 
Thoroughly written, interesting, inspiring, and very obvious that countless hours of thought and research were invested in this amazing book; it's a medicine cabinet full of solutions for society's ills. I could not put it down!

~ Merlin Hampton, Board President of Christian Friends of Israel – America & Founder of BHB Engineering

Fascinating and wide-ranging look at unique individuals who have significantly impacted others. The author gathered details surrounding each life that are sure to inspire and speak to us today. Congratulations! Being a big fan of biographies, this book is a favorite.

~ Jim Kregel, President of Kregel Publications & Parable Book Stores

Never has the need been greater for these stories revealing people of great character and integrity. Its lack in our leadership is evidence of the need for classic character stories like these to replace what's been lost.

~ Dave Henard, Author of Victory Stolen

About champions of godly leadership who sacrificially served the underdogs, needy, and vulnerable. Their life stories inspire us to impact others and to glorify God. I appreciate the reminders on how leadership can be defined as standing and taking risks for others.

~ David Witt, Author of Fearless Love & Founder of Spirit of Martyrdom International

We're using it as a text in our inmate character-building class. It's one of our highest-rated programs because of this extraordinary book. Highly recommended for use in leadership development training.

~ Donna Shetler, Director of Prison Fellowship – Kansas Department of Corrections Re-entry

Couldn't put it down! I've taught character studies to young men and women in several countries for years, and now I use this book as a resource. Thanks for this great asset; it's my favorite read of last year.

~ Review & Reader E-Mail

Really enjoyed the book with its emphasis on a Christ-centered life; it will bless many people.

~ Mike Adkins, Recording Artist & Author

One of the greatest books I've ever read! It should be in every school. Superb writing that kept my attention. I'll read it over and over – you truly are a proverbial storyteller. I'm highly recommending it to everyone and can't wait for volume two.

~ Review & Reader E-Mail

Encourages all needing a hand to step into life's deeper meaningful waters.

~ Sharon Sanders, Co-Founder of Christian Friends of Israel – Jerusalem & Executive Editor

Stories about real heroes who went a step beyond and inspire us to do better.

~ Ray Hall, President & Founder of Prison Books Project International

Like the storytellers of a bygone era with a moral lesson in every story; best enjoyed by firelight with a cup of cocoa.

~ Kim Frolander, Author of Israel Basics & Desert Sailor series

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. (1 Corinthians 1:27-28)

Uncommon Character

Abridged, 3rd Edition

Stories of Ordinary Men and Women Who Have Done the Extraordinary

Douglas Feavel

Please note the abbreviated eBook and audiobook editions do not include the following content: extended author's notes, some supplemental story development, and three comprehensive appendices (Appendix One ~ Anatomy of the Character Stories, Appendix Two ~ Anatomy of the American Character, and Appendix Three ~ Bibliography and Recommended Reading). The omitted content is readily available in the hard and soft cover print editions and comprises approximately hundred additional pages.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue ~ My Story

Irena Sendler ~ Separated by Good or Evil

Joseph Carey Merrick ~ Life as an Animal

Arland D. Williams Jr ~ Dying to Self

Rose Valland ~ The Art of War

Colonel George Washington ~ Only One Left on Horseback

Parable of the Four Farmers ~ Bloom Where You're Planted

Dave Roever ~ You Never Were That Good-Looking

Parable of the Giving Gift ~ Still My Favorite Teacher

Rick Rescorla ~ I'm Taking Them Out!

Phoebe Ann Mosey ~ Aim High

Russell Stendal ~ But You Care, Don't You?

Kimberly Munley ~ The Training Takes Over

Parable of the Overnight Success ~ All It Takes Is Everything

Tommy Thompson ~ Exploring Inner Space

Eva Mozes Kor ~ We Are More Than Our Pain

Christopher Langan ~ Peanut Butter for Every Meal

Captain Plumb ~ How Well Did I Do?

Parable of the Flat Earth ~ Everyone to the Starting Line

Stetson Kennedy ~ Killed Just for Shaking Hands

Ronald Reagan ~ America's Lifeguard, the World's Cowboy Lawman

Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand ~ Remove This Disgrace

Gregory Jessner ~ Can't Help But Worry

Haym Salomon ~ Saving the Fourth of July

Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler ~ Body of Knowledge

Pasquale de Nisco ~ The Priest Who Adopted a Town

Jesus Christ ~ Who Do You Say That I Am?

Epilogue ~ Your Story

Afterword ~ Advocacy for Rapprochement

About the Author

To Barbara Jean: the "wife of my youth" (Proverbs 5:18b), life-long love, companion for more than half a century, and partner in ministry and adventure. By faith, she accompanies me without complaint or hesitation, in poverty and wealth, from our start in Appleton, Wisconsin, through many locations to our present base – wherever we are together is home. As bonuses, she overlooks my ADHD-related meltdowns, patiently does the editing, and believes the best is yet to come.
Acknowledgments

Sincere and deserving attribution is offered on behalf of three of history's most accomplished storytellers whose inspirational lives illustrate heroic character on a grand scale: Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan. Courtesy recognitions are also extended to my contemporaries in outreach whose influences are evidenced herein: Dave Roever, Mike Adkins, Russell Stendal, David Henard, Bob Dylan, Eva Kor, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Barton. They tell their stories better than most and in doing so consistently honor God. My warm thanks to all for their generous and timeless contributions to humanity.
Prologue

My Story

By blending information with inspiration, stories bridge the past with the present; by sharing them, storytellers transform often dull objective history into living subjective heritage. Stories have inherent power to transform lives, and the most powerful stories are about transformed lives.

My appreciation for motivational, true stories gained its underpinning as I pursued history studies at the university level. It was amplified early in my professional career during a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking when I was awarded first place for sharing, as required, a personal true story. This seemingly minor accomplishment sufficiently quelled my previous overwhelming fear of public speaking that upon completing the twelve-week course I went on to be an assistant instructor, thus adding some much-needed formality to my embryonic movement toward storytelling. My continuing interest was significantly refined after retiring from business and gaining the time to wholly pursue discretionary opportunities. After my wife and I returned from investing the first three years in Jerusalem-based outreach, I sought fresh challenges closer to home and consequently became engaged in a mix of teaching roles. These educational experiences led along two parallel paths. One was as a volunteer instructor of multiple proprietary and generic courses in a variety of settings that included a state correctional institute and a county jail, several churches and recovery centers, and a regional camp organization. The other path was as a substitute teacher accepting assignments for all grade levels, subjects, and area schools – both public and parochial (as well as observing the homeschooling of my grandchildren and that of many families within our circle of friends).

After a few weeks of challenging classroom sessions, I concluded that character was a lost, or at least an extremely under-represented, critical component in today's education system. The other precepts could only be properly adhered to, and ultimately successful if character was at the core as the driving, cohesive force. I recognized the need to better understand the nature of character, as well as to find a complementary way to incorporate it into all teaching and training opportunities and into all curricula. Students in the volunteer venues desperately required do-overs in their failed lives. By contrast, students in the substitute venues required help navigating outside of the artificial school environment where radical political correctness threatens reaching the saturation point. Later, I came to realize that the character famine extended well beyond education and into the whole of society. I became convinced we needed a national character revival; not just to staunch what was sweeping us downstream or to refill what had leached away or to give a shot of immunity or pain relief from the harm suffered but, more critically, to rebuild our crumbling foundations. Pursuing this goal from a biblical perspective was the only sound basis with which to go forward. Nothing else has proven able to withstand the constant winds of change and the unpredictable storms of life.

I began by drawing on three transformational true stories (included herein) that I recalled from my past. I utilized these as a collective resource to reward, inspire, and guide the students, thus gainfully filling any remaining time in the lesson schedules. I immediately observed a heightened level of interest. No matter the age, background, or gender of the students, they all recognizably enjoyed hearing a meaningful story about positive human character – better still when the story was true, included a hero, and had ready application. There seemed to be no measurable exceptions within the student bodies, leading me to speculate that I had found something approaching universal acceptance. These positive reactions weren't due to the power of my undistinguished voice or modest physical presence, but rather resulted from the combination of empathy, inspiration, and eternal truth in which good stories are centered. I found an unattributed quote that encapsulated the noted responses as, "If you give a man a fact, he will learn; if you give him a truth, he will believe; if you give him a story, it will live in his heart forever." If, after gaining their attention, I was also able to capture their soul, then I could impart some indelible, takeaway guidance, what I call sticky-points.

I also became more cognizant of a personal heritage that I hadn't previously realized in full. It was that the people I admired most, and who had the greatest influence on me, were prominent storytellers. Their ability to create and to share a worthy story contributed substantially to each one becoming an individual of popular renown and monumental worldwide influence. The effect of the stories I shared was bi-directional, moving first the hearers and then, after witnessing the effect, the teller. I share my stories by heart, which is ordinarily taken to mean from memory, and while this is true for my telling, it's also intended to mean that my heart is invested in the stories as well. I began to actively seek the seed ideas from which to develop additional stories. Once I had secured an adequate number of character stories, I integrated them into every subject, audience, course, and venue, including two proprietary courses I'd developed via opportunities presented en route.

The ensuing trial-and-error phase of mixing storytelling into instructional material revealed two negative and two positive ubiquitous truths about human nature and how it's reflected in modern education. The negative ones were that far too many people settle on unwholesome role models as their personal heroes while they simultaneously lack discriminating mentors; and that positive character – especially that of a heroic nature – is on the decline and rarely formally practiced, taught, or upheld as a behavioral model. The positive truths were that people of all ages love true stories – even more if they're also entertaining; and that well-constructed stories have the power to guide and motivate where other approaches fail or are only moderately successful or enduring. After completing the manuscript for this book, I keyed two phases into the Google search engine: "stories that can change the world" and "stories that change lives." I was pleasantly surprised by the numerous readily available resources associated with both iterations.

I've humorously compared my initial story creating and telling circumstances and objectives with that of Scheherazade's in One Thousand and One Nights. She is the legendary fictional woman who told stories nightly to the king of Persia in order to retain her courtly position and prolong her life for one more day. More seriously, I related my sharing to the theme of heroicstories.org, which is "Restoring faith in humanity...one story at a time." It's said that Abraham Lincoln very seldom created his stories. That assumption is based on his quotation: "You speak of Lincoln stories. I don't think that is a correct phrase. I don't make the stories mine by telling them. I'm only a retail dealer." I confess that mine don't really belong to me either; I feel that they are bigger than me and that I'm only borrowing them in order to pass them along for others to enjoy and share.

The stories within seek to reveal uncommon character that was tested by challenging circumstances and difficult choices. Specifically, these are stories of individuals who were drawn into pivotal situations within their respective cultures, times, and geographies. I've emphasized the following elements about their lives: personal integrity, universally valued criteria, the influences and interdependencies of change and choice, a broad historical timeframe, and simple – yet inspiring – insights into ordinary, mostly unknown men and women. People whose deeds are worthy of our attention and emulation because they have left us a legacy of unselfishness, not one of domination, self-aggrandizement, or capitulation.

My primary mission was to document timeless character stories so their inherent instructional and inspirational values are easily accessible to the reader. You will meet herein founders, teachers, rescuers, altruists, missionaries, attorneys, soldiers, scientists, writers, statesmen, martyrs, immigrants, businessmen, survivors, pioneers, and more – all heroes who have sacrificially earned the right to subtly counsel future generations on the nature of uncommon character. Some are still living, others have long passed; but all have left lasting, positive impressions on the world. Overall, I've taken an informal everyman approach in my selection of the role models and I've presented them in a casual story format in such a way as to emphasize outstanding character traits.

My protagonists are people of decisive action – not philosophers, intellectuals, or academics. That's not to say these select individuals aren't capable of great intuition and thought, because they have convincingly demonstrated that they most certainly were so endowed. They have been, perhaps above all, morally tested with many having simultaneously undergone physical travails. I've gained meaningful personal insights from knowing the protagonists and their life stories; by forwarding them in a book, others may profit from similar introductions. The reader will find each to be a worthy hero of uncommon character. This gripping collection of true stories (and a few parables) regales their legacies of sound judgment and practical wisdom so that their stories have the potential to be of substantive benefit to present and future generations both personally and corporately. This process may be summarized as: Inspiration begets inspiration.

I've not fully developed the good character I unceasingly hope to acquire – the kind displayed by these men and women. Within a process I call forever becoming, I'm continually learning from them and from others like them. During the time that I was contemplating a career closure timeframe with a follow-up strategy for the last quarter of my life, I internalized the words finish well. It was my hope then that the latter days would be better than the former days, and that the best was yet to come. The reader will come to note that I've distributed the admonition to finish well throughout the book and that it always appears in bold font for thematic emphasis. Having lived this book (i.e. teaching it for a decade and knowing some of the protagonists) before writing it, there's unavoidably a lot of me within the stories and supporting materials. Because these stories have been an intimate part of my life for a long time, please do not expect total objectivity as I cannot and do not want to divorce myself completely from them.

I wrote the initial portion of Uncommon Character in Pacific Grove, California where John Steinbeck lived and wrote for an extended season. It was one of the most productive of the many escape locations I inhabited thereafter while working on the manuscript. The book was completed in Ernest Hemingway's adopted hometown of Petoskey, Michigan. In Steinbeck's esteemed novella Cannery Row – written in and about Pacific Grove – he states, "And perhaps that might be the way to write this book – to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves." My book is precisely the product proposed by Steinbeck because the stories herein flow naturally out of my experiences, especially those while teaching. They are the outcome of my diligently gleaning the stories over a long period and then sharing them orally for ten years. Beyond rough outline form, this marks the first time they've been fully committed to writing, permitted to crawl in one by one, and then combine to form a book. I have tried to remain reasonably out of their way.

I believe Uncommon Character is unlike any other book with respect to its dual focus on the overlooked value of storytelling and the timely advocacy on behalf of selfless character. Both are presented through the lives of unfamiliar heroes in little-known situations; and both are also presented in a manner that highlights the sound Christian elements associated with each – not inventing them, but acknowledging them because the world too often attempts to ignore, diminish, or obfuscate them. The book was initially released as A Storyteller's Anthology but, after some market experience, I retitled it to place the primary emphasis on the character trait and the secondary on the story format. Most of the heroes I chose are – or were when initially discovered (many years before I transcribed them from spoken to written) – by design relatively obscure, several that were previously little known have since become well recognized. All continue to offer deep, untapped resources related to their rich lives; thereby convincing me that there's need, unmet demand, and opportunity for what this book is inherently able to contribute. My discoveries personally felt akin to that of Liz Chambers' in her discovery of Irena Sendler, as outlined in the opening story. When a protagonist was well-known, such as Presidents Reagan and Washington, I endeavored to reveal unfamiliar aspects from the developmental days of their youth.

The selected protagonists may be flawed socially, physically, or even mentally; all the more reason for us to relate to them and to cheer their ultimate triumphs. Despite handicaps of any nature, they've all displayed admirable and exemplary responses when faced with difficult circumstances and entrenched opposition. Most moved contrary to the drifting ideology of the public at large, choosing instead to hold fast to unchanging values. This juncture of internal strength and moral conviction, when coupled with compatible actions and results, is a virtue designated herein as uncommon character. The following quote from Billy Graham gives clarity to our understanding of this virtue: "When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."

Supporting the book's dual primary themes of character and story are three recurring secondary themes: choice, heroism, and change. These abound throughout the short stories gathered within this anthology because they are both universal and potentially redeeming in nature. It is a privilege to introduce you to Uncommon Character as I know you'll find this a most compelling read and that it will touch your life in many positive and enduring ways. It was written to be cherished, re-read, and shared over a lifetime. My wife and I are hopeful that future generations of our families will continually find this volume and come to treasure it as much as we have. As you read and recite the stories I've prepared, their past becomes part of your present, and just maybe some will slip into your future as well.
Irena Sendler

Separated by Good or Evil

For I will contend with him who contends with you... (Isaiah 49:25)

History teacher Norm Conard had a well-earned reputation for extracting excellence from students in his Creative Social Studies class. At the start of the 1999–2000 school session in south-central Kansas's small Uniontown Senior High, he challenged his incoming class to select an optional, long-term research project in observance of National History Day. Projects from his classroom had placed forty times in previous NHD competitions. At his urging, fifteen-year-old sophomore Elizabeth ("Liz") Chambers was the first student to accept the volitional assignment. She was a troubled and somewhat rebellious teen, abandoned as a five-year-old child by her parents. This project became the start of her scholastic and social redemption. Mr. Conard said he hoped it would help her to understand the difference one person can make and that he knew she could become one of those with such a unique life mission.

Liz's search for a project theme led her to a small magazine clipping printed six years earlier in U.S. News & World Report and stored in a classroom file. The article briefly mentioned, among a list of many people, an unknown Polish woman named Irena Sendlerowa, her maiden name Anglicized later as Sendler (married name was Zgrzembski). As Liz investigated further, it soon became apparent that buried within the list was the seed of a grand story about a Holocaust rescuer, one lost and untold for more than half a century.

