter, and other cows had busted out of their stalls and were standing in the center aisle.

I was floored; what had happened in here in the night? When I had left the barn the night before, the cows were all healthy and resting comfortably – what happened? I looked at the first few dead cows and realized they had been standing up and instantly dropped dead because their feet and legs were right underneath them. The only thing I could think of that would kill them instantly like that would be electrocution.

I immediately opened up my main circuit breaker panel and looked at all the breakers and, to my amazement, I found one that was thrown. So I was pretty sure my hunch was right. Joanne came out and was as shocked as I was. I explained to her what I thought had happened.

We went to work and got the loose cows into stalls and tied up. Then we fed and milked them. They were very touchy and uneasy. When 7 a.m. came, I called up a master electrician, my vet, my insurance agent and my good neighbor, Howie.

The electrician showed up and verified what I thought. Electrocution. What happened in our barn should never have happened. Many years ago, a previous owner had plumbed the barn. He ran the water lines over the two main beams in the barn to water the cows on each side of the barn.

Later on, a different owner ran an electrical wire next to the water line on top of the beam to run a small fan he’d installed in one of the pens. After many years, with the water pipe vibrating from the cows drinking water, it wore through the insulation on the electrical wire and, on that fateful night, killed a lot of our cows.

A cow would take a drink of water and get killed instantly, as the current would flow right down the water line. Fortunately, after a while, the circuit breaker threw. The electrician said to me, “You’re lucky all your cows aren’t dead in here. Normally in a case like this, they’re all dead.” I myself don’t call it luck; I call it the mercy of God.

The vet showed up and verified how many cows were dead, their bodyweights and their condition. Surprisingly, my insurance agent wouldn’t even come. My neighbor, Howie, came with his skid loader to help me get all the dead cows out of the barn, which was no easy job.

The problem was, I was so busy dealing with these other men and making phone calls to my insurance agent I could hardly help him. But he understood and went to work on it.

And then I was in for one amazing good surprise in this horrible mess. Howie’s dad, Howard, drove into our yard in his car. He came right into the barn and got down in the gutter and started to put the chain around a dead cow’s leg so Howie could get her out of the barn. He did this over and over again. I was shocked; here he was in his early 80s, and here he was helping us young farmers out in our day of trouble.

I of course thanked them very much when they had them all out. They were just glad they could help us out. A fair bit later on, I said to Howie, “I’m amazed your dad at his age came down and helped get those dead cows out of our barn; it was no easy job.” Howie’s response, “Of course he would; he wouldn’t just sit in the house when a neighbor needs help.” Good neighbors are priceless and a real gift from God, I believe.

During all of this, another thought kept going through the back of my mind, “Would we be able to keep our farm?” We had a young family and were way in debt and now, with the loss of all these cows, would we be able to make it? I knew we had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep praying and believing in God.

We ripped out the bad wiring that same day. The vet highly recommended we not buy any cows to replace the dead ones because of the trauma the other ones had been through. He said bringing in new ones would just add to their stress. I did not plan on buying replacements; I didn’t have the money to do it, period.

We were committed to taking as good care as we possibly could of the cows we had left. So we did. Unfortunately, in the next couple of days, some of the remaining cows got terrible mastitis or sick, and we ended up selling them.

The rest of the cows, we were able to bring through. With lots of prayer and TLC. But then we had another big problem come up. The insurance company did not want to pay us for the dead cows. My insurance agent said he couldn’t confirm I even had any dead cows.

I told him if he would’ve come out, he could have seen the dead cows. But I had a written report from the master electrician, another written report from my vet and my neighbors as eyewitnesses. I sent him the written, signed reports – to which they responded that maybe it was disease or something else that killed my cows.

So things got better in our barn in the following weeks – but not with the insurance company. We knew we desperately needed that money to keep going and making debt payments since our milk checks were much smaller. Things were looking pretty bleak, and Christmas was just around the corner. What were we to do?

We decided no matter how many dead cows we had or the problems with the insurance company, we were going to celebrate Christmas, the birth of our wonderful Lord and Savior. Instead of looking back at dead cows, we looked even further back, at a stable in Bethlehem.

Even though we didn’t have much money to buy gifts with, it was such a blessed Christmas as we looked beyond our problems and once again saw the love of God in the birth of our Savior. Oh, how we needed that Christmas to renew our love and joy for what we had just been through and for the challenging days ahead.

We all in our lives will have a “Pearl Harbor Day.” It may not happen on Dec. 7 like it did for us, but I can tell you they do come. But the good news is: God is there waiting for you to call out to Him. He will see you through. Don’t give up on God; He doesn’t give up on us. He proved that many years ago on that first Christmas.

So what happened after that? God saw us through. We kept praying for a fair insurance settlement. After Christmas, the electrician and vet both asked me how the insurance settlement came through. I told them it hadn’t and what the insurance people were saying.

The electrician got very upset about it and told me he would testify for me in court if it came to that. The vet, well, he got angry and said he would also go to court on our behalf. I also asked him about a couple of big medical words in the autopsy a different vet did on one of the cows. He readily explained them to me and told me the insurance company had absolutely no grounds to stand on in denying our claim.

Shortly after that, the insurance company called me up and told me they couldn’t settle the claim because of those big medical words. I asked him if he knew what those words meant, to which he replied that he didn’t have a clue.

I explained them to him, and then he said he would settle the claim since he had no grounds to deny it on. A week later we had our check. Shortly after that, my insurance agent informed me he thought it would be a good idea if I got a different insurance company. I readily agreed and did so. Later on that spring and summer, we had a bunch of heifers calve in to rebuild our herd with.

So God saw us through our “Pearl Harbor Day” and the days following, just as He saw our nation through years ago. I’ve learned years ago, no matter how bad the situation is, we need to keep our eyes on God. And don’t let the problems steal our joy.

From our farm to you, have a wonderful, blessed, joyful Christmas.  

PHOTO: From our farm to yours, Merry Christmas. Photo provided by Tom Heck.

Tom Heck, his wife, Joanne, and their two children own and operate a 35-cow dairy farm in Wisconsin. Contact him at lifeonthefamilyfarm@gmail.com or order his book at tomheckfarm.com