In 1959 Brother Fred Wilson, a Gilead graduate, became the branch overseer in Chile, replacing Brother Albert Mann, who continued to serve his brothers as a traveling overseer. Brother Wilson had given up a promising career as a nuclear physicist to dedicate his life to Jehovah and to enter the pioneer service. At the time that Brother Wilson became branch overseer there were 56 congregations in Chile with a peak of 1,879 publishers.

The branch overseer, Fred Wilson, made a trip to the largest cities affected by the earthquakes and reported the following: “The first stop was in Concepción. The buildings that suffered the worst damage were those of brick and adobe structure. Many wood frame houses had fire walls of brick, and in many cases these caved in on the house, smashing the wooden wall and killing the people. The only known casualty among those associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses was an elderly woman who was studying the Bible. She was a paralytic whose heart succumbed under the tremendous shock of the second earthquake, which lasted several minutes.

“The next day I took the one-hour plane flight south to Valdivia, which was 50 percent destroyed by the earthquake and the terrifying tidal wave. Entire blocks of houses were flattened as though a gigantic hand had dashed them to massive piles of rubble.”