One number associated with Irena in the article seemed too incredible to be true. Liz and Mr. Conard assumed it was a typo, so the first call Liz made was to the source agency in New York to confirm the data. Without hesitation, Liz was informed that it wasn't a typo; the number was accurate. If so, then how could the world not know about the related accomplishments? How could Irena not be famous when her work matched or surpassed that of so many acknowledged rescuers such as the German Oskar Schindler, Dutch Johan van Hulst, Swedish Raoul Wallenberg, Japanese Chiune Sugihara, and British Nicholas Winton? Liz had the beginnings of a personal mission, the likes of which Mr. Conard encouraged her to pursue. She soon gained such affinity for the victims Irena had assisted that Liz's sleep was disturbed until she channeled her emotions deeper into the project.

Mr. Conard enlisted a bright freshman, Megan Steward, to help Liz; not long thereafter Sabrina Coons and a handful of other students also joined. They titled their work "The Irena Sendler Project." The most pleasant and surprising outcome of their research took place when the team sought to locate Irena's grave; it was only then they discovered she was alive and still living in her hometown of Warsaw, Poland. This was now more than dusty history; it became a living legacy. The students utilized their findings to create a play based on Irena's WWII exploits. They titled it Life in a Jar, a name inspired by the method Irena had used to conceal vital, confidential documents.

The study group's play was submitted to the Kansas History Day competition in May of 2000, and it won first place. The statewide win earned them a trip later that year to National History Day in Washington, D.C. They began performing their play in the local community with the admission revenues sent to Warsaw to assist Irena. Prior to the date of her death, there were two hundred and fifty student performances of the play; beginning in Kansas, moving through the United States, then to Canada, and finally to Poland and the rest of Europe. The play is still performed, with 60 percent of the earned revenue donated to the Irena Sendler Life in a Jar Foundation. The foundation promotes Irena's legacy and encourages the education community to teach and to research the unsung heroes of history. After Irena became familiar with the play, she remarked: "You have changed Poland, you have changed the United States, you have even changed the world [by bringing this story to light]. [Because of your work] Poland has seen great changes in Holocaust education, in the perception of life during that time, and you have provided a grand hero for Poland and for the world. I love you very, very much. Your performance and work are continuing the effort I started over fifty years ago; you are my dearly beloved girls."

Before graduating from high school, Liz's core team collected over four thousand pages of original, primary research on Irena's life and on the children that she worked with during the Holocaust and World War II; and more than a hundred colleges and universities had used their material for classroom instruction. National Public Radio, C-SPAN, and the major networks all pursued the dual-interest story of Liz's study team and Irena Sendler's rescue work. Both stories contain universal themes: the former about a young girl's inspiring work in Kansas at the start of the twenty-first century, and the latter about a young girl's inspiring work in Poland at mid-point in the twentieth century. Both girls enlisted and led a small, trusted team of other young ladies to assist with their epic tasks. After several years of media attention focused on the students' project, Irena's life was fully brought to the world's attention – just as it had long deserved to be.

Initially, there was only one obscure website linked to Irena, but by 2008, there were three hundred thousand. Inspired by and based on the students' research, author Ana Mieszkowska wrote a book about Irena in 2005 titled Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust. Since then, several children's books have been published about her life. In May 2008, Hallmark Company announced the production of a movie based on the book titled The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. The film premiered on national television in late April of the following year. Sometime thereafter, a documentary was also completed, titled Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers.

The Uniontown students – mature and well into their marriages, families, and careers – continued to promote Irena's story and to research the related details (Liz became a high school history teacher like her mentor). By the time of Irena's death, they'd completed six trips to Warsaw. On one of those visits, Irena wisely advised the students: "You cannot separate people by their race or religion. You can only separate people by their good or evil. The good always triumphs over the evil." Irena told them what she really wanted out of the larger story was for "the Jewish community to know there were resistance and spirit among the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto."

In 2007, when Irena was ninety-seven years old, the students' academic contributions were catalysts in her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. She came in second, narrowly losing to the author of a book and PowerPoint presentation titled An Inconvenient Truth, the veracity of which has since been overwhelmingly debunked. Conversely, the more information we continue to firmly establish about Irena's life and legacy, the brighter her truth shines. Truth does not change and it grows stronger in the light, whereas falsehoods can only exist in the dark.

Irena died on May 12, 2008, at the age of ninety-eight; it was, appropriately, the day of Liz's twenty-fifth birthday. The members of the project then began working with the Association of Children of the Holocaust in Warsaw to create a memorial statue in Irena's honor. It was unveiled on May 12, 2010, on Liz's twenty-seventh birthday and the second anniversary of Irena's death.

After the war, Holocaust survivors anxious to build new lives had no interest in permitting their thoughts to dwell on the painful past. Jewish attention was rightly focused on reestablishing families and careers, the new State of Israel, the coming Nazi trials, and the repressive threat of communist global expansion. Irena Sendler and her story were further lost to the world after the war when Russian-backed communism gained full control of Poland and forcefully united previously divided Poland, merging it into the USSR block (control of Polish geography had been halved respectively east to west between Russia and Germany by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on August 23rd, 1939). Communists undertook their forms of persecution against the surviving Jewish citizens and greatly mistrusted the patriotic Zegota, the non-Jewish underground resistance movement with which Irena was associated. The former Soviet Union has a well-deserved reputation for burying and/or revising any history not deemed supportive of their ideology or that exposed their infamous deeds. They replaced facts with lies. Irena's story, and her Christian faith, became one of the many victims of these factors.

It was several decades before any of the rescuers began to be generally acknowledged. The related attention was initiated by the research conducted at Yad Vashem (translation: "remember the names"), the State of Israel's official Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. It was they who had compiled the list that started Liz on her academic journey. Her detailed research revealed this forgotten hero and the story that follows about Irena's brave deeds during the Holocaust of World War II. Liz and her team rescued the rescuer.

What's in a name? More than may be readily anticipated. If you were a Polish citizen of Jewish descent, it meant everything at this time – love, liberty, and often life itself. The Nazi-led German army's occupation of Poland in 1939 was the longest, and very likely the most brutal, suffered by a non-Germanic country during the international conflict. The same is true regarding their mistreatment of the population, especially its Jews. The Nazis' confirmed objective was the entire elimination of Poland's native Slavic people: Jews, Gypsies, and handicapped first, thereafter the remainder. This madness included wiping out all vestiges of Polish national culture. Poland's Jewish population was the largest in Europe, and consequently, the Polish Jews suffered the greatest numerical loss of all subjugated countries.

Upon the foregoing foundation, I'm ready to reveal more of Liz's discovery: Irena was born February 15, 1910, in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. She was an attractive young maiden of twenty-nine when the German military machine subdued her homeland and enslaved or murdered its population. She was already both a capable medical nurse and an experienced social worker. Any citizen in need was potentially her client, and she extended no exclusions toward the Jews, even well after the Nazis prohibited assistance to them with the passage of their inhumane and intolerant Nuremberg decrees. Helping a Jew came at a substantial cost: All members of an offender's household risked the death sentence if just one member's pro-Jewish actions were revealed. Władysław Bartoszewski of the Polish Resistance said, "No work, not printing underground papers, transporting weapons, planning sabotage against the Germans; none of it was as dangerous as hiding a Jew. You have a ticking time bomb in your home. If they find out, they will kill you, your family, and the person you are hiding." The occupying Germans were not the only threat to those who helped. Much of the population was already, or now had additional incentive to become, prejudiced against the Jews – the country had a sustained history of violent pogroms.

Irena joined the Polish underground resistance movement Zegota, and became the head of their children's department, operating under her secret nom de guerre, Jolanta. Her initial pro-Jewish effort was to forge new identification papers for Jewish families in order to assist them in obtaining passports to leave the country, or to hide their true identities if they chose to remain in Poland. Three thousand families were helped in this manner. After a year, these avenues were no longer available because the Nazis forced the massive number of remaining Jews into ghettos that were filthier and more overcrowded than any city slums. The Warsaw Ghetto contained the greatest concentration of Jews in the world, and now four hundred thousand were crowded into an area of one and one-third square miles.

Irena immediately sought commissioning from the Germans to check for signs of typhus, a deadly bacteria-based disease the Nazis feared would spread beyond the ghetto. They were unconcerned about preserving the Jew's lives; they just didn't want the contagion to place them at risk. It was the Nazi's view that if a Pole like Irena died during the containment process, it was far better than risking a German life. Under the pretext of conducting regular inspections of the unsanitary conditions related to the frequent typhoid fever outbreaks, Irena voluntarily visited the ghetto at least once daily. On her visits, she brought in hidden food, medicines, and clothing as contraband gifts for the internees. Eventually, she enlisted a small team to assist her and help multiply her efforts. At only eight, Irena became all too familiar with typhus, when her physician-father died during an epidemic while caring for the infected Jewish populace of a village outside Warsaw. Now, regardless of her best efforts, she noted that five thousand internees were dying monthly from the disease and from starvation.

In August of 1942, Irena witnessed a large group of ghetto children being led out by armed Nazis. She was sickened, knowing their fate was likely death by Zyklon B poison gas. Irena reacted to the overwhelming number of deaths and murders by becoming righteously angry. She determined that she had to advance her rescue plans another dangerous step forward. Her focus became helping the Jewish children escape so there would be a Polish-Jewish posterity to outlive the immoral regime.

It was a very emotional and difficult task convincing parents to separate from their children and give them up to a Gentile, Catholic stranger. If her reasoned persuasions were successful in relieving babies, toddlers, and young children from their families, there remained the daunting task of finding sufficient non-Jewish people who were willing to take them into their homes and institutions. Many Polish citizens were pro-German collaborators who wouldn't hesitate notifying the Nazis in order to further secure their tenuous lives. Little did they realize that after the Jews, they would be next; Hitler's mad plan was the annihilation of the entire Polish Gentile population as well. For other native families, even when sympathetic, the risk was considered too great.

Continuing to smuggle supplies into the ghetto, Irena developed several processes for smuggling out the children. She employed any creative, secretive means she could reasonably conceive. The older children were less challenging because they could be led out through sewers and secret passageways. Babies were more difficult. She disguised them as packages; or placed them in suitcases, tool chests, and backpacks; or hid them in ambulances, wheelbarrows, rugs, furniture, trash barrels, and even coffins. Irena would bring her pet dog along because she'd trained it to bark incessantly whenever a uniformed Nazi was nearby. This created both an advance warning and a distraction if she was ever stopped for questioning. While her dog was barking loudly at them, the Nazis could not easily hear any sounds from the babies hidden in her package, vessel, or vehicle. As an additional safety measure, infants were sedated so as to prevent them from excessively crying or thrashing about. Irena secretly spoke German, but she never let on; this tactic often proved advantageous during the smuggling operations.

All rescued Jewish children were given new identities and false documents and then placed with willing Polish families, orphanages, and the convents, schools, or rectories of Catholic priests and nuns. Some of the children were moved to rural farms and others were sent to Israel or to neighboring countries. There developed a kind of underground railway facilitated by the organized resistance movement. Using thin cigarette papers, Irena created written documentation of the children's real family names, which were cross-referenced with their false ones and with their adoptive family identities and locations. She then hid the papers in glass jars with tight lids and buried them under an apple tree – a tree so boldly near a Gestapo facility that it helped defray suspicion and discovery. This effort was risky but necessary in order to preserve the original identities and locations, as well as the new identities and locations. Irena assured the parents and older children that, when the war was over, the borrowed children would be returned to their rightful families if at all possible. The lists were to be the means of fulfilling this promise.

Finally in 1943, Irena was reported by a malicious informer. Without warning or trial, she was arrested by the Gestapo, locked in the notorious Pawiak prison, severely tortured, and eventually sentenced to death. Some years later, a prayer card was found in her former jail cell. On it was written: "Jesus, I trust in you." The card was promptly returned to her, and Irena kept it until 1979 when she gifted it to her beloved Polish Pope, John Paul II (known as The Great, in part for his vigorous opposition of the Nazis and later of the Communists), during a visit to his Vatican residence in Rome, Italy. While in jail, there were repeated efforts by the Gestapo to force Irena to reveal the names and locations of the hidden children. She was beaten and had both arms and legs broken. Even under this extreme torture, she never disclosed any information about the children's new identities and didn't even confirm the existence of the glass jars.

Her friends in the Zegota underground movement were able to save Irena's life moments before her scheduled execution. The German guards assigned to shoot her were approached, bribed, and told to report her death. Thereafter, Irena's name was listed on the public bulletin boards among those executed. For the remainder of the war, she lived anonymously in hiding. Once her wounds healed (although the restoration was never total as she always retained some permanent damage), Irena – with ongoing assistance from the underground – continued ministering to the Jewish children whom she had saved from the ghetto. Further direct work was no longer possible for her there, and soon the ghetto was destroyed after a valiant but unsuccessful Jewish uprising.

Engaged in this manner for five years, before and after her capture, Irena was able, with the help of her team of young girls, to save and sustain more than twenty-five hundred children by the close of the war in 1945. This was in addition to the three thousand family members assisted by the passport project. Immediately following the war's end, she unearthed the glass jars and attempted to return the children, as promised, to their families. Sadly, all of the parents and most of the older siblings not rescued had been murdered at the insidious Treblinka death camp, located nearby. The good news was that through the information contained in the jars, the children – who nearly all survived the war – were easily located. Although they were now orphans, the children learned their true family identities and related Jewish heritage.

An enduring Talmudic proverb says, "Whoever saves a single soul, it is as if he had saved the whole world." Irena's life fulfilled that saying beyond expectation. Because of her work as a rescuer, she has been awarded the status of "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.

Many of the children Irena saved are still living as of the publication of this edition. One lady, who was only six months old when Irena rescued her, remarkably became Irena's caregiver during her final years. Irena died in Warsaw, the same city where she was born and where she fearlessly worked throughout the Holocaust. Despite all Irena had done, this is what the humble hero said about herself: "I still hear the cries of the babies and their mothers. ...I am not a hero, I could have done more; this regret will follow me to my death." Two generations later, the twenty-five hundred living testimonies (or easily ten thousand-plus, with their children and grandchildren) of her glass jar initiative say otherwise. In modern Poland, she is referred to as the Angel of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jesus – the one Irena unashamedly served – commanded: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37). Her life is an elegant example of what it means to truly "love your neighbor" and to be "your brother's keeper" (Genesis 4:9). Jesus illustrated these precepts for all in the parable of the good Samaritan. Irena knew the parable and accepted what it meant at risk to her own life. Irena said her parents instilled in her a caring principle so strong that if she were to see someone drowning, she was to attempt saving them even if she didn't know how to swim. She said, "Every child saved with my help is the justification for my existence on earth and not a title to glory." Standing before God, Irena will be able to respond without guilt if asked the questions God asked Cain: Where is...your brother? What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground (Genesis 4:10).

More than half a century, Irena's engaging story was lost to several generations. Had it not been for Liz's diligent efforts, its inspiration and appreciation may have remained hidden from humanity's attention forever. Irena's legend is growing exponentially with her reputation readily displayed in films, books, statues, and websites. It's appropriate to remember the contributions of Mr. Conard, Liz, and her friends which started the process in motion. The girls wanted to make a difference with their project and help to repair the world. They've met both objectives, and as of my writing, they're still on the job. Even though Irena has been gone for some time, her apple tree lived on as a growing and silent witness to the many lives delivered from unspeakable horrors.

...and I will save your children. (Isaiah 49:25)
Joseph Carey Merrick

Life as an Animal

Who am I, O Lord God... (1 Chronicle 17:16)

The measurement around my head is thirty-six inches, there is a large substance of flesh at the back, the other part in a manner of speaking is like hills and valleys, all lumped together, while my face is such a sight that no one could describe it. My right hand is almost the size and shape of an elephant's foreleg, measuring twelve inches just around the wrist and five inches around my fingers; the other hand and arm is no larger than that of a girl ten years of age, although it is well proportioned. My feet and legs are covered with thick lumpy, wrinkled, skin, also my body is like that of an elephant, and almost the same color; in fact, no one could believe until they saw it, that such a thing could even exist.

The above, detailed self-description was provided by a young man in his teens. It was transcribed directly from his brief two-page autobiography. Since the age of five, people called him Elephant Boy; later in life Elephant Man. Prior to having it surgically removed, he had a trunk-like flap of skin between his mouth and nose that was close to six inches long; hence, more support for the nasty nickname. In the mid-nineteenth century, medical operations were rare and performed without the aid of antiseptics and anesthesia. Undergoing an operation was more likely to harm or kill through infection rather than to benefit the patient. This was the teen's only surgery; fortunately, it was a success.

He was born in 1860 in London, England; in America, our Civil War was just beginning. His given name was Joseph Carey Merrick. Though he was thought to be retarded because no one could understand his speech due to his facial deformities, he had a fine mind. His speech was unintelligible prior to the operation; it improved modestly, but sufficiently, afterward. Even though people ran away from him or drove him out believing him to be a dangerous monster, he possessed a beautiful, quiet spirit. If beauty is only skin deep, then so is ugly.

