[nukkad] THE PARACHUTE

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Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.  --Aldous Huxley
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THE PARACHUTE
Charles Plum, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a jet
fighter pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions,
his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile.
Plumb ejected & parachuted into enemy hands. He was
captured & spent six years in a Communist prison.
He survived that ordeal & now lectures about lessons
learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb & his wife were sitting in a
restaurant, a man at another table came up & said,
"You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from
the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"
"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.

"I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb
gasped in surprise & gratitude. The man pumped his
hand & said, "I guess it worked!"
Plumb assured him, "It sure did-if your 'chute hadn't
worked, I wouldn't be here today."

Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that
man. Plumb says, 'I kept wondering what he might have
looked like in a Navy uniform-a Dixie cup hat, a bib
in the back, and bell bottom trousers. I wondered how
many times I might have passed him on the Kitty Hawk.
I wondered how many times I might have seen him & not
even said good morning, how are you or anything
because, you see, I was a fighter pilot & he was just
a sailor.

Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent
on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship
carefully weaving the shrouds & folding the silks of
each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of
someone he didn't know. Now, Plumb asks his audience,
'Who's packing your parachute?' Everyone has someone
who provides what they need to make it through the
day. Plumb also points out that he needed many kinds
of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy
territory-he needed his physical parachute, his mental
parachute, his emotional parachute, & his spiritual
parachute."

He called on all these supports before reaching
safety. His experience reminds us all to prepare
ourselves to weather whatever storms lie ahead.
 

 

 


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