Eldon Cooper shouldn’t be here today. After all, the odds were stacked against him that cold February evening when he and his John Deere tractor went under the water on his Clarkridge, Arkansas, property.
“People have said I was really lucky; that I should buy lottery tickets,” Eldon said. “Let me tell you, this was not luck.”
No, Eldon says, it was divine intervention.
And it’s a story he’s been sharing with church groups and community organizations ever since.
“It was all God, it wasn’t anything I did,” Eldon said. “I couldn’t have saved myself, and they almost left me. They almost left me and was going to come back the next day.”
To fully understand what happened to Eldon, you have to go back to February 28, 2018 — the day that Eldon now refers to as “God’s Miracle.”
That particular Wednesday started out as a normal day for Eldon. He made plans to meet his newlywed wife, Debra, at bible study at 6 p.m. About an hour before he was due to meet her, he decided to check the pond on his 25-acre property to make sure the dam was holding well after all the rain they had received lately.
It was something Eldon did often.
“I hopped in the tractor, not grabbing my cell phone, a handgun, anything,” Eldon said. “I mean, really, I was only going to be gone for a few minutes.”
Eldon drove the tractor down there, picking up a bucket of fill dirt to reinforce and widen the dam for safety. But once he dropped the bucket of dirt at the far end of the dam, and looked over the edge of the spillway, he saw the rain had caused it to wash out a 4-foot straight drop.
“I didn’t want to damage the tractor, so I started backing up to head home, something I have done 150 times, probably,” Eldon said. “Well, for some reason my rear tire got too close to the edge, and the edge on the pond side gave way, dropping the rear of the tractor about 18 inches or so towards the pond. It stopped before going over the edge, as I dropped the bucket to the ground.”
Eldon’s John Deere had only one door on the left side, and he realized it would be on the deep side of the pond if the tractor rolled. It had an escape hatch out the back, but Eldon had never practiced with it, and it wasn’t something he thought he should try to mess with in an emergency situation.
“I didn’t have much time. I thought two things,” Eldon said. “Should I open the door and jump out and try to swim around the tractor and get away from it before it would roll, if it was going to roll? I’m a great swimmer. That wouldn’t have been any problem to swim it, but could I get out of the way before it rolled? And the other thing, should I just wait here for help.”
He didn’t have time to think about it.
Around 5:15 or 5:20 p.m., only a few minutes after the dire situation began, the tractor started to roll. It all seemed like it happened in slow motion as Eldon said these things “tend to do.”
He was able to get the right side tilt out window open before the tractor cab started filling with water. It filled very fast, probably 15 seconds or so Eldon estimates, but the 19-year military veteran said his training kicked in, and he was able to get out of the seat belt and above the waterline. With the cab filling fast, his head tilted back, and his mouth and nose barely clearing the water, he now realized he had only an air pocket — about the size of a shoe box — available.
“You can imagine what I was thinking. I am going to sit here and asphyxiate on my own air,” Eldon said. “They are going to find me in here and this is going to be my tomb.”
Eldon started praying fervently to God.
“I needed that peace that passes all understanding, so I asked for it,” Eldon said. “You know what; that peace came over me almost immediately. I stopped panicking, and I stopped trying to breathe so hard because I couldn’t get a full breath. But I stopped panicking, and my mind cleared and I could think.”
Eldon looked around to see what tools were at his disposal and realized his belt might be of use. He took it off and started beating on the very small window to try and break it. After a minute or so of doing that, Eldon concluded he was using too much oxygen and stopped.
“I continued to pray. I prayed for my wife Debra, my kids, my family, that God would be with them and help them through whatever the outcome would be,” Eldon said. “I prayed for His will to be done. I prayed that somehow, some way, something good would come out of this situation and God would be glorified.”
He never pleaded for his life but kept praying for those four things.
Then, strangely, the flashers on the tractor came on. Eldon said there was no way he could have bumped it, because it was a rotary switch. He knew God had a hand in that.
Shortly after, Eldon lost consciousness.
Debra knew something was wrong when he didn’t show up at bible study. When she came home at 7:15 p.m. she grabbed the flashlight and the first aid kit and headed down to the pond. It was already very dark, but the tractor’s flashers led her to the scene of the accident. She immediately called 911.
During her frantic call, Debra gave the wrong address — a direction that would have sent emergency responders 20 minutes the wrong way — if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of the dispatcher who double checked their address on their driver’s licenses on file.
While waiting for emergency personnel, Debra started calling around to family, friends, and church members to start a prayer chain.
Once first responders did arrive on the scene, they assumed the tractor didn’t have a cab.
“They saw my protective structure on the back to keep rocks from hitting the glass when mowing, and they thought that was the ROPS [roll-over protective structure]. They really didn’t know what to do,” Eldon said. “In their eyes, I was either in my seatbelt, or I was pinned under the tractor. Either way, I would be dead.”
The ambulance headed back to town and responders determined instead of a rescue that night, it would be a recovery effort the next day.
While all this was going on, Eldon said God was working the whole time.
“When I went unconscious I should have went limp and dropped down back into the water,” Eldon said. “God literally had to hold me back up into that air pocket.”
Everyone was about to leave the scene that night when Eldon’s brother Charlie called out to him
“He said ‘Eldon, are you there; are you alive?’ and I responded somehow, with God’s help,” Eldon said. “They described it as ‘deep, gutteral sounds,’ but I don’t remember any of this.”
They called everyone back and for another ambulance to come. A Clarkridge firefighter jumped on top of the cab, grabbed a baton from the deputy, and broke the glass out. A diver arrived at the same time, and didn’t even get his wet suit on all the way before jumping in to help the firefighter extract Eldon from the cab.
Eldon was alive, but barely.
He had been in that 49-degree water for three and a half hours. All the charts Eldon had seen before, a person could only withstand that type of temperature for an hour before succumbing to hypothermia. He was admitted to the hospital at 9:46 p.m. in a coma and with a body temp of 83 degrees.
The next thing Eldon remembers is waking up at 1:30 a.m. with nurses trying to get an IV started. He asked them if he could help.
“I was like, ‘What are you all doing?’” Eldon said. “It startled them. I wasn’t supposed to wake up. I was in coma.”
He made a rapid recovery and was released by 5 p.m. that Friday, two days after the accident.
Since the incident, Eldon bought a new tractor, a Kubota, with two doors — something he strongly suggests all closed cab tractors have.
He’s also busy sharing his miraculous story with others and enjoying every moment with his family and friends.
“Had God not intervened, I wouldn’t be here,” Eldon said. “I don’t believe in luck. God had done his will, he had saved my life.”