Joseph had a congenital disorder that caused tumors to form asymmetrically throughout his body, thus affecting his growth and development both externally and internally. His condition was accompanied by severe pain and disfigurement, a foul odor, and many physical handicaps with accompanying limitations on his mobility and dexterity. Every year, the disease steadily became worse due to its incessant and undefined deterioration. It ensured that Joseph's troubled life would also be unnaturally short. These attributes explain why his autobiography was a brief two pages, while most run typically in the hundreds. For Joseph to write anything with his deformed hand was difficult and painful, let alone to do so legibly and at length. Unable to communicate easily by speech or by writing, Joseph was left isolated and misunderstood.

What he suffered from was a rare disease since identified as Proteus syndrome (also known as Wiedemann's). It's named after the Greek god who could change his shape in order to escape from his enemies). Joseph's body was changing shape from what we commonly consider human-like to something shapeless, oversized, and somewhat reminiscent of an elephant. As sometimes suggested, Joseph did not have elephantiasis (aka lymphatic filariasis) and he did not have neurofibromatosis – two somewhat similar disfiguring diseases. Proteus syndrome is a very rare disease, and Joseph likely had the most severe recorded case. No unaffiliated reader need fear catching it as it is congenital; you must be born with it. It's somewhat cancer-like in that it's characterized by the out-of-control, abnormal growth of bones, skin, muscles, blood vessels, and other tissues. Some who are afflicted have associated mental disorders; this was not so with Joseph.

No one in England, and in fact no one in the world – including medical experts – understood Proteus syndrome during his lifetime. Joseph's case was widely thought to be the result of an incident that occurred during his mother's pregnancy when the circus came to London. Today, we may occasionally have the opportunity to see a circus, but in a world full of Disneylands, water and theme parks, and Universal Studios, the interest level in circuses is modest. In Joseph's world, however, circus excitement ran fever-high, and the arrival parade was greatly anticipated.

No element of the parade was more appreciated than its final attraction, the elephants. As the crowd pushed to the front for a better view, Joseph's pregnant mother was knocked to the ground in front of a bull elephant. She was nearly crushed but survived unharmed. However, it was thought that her fear of the elephant entered the womb and caused her baby to take on elephant-like characteristics. Joseph accepted this as the cause. We know today that this was obviously not true, but it was the acknowledged attribution at that time; seemly confirmed as Joseph acquired an elephant-like appearance, ever more so with the passing of time.

During the first six years of his life, he was cared for by his loving mother despite his disabilities and abnormal appearance. After she passed away, while he was still at a tender age, Joseph was left in the not-as-good care of his father. For reasons unknown to us, his father acquiesced to demands from his stepmother to force Joseph from the family home and move him into a workhouse. These were semi-public/semi-private institutions (often of a penal nature) where a person was coerced, without any alternative, to perform difficult manual labor from sunup till sundown, six days a week. The inmates went without compensation in terms of fiscal payment, but they did receive inelegant bed and board (food). These workhouses no longer exist today, as they have been outlawed in our more enlightened culture.

For a season, Joseph's assignment was as a door-to-door street peddler, but he had no physical appeal, was challenged to exhaustion by the difficulty of simply walking, and was nearly impossible to understand in verbal communication. In a short time, Joseph was driven from the workhouse and onto the street. This was not because he wasn't a diligent worker, but because his deteriorating physical condition didn't permit him to compete with the other more able-bodied residents. On the harsh, dirty, overcrowded, and unforgiving streets of Victorian London, he was at the mercy of the uneducated, fearful masses, and he quickly found they offered no mercy. He was ridiculed, beaten, denied, harassed, and run out of neighborhood after neighborhood. He tried to disguise himself by wearing a huge, shapeless, bag-like, dark cloak with a smaller, separate hood that was cut with a few holes for breathing, hearing, and seeing. The covering failed to protect him, however, and he was still treated as less than human, and not even as well as most dogs.

The only alternative remaining was for him to join a freak show. This was a traveling exposition filled with a collection of strange plants, animals, and people. An entrepreneurial with low morals would accumulate his freaks for display and charge the public an admission price to view them. Freak shows were commonplace in Victorian England, but they have since gone the way of the workhouse. The taunting received in the show was as bad as it had been on the streets, but at least Joseph again had some modest form of bed and board as compensation.

After some years of this, and with Joseph into his mid to late teens, he finally caught his first real break in life since the death of his mother. A distinguished physician from the renowned London Hospital, Dr. Frederick Treves, attended Joseph's performance and quickly gained a dual interest in him. The first was as a unique medical specimen: What's wrong? What condition does he have? What caused it? How can we cure and prevent this? The second interest was that of one human for another, for one who was obviously adrift and victimized by an unsympathetic urban society.

Dr. Treves used his influence and position to acquire two adjoining rooms in the basement of London Hospital, where he planned to house Joseph on a permanent basis. Joseph was at last off the streets and out of the cruel reach of the public. Since the loss of his mother, he'd never enjoyed this level of security or comfort. At first, the maintenance staff and nurses held the commonly accepted view that he was retarded, contagious, or dangerous. However, because Joseph was not going anywhere and could no longer be driven away, they gradually began to accept him and to correct their initial misconceptions. With more regular exposure and after his facial operation, they were also able to better understand Joseph's less-mumbled speech.

What they eventually discovered was that under the rough exterior was a pleasant and engaging personality. Joseph had a good heart and mind. This was primarily the result of a gift his mother had given him during their short time together. His mother had read the Bible to Joseph and encouraged him to memorize many of its verses. Joseph was amenable to this and began a lifetime habit of reading and memorizing Scriptures. He had internalized the Word, and it yielded and preserved good fruit in his spirit, helping him to accept his harsh lot and to absolve his persecutors. Through it all, he had retained goodwill and avoided holding malice.

People began to enjoy visiting Joseph in his small apartment. First, it was just the hospital staff; but eventually, a broader visitation developed. It became a trendy activity throughout London society to call on Joseph. Actors, writers, artists, and politicians became regulars on his schedule. In time, Edward VII, the future king of Great Britain, was a part of his inner circle. Joseph even developed sufficient proficiency in a hobby. Using paper, light pieces of wood, and cardboard, he constructed small architectural models, such as a church. Joseph would frequently give these as gifts to those who visited him, and it became coveted in high society to acquire one of Joseph's models as a souvenir gift of the visit or as a token of his friendship.

Joseph died suddenly during the Easter season of his twenty-eighth year. He wanted to attend the worship service held in the hospital chapel; but after having done so, he returned to his apartment exhausted from the effort. He informed the nurse in attendance that he wished to take a nap. He added, however, that he intended to sleep as everyone else does. By this, Joseph meant that he planned to lie down in a bed on his back. His usual position was sitting up propped against a wall or wedged into a corner. During his nap, the weight of his great head snapped his fragile neck and Joseph passed on in his sleep.

By his manner of life, Joseph has left us a legacy of enormous value. During his time in London Hospital, he completed his written autobiography and permitted himself to be photographed. Both the autobiography and the photographs survive to instruct us further, as well as to enhance our memory of his unusual life. Joseph did not offer these two permanent artifacts so that we might gawk or snicker; he already had more of that than anyone else during his lifetime. I believe he bequeathed these to us as substantive reminders of what, and how much, he overcame. Joseph was a true victim of a fallen earth and an unregenerate population, but he never adopted a victimized perspective. He sought to be, and was, an overcomer. He had an exceptional number of reasons to become bitter, but he chose to become better instead. This does not happen absent a conscious determination to do so.

It's very unlikely that anyone reading this story has experienced a combination of handicaps and persecution remotely approaching the level of Joseph's. Therefore, by comparison, we have no standing to claim victim status. We may look in the mirror and be dissatisfied with the color or texture of our hair, the shade of our skin, the set of our teeth, the size of our feet, the shape of our nose or ears, or the weight and height of our body. Joseph's legacy – the facts of his life, his autobiography, and the photos – serves to remind us to get over it.

Now, those are obviously my words and not Joseph's. In his lifetime, Joseph's was not a story of heroism; he was as human in every way as we are, while clearly not endowed with as many physical proficiencies. Nevertheless, he made friends at every level, developed a skill, forgave his numerous tormentors, and refused to feel sorry for himself.

Some of our dissatisfactions with self and with our lot in life are based on real circumstances, and some are false and simply perceived to be real. The perceived must be sorted out and discarded. The real will either fall into the changeable or the unchangeable classification. If it's in the latter, we must strive to accept it. If it's in the former, then we have the alternative to strive instead to remove, exchange, or modify it. All of us have a unique purpose in life; and all of us are gifted, just gifted differently. It's not an argument about whether it's fair or unfair to have been given one, five, or ten talents; it's about what we have done with our talents. It's about how well we have invested those we have been given. If one holds on to the outlook that their life is unfair, then that's really holding an offense against God.

Whether our dissatisfactions are real or perceived, changeable or unchangeable, they all originated from the same single source, comparison. Anytime we compare ourselves with another, we will either feel inferior (not as good as) and thus envious, or superior (better than) and thus prideful. Both are losing responses. The winning response is to remove acts of comparison from our lives and replace them with patience (the hope that improvements will come) and contentment (accepting our present circumstances). The apostle Paul once said that when comparing one to another, we are found to be fools.

Learn from Joseph, take a lesson from him in being an overcomer. Life shouldn't be lived as a victim, no matter what challenges are faced. It's not what's on the outside that counts; it's what's on the inside that counts – what's in our head and heart. Put in the good stuff, and take out or leave out the bad. Joseph did not live his life as a victim, and neither should we as we follow the path he walked.

Every examination of Joseph's life – and there are many – has concluded that he was a humble, God-fearing man who knew and believed the Scriptures. He must have had his view fixed on something greater than and beyond his present situation. That something enabled Joseph to love God, to love others, and to love himself despite rejection and difficulties beyond anything that we will personally experience. All men in totality – body, mind, and spirit – are made in the image of God. Joseph, especially, reflected God's nature. Joseph is believed to have conceived the following poetic and reflective lines: "Tis true, my form is something odd but blaming me, is blaming God. Could I create myself anew I would not fail in pleasing you." In addition to his autobiography and photographs, Joseph left us with the quote above, which seems to summarize the nature of his unusual life. The borrowed lines are from the poem "False Greatness" by Isaac Watts. It is often said that Joseph ended his correspondence by quoting these lines; others say they were used as advertising in his freak-show pamphlet. Both uses may be accurate. Joseph was fond of them and was known to quote them often.

...that You have brought me this far? (1 Chronicles 17:16)
Arland D. Williams Jr.

Dying to Self

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed... (Psalm 27:13)

Two bridges stand today as monuments to this story. One is located in Mattoon, Illinois, at the T-intersection formed where Lakeland Boulevard dead-ends into Charleston Avenue. It's visually insubstantial, and can barely be described as a bridge. It is more like a viaduct over a broad excavation – essentially a large, open ditch. The primary purpose of this low bridge is to carry east and west-bound vehicle traffic over the north and south-bound rail tracks beneath it. Early in Mattoon's history, the city fathers demonstrated significant foresight in their providing a route below the urban grade which prevented ensnarling the slowly increasing volume of vehicle traffic with the slowly diminishing volume of rail traffic, thus preventing delay and risk to either transportation method. The wisdom of this design and subsequent investment is commendable and not to be taken lightly.

By comparison, a similarly sized city a hundred miles from Mattoon failed to take such action, and today suffers sixty-five trains per day intersecting catty-corner and snake-like across the city, while completely severing and shutting down all urban activity including emergency vehicles. Nonetheless, in contrast to its vital role, the Mattoon Bridge is not very imposing, rising to a maximum height of only a few feet and able to be crossed with barely a notice.

The other bridge could not be more different from the first. It crosses the mighty Potomac River at a wide portion not far from where its flow passes the stately Mount Vernon Plantation; and then, downstream, pours its considerable waters into the Atlantic Ocean. The bridge's primary purpose is to carry high volumes of surface traffic between Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia, while also doubling as the local terminus/origin of I-395. It has, over the years, grown into a series of multilane, bi-directional bridges of varying architectural styles and purposes, with some carrying rail and others vehicle transportation. This set of bridges was collectively known by the nondescript name Fourteenth Street Bridge(s). Regardless of the insignificant name, there is no way a bystander would fail to notice them. Pedestrians are drawn to the nearby riverside parks, inclined to relax while idly observing the frenzied activities and attractive designs on this network of bridges – I know this first-hand, having often done so.

On January 13, 1982, at approximately 4:20 p.m., the status of these two very different bridges began developing something in common, eventually becoming linked immemorially. Beginning around noon, the nation's capital experienced an unusually severe midwinter storm, an all-out blizzard. In response, the area's manifold federal offices closed early. Before the sun set, the day would record storm-related accidents that shut down or gridlocked the entire metro area's subway, highway/road, and air traffic systems at the cost of many lives. It was to be a day of tragedy as well as a day of related magnanimity.

On the west bank of the Potomac River, less than one mile south of the bridge and tucked tight against the shoreline, is Ronald Reagan National Airport (at that time, Washington National Airport). It was here, in close proximity to the nation's capital, that Air Florida prepared a Boeing 737 for depart for its intended destination in sunny Tampa, Florida via Flight 90. The passengers boarded on time, but the plane underwent extended delays on the runway as periodic de-icing was required to offset the slushy accumulations that occurred while awaiting the hoped-for break in the nasty weather – a change that never came. After some considerable time and for an uncertain reason, the plane was given departure clearance. Days later, the air transportation authority realized that several critical standard safety procedures had been ignored or misapplied.

The 737 labored low and westward about a mile; then failed to lift sufficiently in order to clear the Fourteenth Street Bridge. The crash resulted in the death of four motorists after seven vehicles were damaged along with significant portions of the bridge. The Boeing landed in the river on the far side of the bridge, broke through the thick surface ice, and quickly sank (all but the tail section) beneath the cold waters. Only six of the seventy-nine occupants escaped the submerged and mangled wreckage, struggled to the surface gasping for air, and then clung helplessly in the oily water to the mangled tailpiece.

Rescue attempts from the water were not possible as the river was solidly frozen, and the only capable icebreaker was already engaged in a rescue downriver. Attempts at rescue from the bridge were not possible either as they were compromised by the concurrent vehicle-related injuries and the structural damage. Professional emergency teams were blocked from arriving due to the snarled traffic backups. Rescue attempts from the shore using ladders and makeshift ropes were admirably attempted, but proved wholly inadequate even as those assisting struggled for balance in the two feet of fresh snow. All potential air support was suppressed by the blinding weather, the same conditions that had already downed the 737.

The six survivors were in grave danger of perishing in clear view of the large host of assembled bystanders. Their bodies had all been injured to some extent during the crash, and two were nearly blind after being exposed to jet fuel floating on the surface. Their most immediate threat, however, was hypothermia. This condition takes hold in minutes, with death resulting when a combination of basic life-sustaining metabolic processes shut-down due to a severe decrease in body temperature.

A small National Parks Department helicopter with a two-man crew risked departure from Anacostia Park and successfully traveled the three air miles to the bridge in near-zero visibility. Upon approaching the survivors, they released personal floatation devices with little success. Their attention was focused on removing the survivors from the water, but their efforts were limited by the capacity to proficiently rescue only one victim at a time. The extraction harness was a simple loop on the end of a suspended rope.

It was first offered to a man who handed it to nearby flight attendant Kelly Duncan, who was then partially lifted and partially dragged to the shore where emergency help had gathered to assist. The harness was offered a second time to the first man. He again handed it to another passenger, who was also successfully removed to the shore. On the third return, the chopper crew correctly estimated that their rescue window was drawing to a close, so they fashioned a second makeshift rope and attempted a two-person rescue. Again, the first man declined the opportunity and instead assisted two other survivors, a man and a woman who were each suffering a broken hand. Once both were reasonably secured within the two harnesses, the man in the harness grabbed hold of a third victim, another woman, in an attempt to drag her with him to safety. During this impromptu three-person rescue procedure, both of the women slipped back into the open water. The resulting complications consumed precious time and ultimately forced the helicopter-based rescuers to engage in exceptionally courageous separate actions.

From the shoreline, Lenny Skutnik shunned his heavy outer clothes, dove into the water, swam out, and pulled one of the totally exhausted women to shore. Simultaneously, paramedic Melvin Windsor stepped without protective restraints onto the chopper's landing skid in order to grab the other woman by her wet clothes and pull her from the water to the relative safety of one skid. This action, while ultimately successful, resulted in the skids becoming submerged. Such a condition held a potentially disastrous outcome for all aboard, had it not been skillfully avoided by pilot Donald Usher's quick, evasive maneuvers.

By the time the rescuers were able to execute another return, the first man was no longer visible. After a thorough search, it became certain that as he waited this last opportunity for extraction – the one that was undeniably his alone to accept – he'd suffered the lack of muscle coordination and sluggish thinking characteristic of advanced hypothermia. Consequently, when the remnant of the plane's tail finally broke through the ice and sank, he lacked the strength and willpower to push away and resist its dangerous undertow. He slipped beneath the surface unto sure death and into anonymity at the muddy bottom of the river. His sequence of selfless actions was soberly and admiringly recorded by the news reporters via their cameras and notepads, later they would also be commemorated in numerous publications, a full-length film, and a folk song. There was not a single eyewitness among the many gathered who failed to be deeply impressed by the dauntless scene played in real-time before them. Heroic action was in high fashion that hour.

