In Ohio: a Vision West of Town

By Gregory Jaynes

One summer night Rita Ratchen was driving down Ohio Route 12 when an image of Jesus hove into view on the side of a soybean-oil storage tank. She thought someone had painted it, but as she drew closer the figure disappeared. "My hands come off the wheel," she recalls. "I just crossed my arms over my heart, and I said, 'Oh, my Lord, my God.' " It was a lucky thing she had just bought a new Ford Taurus, she thinks now, because its alignment held her on the road those treacherous few seconds it took to compose herself. This was on a Wednesday night, at 10:15. Rita had been out installing drapes; she has her own concern. She went on home to Fostoria, one of those clean, pretty Ohio villages with high-hipped houses on fresh-clipped lots. For four days Rita did not mention her vision to another soul, largely because "I didn't want to be put away." It was hard withholding the news because she "wanted to share it so badly with someone." Finally, on Sunday night, Dorothy Droll, Rita Ratchen's best friend for 35 years, came to visit, and Rita said, "Dorothy, I want to show you something." They drove out of town about two miles and parked on the shoulder of the road by the Fostoria Country Club. Rita pointed to the tank across the highway, and Dorothy "saw it immediately. So I said, 'Oh boy, two kooks now!' "

The next night Rita took another friend, "and she went bananas. She's Spanish, and they can really get excited." Over the next week the word spread through Fostoria like prairie fire. One night there were twelve cars out there next to the golf course; another night 20. Soon there were 150. One witness reported it took an hour and a half to drive from Putt 'N' Pond Park to the soybean tank, a distance of two miles. Rita called a photographer named Andy Duran at the paper, the Review Times, and asked for a picture, but Andy said he was busy. Privately, he thought the Jesus affair was nonsense. "Andy did what I would have done and dismissed it," says Managing Editor Carl Hunnel.

"But then we started getting more calls, and some of our own people started seeing it." On Aug. 19, after considerable level-headed cogitation -- "I'm a skeptic, O.K.?" Carl says. "I'm not a very religious person, but you can't let that affect your coverage" -- the editor decided to go with the story. His front-page banner headline: IMAGE OF CHRIST REPORTED WEST OF TOWN. "What many people have said appears to be an image of Christ can be seen just west of Fostoria . . . Those who have contacted or have been contacted by the Review Times say the image can be seen when it's dark, around 9:30 p.m. or later, from the area between the Hi-Lo Oil gas station up to the grain bin itself and can only be seen coming toward Fostoria. The bin is the one farthest west." In later editions the paper corrected itself and identified the canvas, if you will, as a soybean-oil storage tank.

The news agency Reuters picked up the piece and moved it on the wire. All of a sudden Carl Hunnel's phone began to ring ceaselessly as the press at home and abroad smelled a newsworthy aberration, always the cause of a stampede, especially in August, when Presidents are on holiday. Fostoria, a town of 17,000 that until Rita Ratchen's sighting was best known for the Fostoria Shade & Lamp Co., a fine glassworks that burned in 1895, went under the glare of world attention. "Yes," the Review Times wrote on Aug. 21, "Fostoria is on the map."

Quickly then the rumor spread that Archer Daniels Midland Co., the tank owner, was going to paint over the image. Just as quickly a "save the tank" movement got going. Finally a company spokesman announced there would be no painting until things quieted down in Fostoria. The company position was that rust stains, under the nighttime security lights, account for the image. The tank was just put up in July, and a primer was applied to its exterior. If it is to last, it will have to be painted by winter, Christ or no.

The story fell out of the paper after it could not find anything else to say about the tank. Before Hunnel was through, though, he had shown his enterprise by hiring an artist to sketch the image on one of the paper's unsatisfactory tank pictures. The caption said, "After several futile attempts at photographing the image of Christ people said they were seeing on a tank at ADM on Ohio 12, the Review Times called upon an area artist to outline the image with the assistance of Rita Ratchen, the first area resident to report the phenomenon. It took artist Don Droll, 421 W. Fremont St., approximately three hours to produce his outline, done with India ink on a clear overlay covering the photograph. The outline more clearly indicates where the Christ image is said to appear, including the small child many people have trouble discerning." (The small child showed up later; Rita Ratchen does not think it was there that first night.)

Editor Hunnel has had a few cranky calls complaining that he is ignoring Jesus, but he sees no way out of his plight. "I'm imaged to death. We shot it from the air. We shot it in the daytime. We shot it at night. What else can I do?"

Even without publicity, however, the people still flock to the tank each night. Along the road in the dark, conversations go like this:

"It's my fourth time. I got Howard to come once. You know my Howard. It takes an act of Congress to get him out of the house. He won't come back with me, though. He says it makes him feel weird."

"Now look just below that power line. See the dark spot? That's Jesus' head. You can't make out the face. Now see his gown? Good. Now just down on the left is the little boy."

And this from the cab of an 18-wheel truck stuck in the traffic jam: "What's the holdup?"

"Jesus."

"That's what I say. What's causing it?"

"Jesus Christ."

"You trying to be funny or what?" And the truck rumbles on through the Ohio night.

Willis Smith of Ottawa Lake, Mich., is selling photographs of the image, a set of four for $2. He has sold 700 sets. Since the image photos are so popular, he thought he would show people his other pictures, so he keeps his family album in his car. People are now ordering prints out of his family album, vacation shots with crooked horizons, backyard snaps. "I've turned pro in two weeks," he says. "I'm getting calls from all over the United States."

One man had 1,000 coffee mugs made up with I SAW THE IMAGE written on their flanks and sold out, at $4 a pop. John Broski of Fostoria invested his savings of $1,800 in I SAW THE IMAGE T shirts, and expects to walk away with a tidy $2,000 profit. As for the image itself, Broski says, "I think there's something there. What it is is probably naturally explained. If the Lord were doing something -- that's a big if, O.K.? -- the oxidation, the vapor lights, whatever, the Lord would do it that way, naturally. It would get the people to come back to the faith. Aw, let me just say it's unusual."

And what of Rita Ratchen these days? "I see it as a natural phenomenon," she said over coffee the other morning in the LK Restaurant down the road from the soybean tank. As she spoke, a waitress came over with a tally sheet from the home office, showing that the establishment's volume since Jesus was sighted has moved it from 53rd place in a 55-restaurant chain to third place. "It is caused by the lights and the rust," Rita went on, "but I believe the Lord permitted it to happen. Just as I believe the Lord permits things to happen in our lives, even illness, in order to bring us closer together."

That said, the 58-year-old widow -- mother of four, grandmother of nine, devout Catholic, independent businesswoman -- smiled broadly, her eyes fairly twinkled, and she added, "Besides, if they took me to the nuthouse now they'd have to take thousands with me."