The five rescued survivors were hospitalized and all lived. There was a disturbing catch, however; no one had been able to get a good look at the final survivor, the one who came to be known as the "sixth man in the water." Even those whom he saved were not able to identify him beyond a simple "I saw a man's hand pass the rope to me." The man's face was also blocked from the view of both those on the bridge and those on the shore, and daylight dimmed even as operations were still underway. The best description came from the pilot who confirmed it was a man and that he appeared to be "middle-aged and maybe balding."

Once attention shifted from the five survivors, there were seventy-four victims who needed to be located and identified. Of these, one was the unknown sixth man. Many wanted to know who he was, but there didn't seem to be any means to satisfy their curiosity. Several days later, a coroner made a conclusive discovery: Only one of the male victims had lungs completely filled with water. It was determined from this unique condition that he must have surfaced and then drowned. This body was associated with the role of the sixth man, later identified as that of Arland Dean Williams Jr., the mystery rescuer.

I was the last man in the water. I was the one who saved your sons and daughters. And when they finally sent down the last shred of rope, I saw my last hope wave good-bye.   
~ Commemorative song by Sarah Hickman

At the time of the crash, Arland was a forty-six-year-old federal bank examiner living in Florida but born and raised in Mattoon, Illinois. After undergoing a recent painful and unwanted divorce, he was once again dating his high school sweetheart, Peggy, who still lived in Mattoon. His objective was to finally marry her. His chosen profession had him diligently engaged in cleaning up the notorious savings and loan financial scandals of the early 1980s. This employment required frequent air shuttle between his home in Florida, his children and office in Atlanta, the District of Columbia, and his hometown in Illinois. To those who knew him well, he was just Chub; not because he was overweight – he was not – but because he seemed so average, naturally content, and even-natured.

The move into banking was a natural for him, as his father, Arland D. Sr., was a bank president in Mattoon. The most atypical part of his life was his decision to leverage his high school ROTC into four years of college at the famous Citadel, The Military College of Charleston, South Carolina and then proceed with the two mandatory years of army service, which he spent as a stateside officer during the era of the Vietnam War. The Citadel is well known for its all-encompassing educational severity, as demonstrated by less than a third of the candidates being able to complete the associated requirements. Ironically, and perhaps prophetically, the demands that concerned Arland most intensely were those related to swimming and water safety as he had a portentous lifelong fear of water.

Not all who heard the news of Arland's heroic self-sacrifice received it with joy. His father and his son and daughter have understandably expressed regrets that Arland traded his life for others. It's not that they aren't proud of him, they are very proud. It's because of the seemingly unfair trade, in that a stranger gained, while they suffered deep personal loss. All three relatives believe some of the tragedies later afflicting the family are traceable to Arland's unfinished roles as father and as son. Such is nearly always the double-edged destiny of heroic action, especially when it ends fatally as it so often does.

I learned his story firsthand during my tenure in Mattoon. After leaving the area, I shared it regularly. I always concluded the telling with the observation that in order for him to have been so altruistic during a time of grave, sudden, and unpredictable personal crisis, he must have already been well prepared to do so. By this I don't mean he had any inclination or premonition his life would take such a final dramatic turn on that particular winter's late afternoon; he did not. There is no way to prepare at the last moment for a crisis circumstance, especially an unanticipated one. What I intend to communicate is that the uncompromising, decent, thoughtful way he lived his life every day had unknowingly prepared him to take the high and unselfish route when an unexpected and unusual event suddenly engulfed him. Daily, he had to be doing right in the regular small things as well as in the occasional large things. He fed his heart and head healthy food on a regular day-in-and-day-out basis. If he had fed them with the garbage of cheating, cutting corners, and compromise, then his natural reaction would have been to continue looking out for himself first.

Great Britain's conservative champion, three-term, and only female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, stated this supposition as:

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. What we think, we become.

Prime Minister Thatcher concluded this quote by indicating that her father always said it and, further, that she thought that she had done just fine in regard to the progression from thoughts to destiny. Yes, she did and so did Arland.

It would not have been sin or selfishness for Arland to have accepted the rope at any opportunity between the first and the final time, and no one would have thought any less of him for such an act. But it was his nature to serve others before himself. If we could have observed his life, we could have predicted the altruistic outcome because every day we would have seen him putting in the good stuff. What you put in is what comes out in a crisis. No one can put in junk and expect any satisfactory outcome. An old computer industry expression sums it up simply as GIGO, or "garbage in, garbage out." In other words, if you input questionable or challengeable data, then expect questionable or challengeable results as the processed output.

After about four years of sharing my personal conjecture on why Arland acted heroically during the terror of uncontrollable moments of horror, someone from the audience approached me afterward and stated that he'd known Arland well. My first thought was that my summary point was about to be challenged. Rather, I received the following confirmation: "When I heard what had happened I thought, 'That's not surprising.' It was exactly how I remembered him. He was always putting others first and doing the right thing."

Scripture offers a number of succinct ways to communicate the same principle. Here are four illustrations: First, it's not what a man takes into his body that corrupts him, but what he takes into his heart. Next, we must be faithful in the little before we can be found faithful in the great. Third, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. And finally, anyone may give his life to save family or friends, but true love will do it for a stranger or even an enemy.

So the man in the water had his own natural powers. ...He could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature, too. The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do.   
~ Publication by Roger Rosenblatt

Returning to again reflect on those two bridges, the lesser one located in Mattoon was immediately dedicated in Arland's honor after the accident, becoming the first Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge. It's the little bridge with the big name and the bigger story. In having done so, Mattoon named its only available structure in memory of Arland; it was essentially all they had to work with at the time, as the small prairie city lacked anything of greater public significance. Two decades later, Mattoon built a new elementary school and named it after Arland as well.

Several years thereafter, President Reagan dedicated the previously damaged Arlington-to-D.C. Bridge in Arland's honor, making it the second Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge. All too often tax-funded public structures like bridges, buildings, highways, and monuments are named after or by some politician for personal aggrandizement or political party gain. Every so often, however, a name hints at an awesome story in which a person of integrity, like Arland, is rightfully remembered. His name is what both bridges have as a common bond. His final acts of generosity are what turned GIGO into "goodness in, goodness out."

...that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)
Rose Valland

The Art of War

And he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house... (1 Kings 14:26)

There was an obscure, middle-aged woman of plain appearance who quietly and nearly singlehandedly went about the risky business of saving Europe's art treasures from the destructive and greedy Nazi hordes who occupied her French homeland and so much more of continental Europe. Her salvage activities took place proactively throughout the aggressive German occupation, not reactively at its conclusion as in the more encompassing events depicted later in the acclaimed nonfiction books The Rape of Europa by Lynn Nicholas and The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel. I was inspired to tell her story before finding these books and well before the film productions that bear the same titles were released, but I delight in the subsequent exposure this deserving heroine is belatedly receiving. Her full Catholic name was Rose Antonia Maria Valland (1898–1980), and throughout the Second World War, she worked at a small art museum in Paris, France.

Rose's life is the valiant story of an unpaid, untitled volunteer who secretly recorded the shameless German art pilfering of Europe, and thereby helped locate and recover thousands of stolen art objects at the war's end. Her role was like that of a spy; its successful execution was of incalculable historical, cultural, and monetary value; while any failure or discovery would lead to torture, imprisonment, and death. Paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Monet, Pissarro, Degas, and many more masters passed literally under her caring oversight. Rose loved art so much she willingly volunteered at French art museums for almost a decade before the Nazi military subjugation of her homeland. Her greatest joy was to be near the precious masterpieces and to assist with their display and preservation. She performed these labors of love while patiently waiting for a more permanent, paid appointment with its concurrent authority, benefits, recognition, and monetary compensation.

France's greatest national fine arts institution is the Louvre, and it's located in the center of the capital city of Paris on the historic Seine River. In 1940, as German forces began their occupation of France, Nazi officials quickly exercised control over the Louvre proper, as well as its outlying Jeu de Paume museum; a modest gallery housing an exhibit of Impressionist works and located near the far more famous Tuileries Gardens and Place de la Concorde. The Nazis utilized the Jeu de Paume's unimposing facility to execute a pivotal step in their overall sinister plan to systematically plunder the European art treasures. It was used as a centralized collection, storage, and transport facility for the priceless art confiscated from museums and Jewish-owned private collections. Hitler prized the artwork, but his intentions went deeper than simple collection. He wanted to permanently erase the cultural heritage of the countries he conquered while simultaneously and selectively enhancing Germany's heritage with stolen glory.

Rose was a simple volunteer at the Jeu de Paume for several years prior to the war; but after the Nazis' occupation of Paris, she was asked by her former supervisor and mentor, Jacques Jaujard, to assume the added responsibility of overseeing the daily operations. Jaujard and nearly all other museum staff had been dismissed by the Gestapo so that their dubious actions could not be observed. From the Jeu de Paume, the stolen art was transported mostly by train to the homes of Hitler, Goering, and other Nazi officials, as well as to German museums and to massive underground and rural hiding places. The dual attraction for the Nazi selection of the Jeu de Paume was its atypically low profile in that the museum and its sole employee, Mademoiselle Valland, were both unpretentious.

The Germans viewed Rose as a bland, plain-looking and plain-dressing, methodical and minor functionary who was occupied with simple tasks like maintenance and inventory. Therefore, they assumed she would not concern herself with attempting to pierce the veil of secrecy over their deceitful operations. They saw her akin to an under-educated custodian, someone who would be sufficiently compliant to obediently perform whatever was demanded of her without any further curiosity or resistance. After all, she held no title or paid position. Among the many of Rose's attributes they didn't suspect, was that she had a fine grasp of both art history and the German language. Her memory for details was exceptional, as was her dedication to the culture of her homeland, a dedication sufficient enough to risk her life to preserve it. Rose convincingly assumed the role of the demure house mouse who quietly observed the stray alley cats.

Acting on an executive order from Adolf Hitler, the Nazis set up a repository in the Jeu de Paume for nearly twenty thousand looted art objects. Hitler, himself a failed painter who was turned down by the academy in Vienna as a young man, arrogantly sought to facilitate the seizure of nearly all European cultural treasures. He particularly coveted those pieces owned by the Jews whom he'd come to spitefully hate, mindlessly blaming them for Germany's failures. Hitler intended to supplement his private collection – he fancied himself the supreme arbiter in determining worthy art – and to transform his provincial and industrial hometown of Linz, Austria into the art capital of the world. To facilitate this, he established a unique organization that operated as the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) Special Task Force under the protection of the Gestapo. The Jeu de Paume soon became the ERR's European headquarters, even though Alfred Rosenberg (the third R in ERR) only rarely came to visit the museum (he was eventually tried at Nuremberg for his crimes, found guilty, and hanged.)

The occupiers first retained Rose for mundane tasks like dusting and watering the plants, eventually assigning her to more substantial ones like cataloging art objects. As she quietly worked, she eavesdropped on the Germans and made secret lists of the more substantial plundered treasures in a diary-like book hidden at her home (not unlike Irena Sendler's lists and jars in an associated story). As much as possible, she tracked the destinations and manifests relating to the art shipments. The Nazis – as was the German nature – had meticulously identified and recorded Europe's artwork even before the start of hostilities. Maintaining this approach after their occupation, the Nazis photographed every object they stole. Rose secretly borrowed their documentation in order to produce photographic or hand-written duplicates in her home at night before replacing the originals the morning.

With America's entry into the war, the Nazi overlords panicked and hastily accelerated their plundering. In turn, Rose applied herself more diligently, now listing nearly all of the thousands of pieces of art forwarded to and through the Jeu de Paume to secluded locales. The related details of the shipments were communicated to the French Resistance movement to which she belonged. By doing this, she was able to have the artwork immediately spared from accidental Allied bombing or sabotage, and thus hopefully available for recovery and restitution later. Often, Rose deliberately made dumb mistakes in an effort to both delay the processing and to maintain an air of calculated personal ineptitude, whenever it served as a profitable strategy.

On one occasion, in May of 1941, Rose the mouse observed Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering when he arrived to personally select some of the more priceless paintings for his massive private collection, a habit of many lesser Nazis officials as well even though principally in opposition to Hitler's larger metropolitan scheme. Second in command only to the Fuhrer, Goering was an extraordinarily vain, brutal, and greedy man. Goering's personal art collection contained seventeen thousand confiscated items, making it larger than the holdings of many public museums then and now.

During her long tenure, Rose occasionally lost the confidence of one of the many Nazis passing through her museum. Even when not under immediate suspicion, she was habitually followed by Gestapo agents. Four separate times someone specifically became skeptical and accused her of suspicious activity. Each time, she was dismissed, only to again find a way to ingratiate herself and be recalled for further duty. The Nazis were stretched thin and had few available proficient art technicians. The potential consequence during any of these moments of wariness could just as easily have been death, rather than dismissal. That Rose had no close family or friends worked in her favor, since there was little beyond firing or killing her that the Nazis were able to threaten or do.

The final months of the war were the riskiest for her. When the Germans realized they were losing the conflict, witnesses to their actions were regularly permanently eliminated without hesitation or regret. As an Allied victory became more apparent, Hitler despaired and issued his infamous Nero Decree, which instructed his architect, Albert Speer, to destroy German landmarks and the stolen European artwork. Speer disagreed with the order and mitigated its execution as much as he could, but many art treasures were still lost. There was an accompanying minor order also issued, but fortunately never enacted, which instructed that Rose be subjected to "deportation [to a death camp] and execution upon arrival."

The Nazis, meanwhile, had grown anxious to evacuate the museum and fully distribute its remaining precious cargo. Rose reacted by undertaking even more dramatic and desperate efforts in her desire to thwart the departing thefts. An art train bound for Germany, and hastily loaded with many boxcars crammed to capacity with paintings and other valuables, never made it out of Paris – thanks to Rose. She forwarded her accurate and detailed information to the French Resistance. The underground partisans then sabotaged the train sufficiently to stall it on the tracks. It remained immobile during the several days that were necessary for the Allies to liberate Paris and the surrounding countryside.

Rose described the noble effort to save the art train in her personal memoirs, Le Front de L'Art: Défense Des Collections Françaises 1939–1945. These inspired a 1964 movie based on the real events relating to the art train. The film is titled simply The Train. When the hero, played by Burt Lancaster, begins feeling desperate about the paltry available means for stopping the train and preventing it from a return to Germany, he asks in frustration, "What do they expect us to do, stop the train with our bare hands?" Factually, it was stopped by a young French lieutenant and six volunteers who used explosives to destroy the tracks. In a life-is-stranger-than-fiction circumstance, that lieutenant was Alexandre Rosenberg. Among the stolen items found on the train were paintings belonging to his father, Paul Rosenberg, a prominent Paris art dealer and of no known relation to the Rosenberg who headed the ERR. Not all of the art was evacuated by rail. In their last-moment rush, the Germans forced the French truckers' union to supply one-hundred and fifty men, and then coerced the few Jews not yet sent to the death camps to provide the labor; thus, French Jewry unwillingly helped in the confiscation of their artwork, furniture, valuables, and collectibles.

Surviving those final days under her Nazi overlords didn't place Rose above risk because most of the local Paris population, as well as some Allied personnel, viewed her as a German collaborator rather than as a heroic spy who risked her life for the benefit of future generations. As the war closed, collaborators frequently faced ostracism, property seizure, prison, beating, and death at the hands of fellow citizens. On the day of liberation, Rose had to protect the remaining contents of her museum even from her fellow Parisians, some of whom stormed the entrances, apparently intent on looting it while armed and threatening violence.

After the war, Rose continued to cooperate with her government, as well as with the Allies' American-based specialized artistic works division, titled the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) – also known more famously as The Monuments Men or The Venus Fixers. It remained necessary to sift through the bombed ruins of Europe for the many cherished art treasures hidden by the Nazi thieves and scattered throughout Germany and the other Reich nations in caves, mines, and castles (most notably the remote and awesome Neuschwanstein Castle of Bavaria's Mad King Ludwig). The Allies gradually uncovered one thousand repositories just in southern Germany. Further complicating the effective recovery and restitution work based on Rose's records was the practice of minor Nazi personnel often stealing the Fuhrer's confiscated artwork; in other words, some of the art was twice-stolen and secreted to unrecorded, personal hiding places.

Eventually after the war, Rose received the position she so long desired and had worked so selflessly to earn. She was appointed a conservator of the French Musées Nationaux, and in 1954 was named Chef du Service de protection des oeuvres d'art. Rose retired in 1968 but continued to work on matters of restitution with the French archives. Her valor and devout service resulted in many lifetime awards from her homeland, as well as from other countries. The French government honored her with the Légion d'honneur, Commandeur of the Order of Arts and Letters, and Médaille de la Résistance. She was recognized by the United States in 1948 and by the 1950's she was even celebrated by her former foe, Germany – then divided as communist east and free west with the western half formally called the Federal Republic of Germany. These were unusually high recognitions for a woman in a time before full emancipation and equal rights were granted to her sex.

Despite her career successes and governmental decorations, Rose remained mostly unknown in France during her lifetime and for some time thereafter. This was mostly due to the period in which she lived; it was a time dominated by men as well as a time when someone from a small, rural village without family name or wealth was unlikely to be granted much merit, favor, or attention. Rose was even disliked by the general French population, as they were prickly about her sharing the recovery information with the famous American task force. Many were also displeased with her continued dogged personal pursuit of the recovery. The general population wanted to put their unpleasant war memories far behind them. Many of them were riddled with guilt due to having collaborated with or supported the Nazis' puppet Vichy government (that of German-occupied France), or because they had committed anti-Semitic activities, or due to having stolen artworks in their possession.

Rose spent the remainder of her post-retirement life diligently recovering and preserving cultural properties. She died in 1980; almost no one attended her funeral. This was the collective consequence of ill-placed and undeserved envy, indifference, and hostility. It took until 2005 for her own museum, the Jeu de Paume – the one she selflessly served and saved – to mount a pathetically small memorial plaque on one wall. The American Monuments Men felt entirely different toward Rose, however, and they freely credited her contributions as so much greater than only preserving and restoring just one museum.

At the conclusion of her career, Rose had established an impressive résumé that came to include the following roles and positions: graduate student of École nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon, art historian, member of the Resistance, art recovery expert, captain in the French military, museum curator, published author, representation in two major Hollywood films (although one with a change of her name to Villand), and likely the most decorated woman in French history. Even if private and unheralded, hers was a very accomplished final act for one who had labored pro bono publico so long as a volunteer worker. In the end, it wasn't degrees from famous academies, rich or noble ancestries, enviable political connections, ownership of priceless masters, general popularity or name recognition, or well-placed bribes that brought Rose to the pinnacle of the French art world. It was simply the quiet demonstration of her commitment to art through tireless and unselfish deeds of dedication.

Rose's part of the story, as key as it was, has concluded. The larger story has not. It continues today with one-hundred thousand stolen World War II-era art objects still either missing or unknowingly in the wrong hands. Many of these are comparatively modest items, such as silverware, books, and precious stones or metals, but some are famous paintings and sculptures. On occasion, a well-known and valuable piece of art will be identified in a public or private collection or auction. When this occurs, formal negotiations are set in motion to attempt righting a seventy-year-old wrong. Even the best intentions to return misplaced art become exceptionally difficult, however, because so many hundreds of thousands of the original owners were murdered in the German death camps. One such a story about Gustav Klimt's stolen 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (called the Austrian Mona Lisa) is chronicled in Anne-Marie O'Connor's magnificent non-fiction book, The Lady in Gold (the related film is titled The Woman in Gold). On other occasions, art is still discovered in a cave, a castle, or a mine. An enormous cache, engineered by and for Hitler, was found hidden in a salt mine seven hundred feet underground in Altaussee, Austria. Sometimes paintings are found deliberately obscured beneath other framed paintings of lesser interest or in a long-neglected basement or attic.

Other masterpieces will, sadly, never be found because some of the art forwarded to the Paris-based central collecting point was deemed unworthy (many of the modern works) or degenerate (especially the Jewish works) by the Deutschland-uber-alles, fanatical and unsophisticated German minions. These pieces – mostly oil and water paintings – were first unceremoniously slashed, and then burned in the courtyard of Rose's museum while she secretly watched, frustrated by her inability to save them. As documented by Rose, some of the destroyed paintings included precious works by the modern masters Klee, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, and Miro. Other geographically dispersed storage points of looted art were spitefully ordered destroyed by the German high command when they sensed the war was lost; a few collections were ably saved, but others were destroyed. Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS, pathetically burned his substantial personal collection of stolen art prior to his arrest and subsequent suicide.

Most likely, Rose never fully suspected the potential magnificence of the humble, instrumental volunteer role she had readily accepted – a role seemingly no greater than that of a janitor, or worse, appearing to be a collaborator serving the wanton desires of a nefarious Nazi overlord. Rose willingly chose to suffer the life-threatening risks of her unofficial position as a spy for the Resistance; as well as the humiliation of her official position which was essentially that of a slave to a malevolent master, all while her good deeds were potentially mistaken for Nazi sycophancy by her countrymen. Setting these rejections and unpleasantries aside, Rose had to, and did, focus on the distant vision of the far greater and final good, which was the preservation of three millennia of European culture.

Life is full of little steps that, when consistently well-executed, lead slowly and unsuspectingly to great endings. Rose remained faithful in the small, early requirements of the opportunity set before her. This faithfulness led steadily and surely, just as scripturally promised, to a position where she could show her faithfulness in the larger opportunities, not unlike the lives of Joseph and Daniel of an earlier biblical time and example. She was not motivated by any immediate personal reward, and yet significant public acclaim – as well as private reward – invariably accompanied the successful conclusion of her altruism. Like so many other quiet heroes, her reputation has grown since her death and exceeds that which existed in her lifetime.

Rose accepted the work of an unpaid volunteer. The cost of doing so was especially high under the Nazi regime as measured in terms of personal risk, belittlement, and sleepless nights. In performing gratis work, ones such as Rose demonstrate commitment, gain relevant field experience, make contacts and develop relationships, have the opportunity to do what they love, build résumés, provide community service, display their aptitudes in a practical setting, fine-tune their skills, and become well-positioned for hiring or career advancement. Any one of these is beneficial; collectively, they can be overwhelmingly advantageous. Rose's example is a useful life lesson for all of us, regardless of our age. She had many natural and artificial hindrances opposing her goal of securing a significant position with a major art museum. Largely, however, through the opening she created by accepting long years of diligent service as a volunteer, Rose finished well. It's not the sum of frustrations, oppositions, and mistakes we have encountered that make life rewarding; it's the continued striving to finish our given role despite these challenges and to finish it well. As the apostle Paul said, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7). Said more simply in colloquial style: It ain't over until it's over.

...he took away everything. (1 Kings 14:26)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Since leaving business many years ago, my wife and I have worked extensively in volunteer venues, sometimes full-time and sometimes part-time. I noted early on with delight that I could obtain nearly any job I was attracted to and perform it in nearly any organization and location I chose. I've since been a tour coordinator, lighthouse attendant, recovery center board member, summer camp boat driver, teacher, prison counselor, park ranger, paralegal, and much more. That was made possible by two factors. The first was that I had collected letters of reference for fifty years from all my previous employers and presented them along with my application. The second was that I assured the prospective organization that I was willing to do the job without pay. Armed with these assets, it amazed me how many doors, previously closed to me because I lacked experience or education or other qualifications, were now open to me at an advanced age that's often shunned by human resource departments. That's my chosen way of finishing well! If you are retired or have time available, please consider the mutual benefits inherent in volunteering for non-profits in order to serve the needy or the general public or both – it's your choice.
Colonel George Washington

Only One Left on Horseback

A thousand may fall at your side, then thousand at your right hand... (Psalm 91:7)

The patriotic deeds of a mature George Washington, the Revolutionary War general and first American president, are well known and documented, leaving little need for further examination. There's also a small canon of familiar stories about George Washington as an adolescent. One example is when he is alleged to have chopped down his father's cherry tree. When asked about the incident, the child replied: "I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my hatchet." The promotion of this story is attributed to Mason Parson Weems. Its place in popular culture was initiated in 1800 by its inclusion in his book The Life of Washington. Even though this story has endured for generations and has the appearance of truth, it is actually folklore. Even so, it's morally instructive and is intended to portray Washington's constructive character – a goal it does accomplish. It tells us that how we respond to adversity in our youth often determines the nature of our character as adults. This was clearly true in Washington's life, as will be further illustrated in the exciting narrative ahead.

There's another story about Washington as a young man that leaves the impression of fiction, yet has been substantiated as fact. This true one transpired during the time of the Seven Years War (1756–1763), known in America as the French and Indian War. At this time there was no "official" United States. What later became the States were then British colonies located in a small portion of the North American continent. All colonists were born British subjects, not American citizens. The colonies numbered only thirteen and were clustered along the Atlantic Coast from south of British Canada to north of Spanish Florida.

West of the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi River was a vast interior, loosely occupied by France, called simply the Ohio Valley Country, which became known after our independence as the Northwest Territories with Vincennes, Indiana as its capital. England (aka the British Empire) and France were the superpowers of the time, and they were in competition to establish firm and, hopefully, final control of the Valley. To facilitate their position, the French aligned themselves with several indigenous Native American tribes, as the British already had a natural alignment with their colonies.

Washington was twenty-two, the age of a typical college senior today, but he already held the position of lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia. The British Crown had just appointed General Edward Braddock to the colonies as its supreme military and civil authority. Upon hearing this, a self-assured but inexperienced Washington approached Braddock in New York with an offer to join his forces against the French presence at Fort Duquesne (east of present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). The offer was accepted, Washington advanced to the rank of full colonel, a wagoner by the name of Daniel Boone was hired to assist, and together the crusade was launched against the French-held fort in an ambitious attempt at a surprise attack.

Washington was familiar with the country around the fort due to his time as a surveyor for his mentor, Lord Thomas Fairfax, who had considerable landholdings in the area. This was not the first time Washington was to fight the French in the hotly disputed area known as the Monongahela River Valley. At age twenty, in the opening weeks of the war, he'd led and lost an earlier battle for control of the valley at Fort Necessity, located a short distance from Fort Duquesne (near modern Washington, Pennsylvania). Washington hoped that, under Braddock's experienced battle leadership, this would be his chance for personal redemption and reputation.

To reach the fort required a journey through thickly forested mountain terrain, some of it traversing risky valleys, where the men were exposed on the narrow paths or could be trapped without convenient escape routes. Braddock's solution was organizing an expedition of overwhelming size in terms of munitions, supplies, and men. Subsequently, it plodded along, marking little distance daily as the way through the forest required cutting time-consuming access of sufficient size for the entourage.

Reacting to the frustrating circumstances, Washington convinced Braddock to form a smaller fighting unit with which to make a more rapid attack in advance of the remaining support. A group of somewhat less than two thousand men was assembled for this purpose. But their plan was easily discovered by the defenders. The French immediately prepared a surprise attack of their own, placing their mix of troops and tribes in a favorable forward offensive position. With a force only half the size of the British force, they waited to ambush them in a narrow gorge, having assumed the high positions along the protected forest ridges. July 9, 1755, was the date of what was initially planned as the Battle of Monongahela.

What transpired during the two hours following General Braddock's arrival at the gorge is more accurately labeled a massacre rather than a battle. The British troops were quickly reduced to less than a third due to the injuries and deaths inflicted by well-protected and hidden French and Indian enemy forces. With one exception, every officer and every person on horseback was wounded or killed. Braddock suffered a mortal shot mid-battle and died on the return route. The French forces were only mildly diminished. The favorable French and Indian position was one factor behind the disparity; the other was the British military's own formal battle tactics. They stood upright, as trained for in European fighting, with an open formation and, if on horseback, remained mounted providing easy targets. (The British manner of fighting was noted by Washington, who would use it two decades later to his advantage against the anti-revolutionary English forces.)

Colonel Washington's responsibility as aide-de-camp to Braddock required him to ride unprotected from point to point across the battlefield, delivering the general's orders. Singularly remaining on horseback alive, Washington's responsibility defaulted to organizing the troop disengagement and leading their hasty march back to the safety of the larger British force and then unto Fort Cumberland, Maryland.

Word spread quickly that Washington was among the dead. So, he promptly wrote letters to his brother and mother assuring them he survived and testifying to his battle experience. He reported that after examining himself afterward, he was completely unharmed; but that he found four musket ball holes through his coat and more in his hat. He also reported combing lead fragments out of his hair. Somehow they had damaged and penetrated his clothing while not touching his body. He indicated that two horses were shot from under him during the fighting, but that he rode out mounted on a third. In his words: "Death was leveling my companions on every side of me!" Colonel Washington attributed his preservation to the protective hand of a providential God. Shortly thereafter, what transpired became the subject of revival preaching and Sunday sermons. Everyone concluded that God had a special purpose in keeping young Washington alive. Soon, the chronicle of the massacre at Monongahela (aka the Battle of the Wilderness) found its way into American history books, where it remained for over a century.

In 1770, fifteen years after Monongahela, Washington expressed a desire to revisit the Pennsylvania battleground. This had been the location of two of Washington's most painful experiences, and his memories of them were still disturbing. He sought closure. Washington arranged for his lifelong friend, Dr. James Craik, to accompany him back to the valley. After the men arrived, they were met by a group of Indians accompanying a greatly revered old chief. The chief had heard about their visit and determined to meet privately with Washington. Once the time and place were determined, Washington inquired as to why the chief wanted to meet with his former enemy. The chief was aged and frail, and the men wondered what unique purpose had motivated him to travel such a great distance to see Washington. Through an interpreter, the chief indicated that before his life ended, he felt compelled to meet the man whom God would not let die in battle.

Over a council fire, the aged chief shared his personal perspective on the battle, one that Washington did not fully know. The chief had singled out the tall, mounted colonial officer and instructed his men to take special aim at him. (Washington was well over six feet in height – substantially taller than most of his contemporaries.) With Washington as the only man still on horseback, the objective should have been easy to accomplish, yet the chief's men repeatedly failed to bring down their special target. The chief then raised his musket, but after a dozen carefully sighted shots that yielded no results, he determined further effort was useless. He instructed his men to save their ammunition and direct their efforts elsewhere. The chief said that he and his men were well trained and experts in the use of muskets in battle and that, save for Washington, they could hardly miss from their advantageous position. He realized the Great Spirit was protecting this young officer and that He had a special purpose in preserving his life.

Then the chief shared that he had come not only to meet the man whom God had so wondrously preserved but also to prophesy over him. The old man said that Washington would soon fight and win a mighty war in order to found a great nation of which he would become its chief. Sequentially therein were predictions of three significant events to soon occur in our early history. First, the "mighty war" he was to "fight and win" was the Revolutionary War for American independence led by Supreme Commander Washington. Second, Washington's "found a great nation" occurred when the new constitutional republic was organized and birthed postwar by the Constitutional Convention, over which Washington presided as chairman. Third, Washington did "become its chief" when he became our first president, serving two back-to-back terms.

The year 1775 – just five years after the prophetic meeting with the chief – marked the beginning of America's War for Independence. The war was both a revolt against the founding county, the powerful British Empire, and a civil conflict against a significantly large loyalist home population. It consumed the next eight years and ended in an unexpected victory for the fledgling nation called the United States of America. (See the story on Haym Salomon.) It was largely expressed as a military conflict, and its primary fighting force, the Continental Army, was led by General Washington, just as had been predicted by the old warrior chief. God protected Washington at Boston, Brooklyn Heights, and the Delaware River, as well as through the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Yorktown, and the many others. After peace with Britain was consummated by the Treaty of Versailles, Washington laid down his considerable power because he firmly believed that military authority should be subservient to civilian authority. History buffs know this action as "choosing the role of Cincinnatus over that of Caesar." It was a rare, magnanimous statement in the history of mankind, and one that set a precedent for America that we still honor three centuries later.

As life first moved beyond the war, Washington met with his officers in Newburgh, New York. They were depressed and in a mutiny-like frame of mind over unfulfilled pay and pensions long overdue from the Continental Congress. As he attempted to read a letter of pacification from a Congressman, he found himself constantly stumbling. Pulling his reading glasses from his pocket, he placed them on for the first time in front of his men, explaining, "Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country." He'd brought the men to tears; they no longer needed to hear the message within the letter.

The time between the war's end and the enactment of the Constitution in 1787 marked a five-year period during which Washington played a vital leadership role as chairman of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. The goals were to first author the United States Constitution and then to pilot it through ratification by the states. The Constitution authorized the election or appointment of executive, legislative, and judicial leadership. Washington was asked to serve the country in yet another key capacity, this time as our first chief executive officer, the president. He did so for eight years, fulfilling two consecutive terms of four years.

Thereafter, an overwhelming majority of the country's citizenry favored appointing Washington as the king of America. This position rightly may seem strange to us today. Again, Washington is to be credited for the fact that it seems strange. He laid down his civil authority and power, just as he had earlier laid down his military power, desiring instead the plain, quiet life of a gentleman farmer at his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. This was the second time he had established a rare, but lasting, precedent and became a selfless example for future generations. Few have ever abandoned power, much less when it was so easily in his grasp with so many willingly conceding it to him; rather, most violently cling to it and scheme for more. Having abandoned power twice, Washington is most likely the only man in history with such a legacy. He simply had this to say regarding his many titles: "I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man." The Bible credits Moses as being the most humble man who ever lived; my thought is that Washington may be the second most humble man. One informal definition of humility is: Knowing who you are.

In George Washington: The Founding Father, Paul Johnson writes of the events of Washington's resignation of his command and of England's King George III's personal reaction:

Having made peace between the civil and military powers of the new country – and, in an emotional ceremony, bidden farewell to his officers on December 4, 1783... in Annapolis, Maryland, (and) on December 23... he formally handed back to Congress his commission as commander in chief, which they had given him in June 1775.... He had his horse waiting at the door, and he took the road to Mount Vernon the next day. No one who knew Washington was surprised. Everyone else, in varying degrees, was astonished at this singular failure of the corruption of power to work. And, indeed, it was a rare moment in history. In London, George III questioned the American-born painter Benjamin West [on] what Washington would do now he had won the war. "Oh," said West, "they say he will return to his farm." "If he does that," said the king, "he will be the greatest man in the world."

One historian I read wrote that Washington was the greatest American in the history of our country due to who he was and what he accomplished. I have come to agree. Almost a century later, Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." That quote is likely misattributed to Lincoln with the source unknown; however, it succinctly reinforces the point: Washington performed in a most unusual, but exceptionally admirable, way by laying down great power.

Washington is an example of the citizen-politician who goes to the capital of his state or nation, serves a few terms, and returns to civilian life – just as the Founding Fathers practiced and intended. Sadly, this has been almost completely disregarded by the pervasive career politicians of later generations. The current practice of politicians is to gain elected government positions and then refuse to honor voluntary term limits, thus obtaining lifetime security and prestige, exemption from laws legislated on others, and inappropriate padding of personal income through gifts from lobbyists, self-initiated increases in benefits, and lifetime pensions. Their lifestyles would shock and embarrass a selfless man like George Washington, who served eight years as commander in chief, accepting only expense reimbursements as his compensation. (See the stories on Haym Salomon and Dave Roever similar examples).

On June 16, 1775, Washington appeared before the Continental Congress for the purpose of being offered the command of the new army. In his words, he did not feel up to the task:

Mr. President, Tho' I am truly sensible of the high honour done me, in this appointment, yet I feel great distress, from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust: However, as the Congress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service, and for support of the glorious cause. I beg they will accept my most cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their approbation. But, lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavourable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered, by every gentleman in the room, that I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with. As to pay, sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress, that, as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous employment, at the expence of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any proffit from it. I will keep an exact account of my expences. Those, I doubt not, they will discharge, and that is all I desire.

That demonstrates why God's favor rested on him; he could be trusted to be faithful in both the small and the great. Although largely unheeded, he modeled a high standard of public service that remains for us to emulate.

Washington's national contributions and his personal examples clearly demonstrate why God could trust him with so many critical roles. He could be counted on to deny himself and perform what the Lord laid before him. He was physically preserved in order to see God's plans completed through his life. The special qualities developed in an American crucible have, over the past centuries and especially since the time of Washington, become the template for countries and nationalities all over the globe. His time was unique, and the men surrounding Washington were dedicated to serving the same cause.

Washington was honored by his contemporaries, and he is remembered today by the simple description: "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." He was truly the Father of Our Country three times over, and thus the grandfather of the great men in the following generations and centuries, men like Lincoln and Reagan, who acknowledged they followed in Washington's large, clearly imprinted footsteps.

Today, few have heard this relevant true story. However, it hasn't always been the obscure account it's become. This story was once printed in virtually all school textbooks. While at present removed from classrooms, it has experienced a resurgence as evidenced by several recently published nonfiction books by respected historical researchers and writers. Washington himself often recalled this singular event and recognized that it helped shape his character and confirm God's call on his life (see the story on Ronald Reagan regarding his similar perspective after surviving an attempted assassination). I was in elementary school during the late 1950s, and as an adult, I retained vague recollections of this "bulletproof" Washington episode. In order to confirm it, and to recover forgotten details, I located several dated, out-of-use American history textbooks circa 1930–1940. Sure enough, the story was present and incorporated within the sections outlining the French and Indian War. There's an occasional current recognition of Washington's bulletproof stature. In the February 21, 2015, edition of the Wall Street Journal, Editor Jack Schwartz summarized his review of Washington's military career by stating: "And he [Washington] was lucky in battle, appearing almost invincible to the bullets whizzing around him."

If history was still taught with the fullness of these kinds of stories, it would be a far more appealing subject. It would display the whole and comforting truth of a God who holds us in His hands for a purpose greater and larger than the ones the secular humanists permit our children to see in their textbooks filled with revisionist history and outright lies; texts in which they have censored out God and His wisdom in order to promote the foolishness of man and rationalize false goals. They attempt to control our heritage by what they include, as well as by what they omit.

For additional evidence that this story was once commonly recognized, primary researcher David Barton of Wall Builders in Aledo, Texas, referenced three dozen historical texts within his limited, personal collection. The historical sources utilized by Mr. Barton include the personal records of the participants in the battle, details provided by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography, and the research of prominent historians of earlier periods, some of which were published more than 160 years ago. I know of no man who has done more than Mr. Barton to promote the story of George Washington at the Battle of Monongahela, as well as so much more historical truth regarding America's Judeo-Christian foundations.

In closing, I want to help ensure this wonderful story comes home in a personal fashion to every reader. George Washington was special to God. God created him to be different from everyone else in order to set before him a unique purpose for his life. God has created each of us to be different from all others in order that we fulfill His unique purpose for our lives as we choose to walk in obedience. If we don't play our part, it may not get played at all and others will be negatively affected along with us. We can start on the path with small acts; as long as we are faithful in the smaller, God will trust us gradually with the larger.

While we're walking faithfully in either, we may well find that we too are invincible. This is not an invitation to walk out in front of a semitrailer truck as a test; we should never put God to the test. We must put God to the trust and He puts us to the test. God's faithfulness does not require testing because it never wavers. It's always available to those who walk in obedience. I am able to recognize with confidence a few times in my life when God provided me with a bulletproof vest – sometimes actually encompassing physical delivery from near-death situations. I've also experienced it psychologically in career settings as my employment security was undermined on occasion by direct reports, jealous peers, or overbearing supervisors; any one of whom wanted me vacated from my position for some unsavory purpose. But I had the confidence I was where God wanted me to be; and in remaining there, despite the temporary damage or pain, He faithfully saw me through the circumstances to victory every time. These are personal illustrations of what I mean when I affirm that we are all bulletproof while we are in God's perfect will.

There are additional true-life incidences of physical deliverance and preservation of life, much as with Washington, within more than a dozen stories presented in Uncommon Character; these include those of Irena Sendler, Joseph Merrick, Rose Valland, Dave Roever, Rick Rescorla, Phoebe Mosey, Russell Stendal, Kimberly Munley, Eva Kor, Charlie Plumb, Stetson Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Richard and Sabrina Wurmbrand, Gregory Jessner, and Haym Salomon. Perhaps none of these "rescues" were as dramatic as the one at experienced near Fort Duquesne, but they were indisputably lifesaving and, to those who lived through them, their uniformly positive outcomes were mightily appreciated. We may experience our "rescues" literally or figuratively, physically or psychologically, financially or socially, and the bullets and arrows may come in the form of trials and tests or accidents and persecution.

George Washington experienced nearly a lifetime of military service, which included even more than the Battle of Monongahela and the eight years of the War for Independence, yet he was never wounded in action. Think of it! As far as has been documented, he spent more than a dozen years actively absorbed in warfare, often exhibiting a bold frontline leadership style, and all without suffering any injury from cannonball, knife, arrow, or bullet. (There is a parallel here with President Reagan's story wherein he survived more than seventy-seven successful deepwater rescues prior to age twenty-one as well as an assassin's bullets during his presidency.) When we're faithfully fulfilling the purposes God has for our lives, He will protect us and not release us until all are completed. As reported by his secretary, Tobias Lear, Washington's last words, spoken in the presence of his old friend Dr. Craik, were "Tis well"– a fitting acknowledgment that his life finished well on December 14, 1799, just an hour before midnight and only days prior to the next century. Washington likely did close the eighteenth century exactly as King George III forecast earlier: the greatest man in their world. America was mightily blessed to have been given the gift of such a man of uncommon character at so many critical junctures during our founding years.

...but it will not come near you. (Psalm 91:7)

* * * *

Author's Notes: My story is not the whole of Washington's prodigious legacy. As added teasers, his life also includes the following four substantial activities, and more, that Washington did after completing his third major role in my story, that of two-term president: 1) accepting the role of commander-in-chief of the Army a second time when war against France seemed imminent, 2) preparing a plan to emancipate his slaves, 3) facilitating the construction of the federal city at Washington D.C. when current President Adams refused to do so, and 4) founding three premier educational institutions. Washington's providential invulnerability is not wholly unique to supreme wartime generals who become two-term presidents. A study of General-President Ulysses Grant's frequent time in battle will reveal many similar circumstances of immunity throughout our Civil War (the second American civil war as the Revolutionary War was the first). As a fitting supplement to this story, please reference the dramatic ninety-first psalm (verse 7 appears above) for a fuller revelation of God's benevolent safeguarding of his people; it's easy to picture both Washington and Grant reading it before going into battle.
Parable of the Four Farmers

Bloom Where You're Planted

Do not associate with those given to change... (Proverbs 24:21)

A farmer in Hopetown, Africa was hearing tales of those who'd made fortunes after discovering diamonds in Central Africa. These so excited him that he could hardly wait to sell his farm and go prospecting for diamonds. Finding diamonds seemed like a way to get rich faster and more easily than did remaining and working his farm. So in 1867, he hurriedly sold the farm and spent the rest of his life wandering the African continent in an unsuccessful search for the precious gems that were gaining such high prices in world markets. Finally, worn out and in a fit of despondency, he threw himself into a river and drowned. The man's suicide may sound like the end of the story, but it was really the beginning.

Meanwhile, on one of his many crossings, the farm's new owner, Daniel Jacobs, noticed a bright flash reflecting from the bottom of the stream. Bending down, he picked up a sizable stone. Admiring it, he brought it home; thinking it an attractive curiosity, he placed it on the fireplace mantel.

Months later, a neighboring farmer, Schalk van Niekerk, visited Daniel and noticed the stone above the fireplace. Removing it from the mantel, he examined it closely, weighed it in his hands, and became exceptionally excited. He asked Daniel if he knew what he had in his possession. When Daniel replied it was most likely rock crystal (sometimes called clear quartz), his visitor told him that he believed the man possessed a large diamond. The farmer had difficulty believing this could be true since his stream had many such stones – not all as large as the one on the mantel – but nonetheless, they were sprinkled periodically along the bottom. After consulting with experts, however, the crystal was confirmed as a diamond of exceptionally large size – one of the largest ever recorded.

The farm sold by the first man – so he might find diamonds elsewhere – turned out to be one of the richest diamond fields on the African continent. The first farmer had literally owned acres of diamonds, free and clear. Unknowingly, he sold them as part of the farm for an insignificant portion of their value in order to free himself to look for them elsewhere. The vicinity of the farm became the site for several of the world's largest diamond finds, including the Eureka diamond at 21.25 carats and the Star of South Africa diamond at 83.50 carats. If the first farmer had only taken the time to study what diamonds looked like in their natural, unpolished state and had thereafter explored his property thoroughly before looking elsewhere, he would have realized his fanciful preoccupation.

Thereafter, the Hopetown area didn't remain a quiet farming community; rather, it became the worldwide focus of a diamond rush. Today, the ruins of the Jacobs house are preserved and exhibited as an African national monument.

Portions of this story have been retold many times since the discoveries on the Jacobs farm. Baptist minister and Temple University founder Russell Conwell (1843–1925) credited hearing its origins from a North African Arab whom he met while traveling in the Middle East. Conwell might have been our country's first motivational speaker, as he claimed to have incorporated portions of the story into speeches given worldwide over six thousand times. He titled his speech "Acres of Diamonds" and he summarized its fundamental message as "dig in your own backyard."

This simple historic parable about a foolish farmer illustrates three valuable personal principles for us today. They are not principles related to actual precious commodities like diamonds (or later gold, oil, and silver), but principles about other precious matters called opportunities that have equal, or perhaps greater, value than those physical ones.

The first principle is that too often we think we must look somewhere else to find riches when we're standing in the middle of our own productive field. Most likely we are not searching for real diamonds, but instead seeking happiness, success, contentment, and peace. All the while, these valuables are within our grasp. It's the old idea that the grass may look greener on the other side of the fence, but it probably isn't. The reality is that we are simply dissatisfied with what we already have; or we haven't thoroughly utilized all of the resources, gifts, opportunities, and blessings we've been given. It's been said that if the other person's yard is greener than ours, it's getting better care. While we're looking at other yards, others are looking at ours. Before running off to those that only look greener, let's be certain that our own is not just as green, or perhaps even greener. Abraham Lincoln said, "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." If we had the wisdom and the patience to explore the opportunities surrounding us, we would likely find that most of the riches we seek are already right where we are.

The second principle is that these riches could be slightly hidden, just like the diamonds on Jacob's farm. Rarely will they be found out in the open and obvious. The truly valuable things in life are not the ones that seem so popular and important right now like music, sex, sports, parties, motorcycles and cars, video games, drugs, gambling, fashion, golf, drinking, hanging out, and texting. Real riches are disguised as parents, teachers, pastors, mentors, counselors, and church leaders. They are also found in our homework, jobs, family activities, volunteer efforts, books, and studies.

The third principle is that it's okay to grow, stretch, try new things, and change locations; but not at the cost of depleting or damaging the good things we already have. We are only truly poor when we are dissatisfied with what we already have at the moment.

In order to bring these three principles home in a practical manner, let's ask ourselves some warm-up diamond mining questions, followed by completing a simple written exercise. The intent is to help unearth opportunities extant in our life, those that may be overlooked, underutilized, or unappreciated. Thoughtfully consider your diamonds – both those acquired and those still sought, and then answer these questions:

  * What am I building my life around, as evidenced by the things I'm using resources to acquire?
  * Are these truly diamonds, or are some just common rocks?
  * Am I doing the best I can right now with the diamonds I've been given?

Now, the associated multistep exercise is as follows: Remember that what we often think is a diamond, really is not; it's just a rock. First, in an effort to help discern the difference between the two and eliminate confusion, list on a piece of paper all of your current priorities, opportunities, dreams, goals, resources, and projects. Be as specific as possible and avoid vagaries. Then, after careful evaluation, label each of them either as a diamond or as a rock. Now create an unprioritized, two-part list by placing the true diamonds at the top and the rocks at the bottom (or place in side-by-side columns). Next, individually write each item labeled as a diamond on a small square of paper – only a single one on each piece. Then, one surrogate diamond at a time, start throwing them away beginning with the least meaningful in your life until you have only two or three squares remaining. Finally, and most importantly, heartily pursue the remaining squares (the real diamonds) by aligning your activities and resources in accord with those that remain – the few surviving squares of paper. Yes, it is both difficult and revealing.

This process ensures that one is both mining the ground already underfoot and focused on the most critical items located there. We all have acres of diamonds – gifts, people, blessings, possibilities, talents, and supporters/helpers – right where we are already. If we don't realize this, it's probably because we either didn't recognize them or we just didn't look very hard for them. Let's go after them, work with them, give them time and attention, hold them, and share them. Working regularly with these diamonds will lead to more true riches throughout our lifetime.

In Wes Davis's Wall Street Journal review (April 30, 2009) of Willard Spiegelman's book Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness, he shared the following wise observations about life:

Ordinariness can yield much more pleasure than is normally assumed. All the striving for happiness may cause us to overlook the riches of the familiar and near to us.... You find that the plainest occurrence is surprisingly rich.

The idea is to slow down enough to pay attention to what is nearby and to examine the world around us – give extra time and focus on what we see and hear. This thinking substantiates everything shared thus far about the riches right under our feet, right where we are.

Even if it's only partially true, perhaps you think the story about the diamonds is an anomaly; that it's a unique, one-of-a-kind circumstance. It may well appear to be an outlier; so as a reproof, I am offering three more remarkably similar tales about foolish farmers. They all have the same theme, all occur during the same time period, and all yield the same beneficial principles.

In the first of these backup stories, a farmer living in Coloma in northern California circa 1847 heard that gold had been discovered in central California, near Sacramento. He became fixated on the opportunity for quick riches – often called gold fever. He sold his ranch to a Swiss immigrant by the name of Colonel Johann Sutter. Sutter employed a carpenter named James Marshall to build a sawmill sluice to carry stream water closer to his crops and cattle. His little daughter started playfully dumping handfuls of dirt into it in order to watch it flush downstream. Marshall noticed that certain shiny lumps were washing out and settling to the bottom. After examining them, he suspected the bright little rocks were actually gold. During an assay, they were confirmed as gold nuggets of the highest quality. This event started the famous California Gold Rush (see the related story about Tommy Thompson in "Exploring Inner Space"), the largest gold discovery in American history, with a value of hundreds of millions of dollars in Coloma alone.

In the next story, a man who lived and worked on his Titusville, Pennsylvania farm for twenty-three years became dissatisfied with his agricultural lifestyle. After hearing about oil discoveries in Canada, he recalled that he had a cousin living there. His cousin was employed in the oil business, so he wrote and requested a job. The cousin wisely advised him to undertake a formal study of petroleum as a prerequisite. The farmer immediately complied with commendable zeal and hard work. He attended well-respected Temple University and learned almost everything there was to know about oil at that time. As his cousin had promised, he was hired and moved to Canada in 1865, hurriedly selling his farm for a decent sum of about $50,000 in today's value. The new owner of the farm carefully walked his land in an effort to become familiar with its assets and liabilities. While checking a stream that twisted through the property, he noticed his cattle would only drink upstream of a certain point. This was a curiosity. By investigating further, he found scum gathering on the surface downstream, thus discouraging use by the cattle. Further and closer inspection revealed that the scum was actually oil seeping to the surface. He'd discovered a portion of the richest oil field found to date. It would soon be worth hundreds of millions of dollars as the economy was fast-moving from whale oil to emerging petroleum-based products like kerosene, oil, and gasoline.

In the final story, a man from just north of Boston in Newbury, Massachusetts paid his way through nearby renowned technical college, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), with finances gleaned from his small farm. Upon graduating in 1878 with a degree in mining engineering, he remained at the university as a professor of mineralogy. The new job, however, did not satisfy for long, so he contacted Superior Copper Mining Company in Wisconsin. The company was interested in his potential, but they could only offer him a modest salary supplemented by a share in the profits of any new minerals he might discover. He confidently accepted, quit his new professorship, and sold his small rural homestead. However, as far as I was able to know, he never found any significant mineral deposits. What is known is that back on his previous homestead, the new owner – who had no formal training or education in minerals – was diligently caring for and expanding the old farm. Farm implements continue to be manufactured ever larger in a successful effort to increase productivity and profits. So, in keeping with the trend, one of his first purchases was a bigger wheelbarrow.

That area of the country is very rocky. Since the time of the first settlers, rocks cleared from fields and gardens were used to mark property lines, construct houses, and form fencerows. Uniquely, and as a source of local pride, mortar is never used to bond the individual stones. Instead, the stones are carefully selected for size and shape, and then simply stacked together in firm patterns. So when the farmer's new wheelbarrow scraped the sides of the old stone fence's gateway, it was an easy matter to remove some of the rocks to broaden the entrance. In the process, he noticed a somewhat shiny rock, shaped (and sized) much like a football. Yes, it had happened again. The rock was almost pure silver and worth thousands of dollars. This was the accidental beginning of the Chipman Silver Mine. Silver mining in that area continued uninterrupted for almost a century.

At this point, we are able to justify renaming this parable "Four Foolish Farmers." The series of tales was compiled for the benefit of two audiences. One was high school graduating seniors whom I've overheard saying, "I can't wait to leave this boring town; there's nothing for me here." The other group was a mix comprised of inmates at the state prison and residents at the recovery centers who'd tell me something like, "I can't go back to my hometown after my release; there's nothing for me there. I've got to find some newer, greener pasture."

I have made mistakes in this area, so I can relate to the four farmers and to both of my audiences. I've salted lessons derived from my faulty experiences into the parable's creative mix. I was able to identify the three principles listed above only after first traveling several difficult routes to my enlightenment. I didn't learn any of them the easy way. While working my way through college, I was employed by a locally-based, quality manufacturing company. The company was owned by a single wealthy family, and it held a great many patents. It had a long and successful history, and today remains viable although absorbed by a larger corporate entity. I was asked twice to remain in their employ after graduation. I turned them down, thinking that was a job I'd held during college; now with a diploma, I felt I could do much better. However, the reality was that it took seven painful years to regain the satisfaction and opportunity I had prior to leaving that company.

Fifteen years and two more employers later, I found another quality company with long industry tenure and owned by a single wealthy family, this time it was engaged in telecommunications. After about five years, the grass began to look greener and I was tempted to move to other, glitzier competitors. This is what some of my coworkers were doing at the time. But I'd learned my lesson with my college employer, and I stayed. At first, it was painful as I received phone calls from my former associates during which they shared glowing comments. After a year or two, however, their once positive reports began devolving into complaints; the same dissatisfactions surfaced with the new employers as those that they'd suffered earlier with my employer. On the other hand, my satisfactions were rising as a reward for staying the course.

A similar fictional tale is told about two men who were both moving independently from Town A to Town B. At a midpoint along the route between towns, lived a farmer. The first traveler asked the farmer what the people were like ahead in B. The farmer responded by asking, "What were they like in A?" The man said that they were unfriendly, mean-spirited, and idle; and that's why he was moving. The farmer said that, unfortunately, they were just like that in B. The second traveler arrived at the farm a few minutes later and also asked about the people in B. Again, the farmer queried, "What were they like in A?" The man said they were friendly, good-natured, and helpful; and he was sure going to miss them. The farmer said that, fortunately, they were just like that in B. The farmer was illustrating the moral truth that everywhere we go, we're still there and we bring our satisfactions and dissatisfactions along – they are inherently part of our makeup.

Clinical Psychologist and author Dr. Meg Jay makes a similar point in what she calls a parable told to her by a minister:

Two brothers are raised in a home in which the father is a violent alcoholic. One brother grows up to be drinker and an abuser, while the other becomes an abstinent man and a model parent. When asked how they came to be who they were, both brothers gave the same answer: "Given who my father was, how could I not?"

During what I call my turnaround time – the time when I was repairing my initial employment error – I purchased an interesting inspirational piece for my wife's office. It was a plastic potted flower about eight inches in height. On the vase was a small gold plaque inscribed with "Bloom where you're planted." That succinct phrase became personally applied wisdom which I share in concluding this parable story.

...for their calamity will rise suddenly. (Proverbs 24:22)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Russell Conwell's writings were the primary source for all four foolish farmer stories. They are currently in the public domain. Some points of emphasis in the "Parable of the Four Farmers" and some in the "Parable of the Flat Earth" may appear contradictory. The first, however, is a caution about making changes and the second is a caution about ignoring changes. The resolution is found in the following supporting statements: Avoid changes for the wrong purposes, such as a greedy objective, running from a problem, or dissatisfaction with circumstances. Change may be generated by external circumstances, and thus forced on us, or change may be generated by our internal thought processes or personal choices, and thus be far more optional. When change is right or best, proceed – after prayerful consideration – in faith. Neither an attitude for nor against change is correct in every situation. We would do well to imitate the ancient Israelite tribe of Issachar who reportedly remained constantly alert to their changing times and thus remained immediately prepared on behalf of their families and country.
Dave Roever

You Never Were That Good-Looking

You have tried me and have found nothing... (Psalm 17:3)

All of us have wounds and scars on the inside and outside, but Dave Roever's life is firsthand proof that these don't have to define us or prevent us from fulfilling our destinies. Many former soldiers are recovering from the pain inflicted in distant wars, like Korea and Vietnam, as well as from the recent and continuing wars in the Middle East. If you are a veteran, then this story is especially dedicated to your healing. This will seem like a war story, but it's really a love story.

Dave was the son of a rebellious South Texas biker who became a pastor after marrying a godly young lady. Ironically, Dave's life followed a similar course to that of his dad's. The substantial difference was due to the pivotal event that serves as the fulcrum of this story. Marriage, military service, fatherhood, education, manhood, Christianity, recovery, and ministry are all vital subjects today, just as they should be, and they all merge compellingly in the telling of Dave's unforgettable chronicle.

When seventeen-year-old high school junior Dave met thirteen-year-old freshman Brenda, it was instant love, and he quickly asked her to marry him. She rewarded his forwardness with a slap in the face; as a follow-up, he was advised, "If you really love me, then you'll wait." Dave did just that, and in the intervening period, they both remained pure and faithful. Their wedding followed shortly after Brenda's graduation. Dave had been attending Bible college full-time and working at General Dynamics part-time. As a newlywed, he began overemphasizing the earning aspects related to the job rather than diligently continuing to focus his attention on school coursework. His grades dropped accordingly, resulting in the receipt of a draft notice announcing he'd lost qualification for a continuing student deferment. At the time, many young men were being inducted into the military for duty in the long-running conflict in Vietnam, Southeast Asia.

Dave still had the option to apply for a surefire ministerial deferment, but because he felt inclined to actively serve his country, he didn't pursue it. He did elect to avoid the two-year army draft by enlisting in the navy for a four-year commitment. Thus began a series of three challenging, prewar training assignments in which he excelled, finishing each time at the top of his class. The culmination was a position as a Navy SEAL (SEa, Air, Land) wearing the coveted Special Forces black beret. Dave was soon ordered to Vietnam and faced what he still calls the most difficult and painful experience of his life – saying good-bye to his bride. Considering what Dave faced in the near future, and for many years thereafter, that statement is a powerful avowal.

Once in Asia, he was assigned to the dangerous brown water river patrol working on a PBR, a high-speed, lightweight cruiser with a four-man crew, four .50-caliber machine guns, and two massive turbo-charged engines powering jet pumps instead of propellers. His team replaced one that had just been nearly wiped out after suffering 90 percent casualties. Dave's commanding officer's name was – no joke – Lieutenant Rambo.

Dave says he had three bunkmates during his time overseas in 1969, and they all made fun of him for refusing to be unfaithful to his wife and calling by indulging in the readily accessible drugs, drinking, and prostitutes. Each man, respectively, gave him a different nickname: Dudley Do-Right, Preacher Man, and Dr. Dolittle. In turn, he came up with nicknames for each of them: Pervert Number One, Pervert Number Two, and Pervert Number Three! Because Dave continued to excel in his responsibilities, he was soon in command over the three men in an odd payback situation. Not long thereafter, Dave and Pervert Number One, Mickey Block, would assume each other to be dead after they were viciously maimed in separate combat situations. (Both recovered to eventually become best of friends and join hands in worldwide ministry.)

In a chilling scenario that could have been lifted from the Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) inspired film Apocalypse Now, Dave's crew was upriver on a mission to disengage enemies who had fortified themselves along the jungle-covered banks. From this secure position, those communist commandos had attacked a patrol the day before. Standing on the bow of his PBR and next to the foremost machine gun, Dave raised his right hand to the same side of his head in order to lob a white phosphorous grenade. (These are used like napalm to burn away vegetation and expose enemy troops, armor, tripwires, and traps.) At that exact time, the grenade detonated, likely due to being hit by a sniper's bullet fired from shore.

Instantly, Dave suffered extreme physical damage to the right side of his face and the top of his head, including his ear, eye, teeth, jaw, and lips. He also lost portions of his fingers and thumb. The front of his chest was ripped to the bone, exposing internal organs. Because phosphorous burns slowly until it's fully consumed and cannot be extinguished even underwater, his body continued to smolder until his flesh simply melted off and floated away. He lost sixty pounds of body weight in a few terrifying moments. Dave knew he wasn't dead because he could literally see his heart beating. There's much more to this painful ordeal, but this is enough to convey the horror of Dave's experience.

Somehow he made it to the muddy bank, where he was placed on a stretcher by evacuation helicopter medics. As Dave tells it now with a sprinkling of humor, his burning body ignited the canvas and he landed headfirst on the ground. After being wrapped in wet blankets, he was placed on a Bell UH-1, Huey, chopper. Once in the air, the medics assumed he was dead, so one was in the process of completing the death tag and affixing it to Dave's toe just as he was finally able to utter just one word: "Medic!" The pilot was so shocked he lost control, and as they were falling from the sky, Dave again humorously reports he feared they'd crash and he'd be the only survivor. The pilot recovered and all aboard made it safely to the base.

Once back, Dave's painful survival experience turned into an extensive recovery period. He changed hospitals and geographic locations a number of times over the weeks before finally being transported stateside to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. It was there he was scheduled to see his young wife for the first time since their separation and, more importantly, for the first time since his injuries. Dave already had several post-trauma experiences that caused him to be anxious about meeting Brenda. Earlier, he'd requested a mirror; in it he saw the reflection of a monster where a man had once been. One side of his face was missing down to the bone; the other side was swollen to double its normal size.

He shared a hospital ward with twelve other burn victims, but Dave was the only one of them who left the ward alive. He'd witnessed a depressing situation when the wife of the patient next to him arrived for her first visit. She took one brief look at her husband, who was burned over his entire body due to a gasoline fire during a helicopter crash, and she said, "You're embarrassing. I can't be seen with you." She then removed her wedding ring, placed it on the bed between his legs, and walked out. The man died within hours of his painful wounds compounded by a broken heart. What, Dave wondered, would Brenda's reaction be to the shocking, bloody pulp of a husband she was about to see? Here's the report in his words (from his book, Welcome Home Davey):

My wife, Brenda, still a teenager, walked into my room, a girl I had respected while we dated. She was a virgin when I married her and so was I. Our relationship was built on respect, not in the backseat of a car. Two kids who had waited for each other because they respected and honored God and themselves. Now, that respect would come back, not to haunt me, but to help me. The day Brenda stepped into that room it was truth or consequences. She walked up and read the chart on my bed to confirm I was her husband. She read the tag on my arm to be certain the right man was in the right bed. Then, convinced it was me, she bent down, kissed my face, looked me in my good eye, and said, "I want you to know that I love you. Welcome home, Davey."

When Dave protested that he was sorry he couldn't look good for Brenda ever again, her response was, "You never were that good-looking anyway." This was not a cruel insult, but rather a coded affirmation that she loved Dave for who he was, not for what he had.

The following year was a blur of frequent, pain-filled surgeries, many of them centered on repairing his damaged face and replacing missing skin. Dave calls that time "my slow year of crucifixion." Upon finally leaving the military hospital, a new struggle became apparent. In the burn ward, Dave says, "Everyone is a freak, so no one is a freak"; but once outside, things were immediately different. Not only did Brenda and Dave need to adjust to his new appearance and limitations, but so did everyone else. Shock, curiosity, and cruelty were typical reactions – not unlike what had been bestowed on Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Dave's new identity became an overwhelming issue. He would hear himself described as it, not him or he; there's no humanity in the pronoun it.

Perhaps the one who had the greatest challenge accepting Dave was Dave himself. One of the first lessons he had to learn was to receive unconditional love. This gift was faithfully administered by Brenda. It's a difficult challenge for all of humanity to accept without reservation that which is freely given, cannot be earned, and is undeserved. This is one reason that God's gift of salvation is so misunderstood and frequently rejected. Because Dave had earlier learned this lesson in his spiritual life, he was eventually able to apply it in his marriage relationship. It really is true that it can be more difficult to receive than to give, especially when you are helplessly unable to reciprocate. Accepting the care of others with simple gratitude displays a rare kind of dignity – a kind that usually is not naturally present and has to be deliberately acquired.

Dave found his way out of the medical centers and back to his former life, first through Brenda and then through a series of guest-preaching opportunities in a few small churches. As these grew in frequency, so did his confidence. For about a year, he'd received monthly disability payments. Dave decided he no longer wanted to be dependent on the government and to continue living like a victim, not earning his way in life. Thereafter, he dialed the regional Social Security office and requested the checks be discontinued. The office informed Dave that he qualified for full lifetime income. In faith, Dave stated he didn't want to "live off the government dole" and he didn't want to think of himself as disabled. Following the instructions he received, he submitted his request in writing and his support checks ceased coming. With this act, he proved to himself that he'd successfully found his way through all the potential entrapments available within the false roles of wounded soldier, burn victim, disfigured beast, self-pitying survivor, and lastly, lifetime disability recipient. Dave accepted his position as simply a man. While he was still in Vietnam, Dave's wife and parents had erroneously received a letter informing them of his death; his buddies back at the barracks had divided up the spoils of his possessions as per the traditional, unwritten military code. But now, with this act, Dave was fully and wholly back from the dead.

With only one ear, one eye, one thumb, and one good finger on his right hand; and with more reconstruction operations still required, Dave went out looking for the job he didn't have and the regular paychecks he desperately needed, as Brenda was well along the way in the first of their two miracle pregnancies – pregnancies the doctors told Dave he was incapable of effecting. Afflicted with multiple serious physical handicaps, not unlike Joseph Merrick, his prospects for successfully finding a satisfying job were nearly non-existent. The initial offer finally came in the form of office manager at a concrete company where his brother was employed. He gratefully accepted the position, but Dave would not stay long at that business.

He began to feel that, of all places, he was to return to Vietnam in the midst of a still "hot" war against his country and its ally, South Vietnam. Dave again visited that land, but this time with a Bible loaded with John 3:16; not like his first visit when he carried an M16 rifle and wore a black beret (this time he wore a wig). He spoke little of the native language, mostly words related to war; now he was learning words related to peace and true freedom. Dave was well received by the local population, as was the message of eternal hope he shared. Therefore, he repeatedly returned to Vietnam over the next year, right up until Saigon was overrun by the North Vietnamese Communists. Dave barely made it out of the country, miraculously catching a seat on the last flight out. As they taxied down the runway, the pilot was forced to evade enemy machine-gun fire directed at their plane.

Once safely back in the States, Dave became acutely aware of the way the nation had largely, and sometimes even aggressively, turned its back on the veterans of the war in Vietnam. It was widely reported, although untrue, that America was losing the military aspects of the war. What was true was that we were on the verge of a decisive win when America lost sufficient internal political support due to an adversarial press and a weary population; Washington was pursuing its already questionable war on ever-thinning credibility. While Dave had personally heard the words "welcome home" from his loving wife, too many others were coming back to silence, rejection, loneliness, and shame. Many soldiers reacted by losing themselves in alcohol and drugs. Dave now began to focus on an outreach to help repair this situation by applying what he had learned firsthand. This led to the establishment of the Roever Evangelistic Association with Dave's wife, Brenda, as business manager.

Due to extensive national and international travel demands, the Roevers became home-education parents so that their children, Matt and Kimberly, could accompany them nearly everywhere. In this role, the family came to understand the needs of school-age youth with Dave subsequently speaking to millions of public high school students. The audiences for Dave's motivational appearances grew to also include veterans and active military, especially the physically wounded and emotionally traumatized warriors. He expanded his topics to cover subjects of broader interest to these men, subjects like marriage and family, drug prevention, and manhood. He's shared in countless locations while never charging for his appearances. I've met him and enjoyed his presentations numerous times. He is the real thing. As of this edition, Dave lives and his story is ongoing.

The Roever Evangelistic Association website states:

Because of his war-time experience of service, injury and recovery, Dave is uniquely qualified to speak to the needs of military personnel. In every setting, Dave's message is one of hope. Using his life as an example, he addresses issues relevant to his audience and presents concrete solutions to life's problems. Often drawing upon his war experiences of loneliness, peer pressure, disfigurement and pain, as well as triumphs, Dave weaves a message of courage, commitment, and survival that touches and transforms those who hear him. The foundation of his hope is his faith. (roeverfoundation.org/meet_dave_roever.php)

As a gifted communicator, he's often found in a variety of settings including public schools, military bases, business and para-church conventions, television and radio studios, youth assemblies, or at his organization's Eagles Summit ranches in Colorado and Texas. No matter where Dave is, he's always certain to share a caution about not becoming conformed to culture as he strongly believes that just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right or even a good choice. What's acceptable to a culture changes with time and with location; what is true does not. The truth is able to withstand the foibles and fads of today's atmospheres of popularity and indiscretion. He advises not looking to peers as a source on what is the right thing to do; instead, find some wise, mature counselors. For example, peers will say that saving yourself from immorality and honoring the other sex is out of date or denying yourself some "feel good" fun. Respecting yourself and others are none of those things. Dave and Brenda are living proof of the benefits gained from choosing to stay chaste and remain faithful. It's the thing to do now, and it will pay dividends when you need it later. We can all learn from Dave instead of listening to our Perverts Number One, Two, and Three.

Sadly, it took the army thirty-four years (until 2004) to award Dave his several earned medals, including a Purple Heart. This took place at roughly the same time that he received an honorary doctorate degree from Central Bible College and the Outstanding Civilian Service medal from the Department of the Army for his lifelong contributions. Dave victoriously executed his life mission well in advance of any belated recognition provided by government, scholastic, or civil awards and titles. There's no final ending to Dave's story as of this edition, but here's the chosen conclusion in his words as he imitates an imaginary freak-show barker:

Come one, come all! See the Human Torch who burns so brightly that the night is turned into day; a man who is ever aflame and yet is not consumed! See the living miracle who is dead yet alive, whose death is his life. But stand back when he appears. Stand back, ladies and gentlemen, for he longs that that same fire may burn in your own souls – as it burned in his body!

...concerning the works of men; by the word of Your lips, I have kept away from the paths of the destroyer. (Psalm 17:4)

* * * *

Author's Notes: The portion of Dave's story regarding his severe service injuries is not unique, though it would be better if it was. I shared Dave's simply because I know it best. In all wars – just and unjust – men and women, civilians and military often suffer inconceivable physical injuries and live painfully through them. One such civilian story is the iconic one of laudable Phan Thi Kim Phuc, known as Napalm Girl for the collateral damage skin burns she suffered as a child in Vietnam. More recently, the wars in the Middle East and elsewhere have produced additional experiences akin to Dave's and Kim's. Perhaps most implausibly are our first five combat survivors to endure quadruple limb loss: U.S. Army Sgt. Brendan Marrocco, Marine Sgt. John Peck, Marine Cpl. Todd Nicely, Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor Morris, and Army Staff Sgt. Travis Mills. Each of these men, near only twenty years in age, has a true tale of selfless courage under challenging call-to-action conditions thousands of miles from home. Many more veterans unnamed here live with severe facial and body burn scars, some of the wounded service members suffer both physically and emotionally with PTSD. The stories of the heroes who earned the nation's highest award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, are readily available and never cease to inspire us – many have given their lives in service to us, nearly all were severely injured. These men and women largely do not think of themselves as victims, yet they are some of society's true victims. Most do not think of themselves as heroes either, yet they are heroes all!

There are many non-profit organizations funded largely by donations and staffed heavily by volunteers who support the wounded veterans. A few of them are, in no particular order: Wounded Warrior Project, Gary Sinise Foundation, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and Disabled American Veterans. As Gary advocates: "We can never do enough for our wounded military, but we can always do a little more." Our time and donations will help these heroes do what they and their families are struggling hard to do: Finish well.
Parable of the Giving Gift

Still My Favorite Teacher

Let not many of you become teachers... (James 3:1)

Mrs. Clark stood in front of her fifth-grade class on the first day of a new fall term and told the eleven-year-old students a lie. Like many teachers, she habitually gathered the children early for an orientation session during which she never failed to share that she would dedicate herself to each of them fairly and equally. At the time, she meant it; she thought she was that kind of teacher. However, slumped in the back row was a skinny boy named Johnny who was just plain difficult to like. He was soon going to unwittingly expose her inadvertent hypocrisy.

Mrs. Clark began noticing that Johnny didn't play well with the other children, his clothes were messy, and he always needed a bath and a hair washing. Communicating with him was difficult because he only spoke when spoken to, and then only responded in monosyllables like "yup," "nope," and most often a noncommittal "maybe." On the good side, his silent demeanor and standoffishness meant that he was never a disruption, didn't require admonishment for fighting or bullying, nor need go to the principal's office for discipline. However, Johnny rarely completed his assignments or turned in his homework. Her frustration with him reached the point that Mrs. Clark almost enjoyed marking his papers with a red pen, drawing bold Xs next to his errors and omissions, or marking the top of his papers with a big F.

Every teacher had access to their student's academic histories and was encouraged to review them. If she had read Johnny's school records earlier, she would have understood him better. Mrs. Clark had delayed Johnny's until last. When she finally checked his file, she was appropriately surprised. His first-grade teacher had written: "Johnny is a bright child with a quick laugh. He does his work neatly and exhibits good manners...he makes friends easily and is pleasant to be around." His second-grade teacher had written: "Johnny is an excellent student, well-liked by his classmates, but he's troubled by his mother's terminal illness and life at home has caused him to struggle." His third-grade teacher had written: "His mother's death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best, but his father doesn't show much interest and his home life will affect him negatively if corrective steps aren't undertaken." Johnny's fourth-grade teacher had written: "Johnny is withdrawn and doesn't show much interest in school. He doesn't have many friends and he day-dreams in class." By fourth grade, the records described Johnny as the poorly performing student that Mrs. Clark knew the following year.

The school year progressed with their relationship mostly unchanged as the two-week Christmas vacation approached. On the final school day of the old year, Mrs. Clark's students followed the longstanding tradition of bringing their teacher gifts. There were many presents under the little tree in the corner of the room waiting to be opened during the afternoon party. All were wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright, fancy paper; all except Johnny's whose were clumsily wrapped in the heavy brown paper commonly used for grocery bags and held together with masking tape. His presents were just like Johnny, not very neat or attractive.

When it was time to unwrap gifts, Mrs. Clark was a little surprised to have received anything from Johnny, so she took care to open his two gifts in the middle of the other presents. A few children began to snicker when she opened the first, containing a rhinestone bracelet with some of the fake jewels missing; and then they did so again when she opened the second containing a half-filled bottle of cheap perfume. Mrs. Clark had the presence of mind to kindly stifle the children's rude reactions by quickly placing the bracelet and dabs of the perfume on her wrist, holding it up, and exclaiming, "My, how very wonderful!"

Johnny lingered after school that day standing near her desk. This was unusual behavior and it created both curiosity and more surprise in Mrs. Clark. He looked nervous but sounded sincere when he said, "Mrs. Clark, today you smelled just like my mom used to, and her bracelet looks really nice on you. I just want you to know that you're my favorite teacher."

That night Mrs. Clark didn't sleep well; something unidentified was deeply troubling her. She persisted in examining the day's activities, and eventually gained insight into the situation. A clearer understanding of Johnny's problem led to perceiving her part in contributing to it. She felt ashamed about her attitude toward him. Before sunrise, Mrs. Clark determined she needed to make some immediate changes. From now on she would really love and help all of her students the same – especially the slow and troubled ones – beginning with Johnny. She would strive to become the kind of teacher she said she was, the kind she wanted to be, and the kind the students needed her to be.

On the first day of school after the holidays, the fifth-grade students were greeted by a new teacher. It was still Mrs. Clark on the outside; but on the inside, she was different. She quit just teaching subjects like reading, social studies, and math; she began teaching students. As she had determined, Mrs. Clark paid particular attention to Johnny. After working with him for some days, his mind seemed to awaken and find a fresh spirit. The more she encouraged him, the more he responded. By the end of the year, Johnny had caught up with most of the other students and he had even begun to surpass a few others. Now to keep her promise of impartiality toward all students, Mrs. Clark had to keep her pride in check and resist the temptation to treat Johnny, and those like him, as teacher's pets.

The school year ended with Johnny graduating fifth grade, with its accompanying physical move from elementary school to the middle school some miles away. Before departing for summer vacation, Johnny was found one final time waiting by Mrs. Clark's desk after the rest of his class had charged excitedly out the door. He told Mrs. Clark a simple good-bye, followed by "You're my favorite teacher."

Mrs. Clark didn't hear from him for the next three years. In late spring of the third year, she found a hand-addressed envelope in her assigned mail slot at school. It contained a note from Johnny reporting that middle school had gone well and he was moving on to high school. He concluded it with: "You're still my favorite teacher."

Considerable time passed without further contact from Johnny until, at the end of the fourth school year, she received a familiar-looking handwritten envelope in her mail slot. It contained another note from Johnny saying that high school had gone well and he'd been accepted at the state university on a partial scholarship. The note again concluded simply: "You're still my favorite teacher."

Mrs. Clark continued to teach fifth grade at the same school. Nearly four more years passed without any more updates from Johnny; that is, until late spring of the fourth year when she found a third note in her mail slot. It was from Johnny and reported that he was graduating from the university in a few days with a degree and summa cum laude honors. This note concluded similarly to the other two: "You're still my favorite teacher." That simple statement always reminded her of the long-ago Christmas party and of her renewed commitment to teaching during the sleepless night that followed it. The recollection never failed to inspire and refresh her.

The next six years passed quickly for Mrs. Clark, who had spent more than half of them enjoying retirement from the classroom. Late in the spring of the sixth year, an envelope arrived at her home. It was from the office manager of her old grade school. Upon opening it, she immediately recognized Johnny's handwriting on what was to be her final note from him. It was another brief update reporting that he'd gone on to medical school, where he met a pretty young nurse to whom he was now engaged. But the personal note wasn't alone. Attached was a sealed, formal envelope containing both an embossed invitation to his wedding and another handwritten note. In the second one, he reminded Mrs. Clark that he'd lost his mother in elementary school and reported that his father had passed away several years ago. Thus, having no one to represent his parents at the wedding, he asked whether she'd be available and willing to do so. This note concluded with the now-familiar words: "You're still my favorite teacher," but it had an unfamiliar signature. It was signed: Dr. John R. Mills, MD.

Mrs. Clark accepted the wedding invitation, considering it an honor to sit up front where Dr. Mills' parents would have sat. She arrived wearing the bracelet and perfume given to her on that Christmas when she and Dr. Mills were together in her old classroom – when he was still known as Johnny.

After the ceremony, they embraced and Dr. Mills thanked Mrs. Clark for being there for him on his wedding day, and more importantly, he thanked her for what she'd done for him back in fifth grade. Mrs. Clark replied that his gratitude was misplaced, for it was he who had honored her with the invitation as well as he who had encouraged her to become the kind of teacher she wanted and needed to be. It was the combination of his simple trust and fidelity that acted as the catalyst for decisive growth in her life.

They were both correct because they'd been mutually influential in making substantive, positive changes in each other's lives – changes that cascaded from both of their lives on into the lives of many others thereafter. Johnny's unquestioning love for Mrs. Clark was the igniting spark for her change; it was her change that reflected the love back to Johnny, who then leveraged it to consistently improve his life. Those two small, physical Christmas gifts of the bracelet and the perfume were the first seeds sown into lives that would grow into greater gift giving for both parties. These kinds of gifts don't require shopping, money, or wrapping, yet they are gifts that will endure and keep on giving. The real gifts were their time and attention to each other. These were the best gifts they had given, and the best ones they had received.

Their gifts are representative of gifts we can all afford to give: our love, talents, kindness, attention, and time. These are the true gifts that are needed by those unlovable ones like Johnny, or by those misguided ones like Mrs. Clark. At some point in our lives, we are all like Johnny and need to receive from a Mrs. Clark; at other times, we are capably equipped like Mrs. Clark and can give of ourselves to a needy Johnny. Even Johnny, who seemingly had nothing, found something to give Mrs. Clark. We are reminded to be generous in giving of ourselves, for none of us has anything in life of real value that we have not been given ourselves. The investments that we make in others are the best ones because they are life-changing and thus pay lasting dividends to the giver and to the recipient.

There are only four things we can take beyond the grave; I call them the everlasting four: integrity (sometimes called a good name or reputation), relationships, the positive concentric circles that our good deeds have set in motion (sometimes called paying-it-forward), and faith.

...knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. (James 3:1)

* * * *

Author's Notes: I first discovered this story about midway through life. It's one of the earliest I recall appropriating and sharing. Over the years I have modified its structure and personalized the storyline. I've attempted to uncover two specifics related to the origins of the story. The first was determining whether it is essentially fiction or nonfiction. The discovery data was conflicting and inconclusive with some indicating the one, and others just the opposite. So it is likely a mix of both. Therefore, I'm presenting it as a parable. I've also changed the names of its protagonists. Their names were selected on the basis of my preference and have carryover from my past. It became the story of one of St. Mary's elementary school teachers, Mrs. Clark, and one of her most challenging students, Johnny Mills. To my knowledge, neither name represents a real person within the context presented. The second of the two specifics was in determining who had conceived the core story. Again, the discovery data was conflicting and inconclusive. I was able to find multiple, unattributed renderings of the story; but never able to confirm the original author.

Students often offer written essays to me after hearing a story. Many are very personal and moving. The following is one from a fifth-grade boy:

I remember I was like Johnny. I was not doing good in school. I was sloppy because my grandpa shot his self. He was my favorite. He would take me for ice cream. My life was great [until] a couple of years later [when] my mom came home crying and I was trying to cheer my mom up. She said she loved me and she said to me, your grandpa died. My life crashed, my heart was smashed, my life was dead. My dad helped me through it, but I will never ever forget.

This young man recovered like Johnny did and became a good student.

I've shared this story in many venues including state prisons. Occasionally, I become emotional as I tell it because it's easy for me to relate to some of the elements. As simple as the storyline is, I've observed inmates' eyes tear over as well as they look downward in an effort to hide how deeply they are moved by some portion of its message. My follow-up is to encourage them to take-up the available pens and papers and, with delay, write to whoever is on their mind. Perhaps this is also a good time for the reader to do so.
Rick Rescorla

I'm Taking Them Out!

Set a man over the congregation who may lead them out... (Numbers 27:16-17)

His childhood ambition was to become an American soldier like the ones who helped his country win the war and whom he later enjoyed viewing in Hollywood films. Cyril Richard Rescorla was born in Hayle, England in 1939 at the start of World War II. He grew up during the Battle of Britain and the American-led Allied Expeditionary Force. Early on, Rescorla adopted the name of Rick instead of Cyril because he thought it sounded more American, everyone knew him as Rick thereafter. Some of his earliest and most cherished recollections are of the GIs from the States who were stationed near his home. He grew to manhood, believing in the goodness of America's global vision, especially our domestic and foreign opposition to Communism.

Rick was naturally big, strong, and well-coordinated. He was so good at rugby, the shot put, and boxing that many expected he would become a professional athlete. Instead, he joined the British Army as a paratrooper at seventeen. He saw four years of modest action in the colonies of Cyprus and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) as a sometimes soldier, policeman, or mercenary. It was in these capacities that he had firsthand contact with Communist-fomented insurgencies, and he became more of an avid anti-Communist. He was not, however, fully satisfied with the direction of his life until he turned twenty-two and immigrated to the States, signed with the army infantry, and joined the fight beginning to stir in Vietnam. Rick served in the reformed 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, which came to be known as the Airmobile. It was a newly developed approach to executing limited warfare through a combination of helicopters, forward landing zones, and fast, hard-hitting mobility merged with air support as needed. These operations were adapted for use in the jungles where guerrilla tactics were practiced by the enemy. While serving in the Airmobile, Rick earned the rank of lieutenant and became the commander of Bravo Company.

Vietnam was a French colony and part of a geographic area, a large peninsula, known during the Colonial Era as French Indochina. Throughout the twentieth century, it was never fully independent, which contributed to it becoming a pawn between the capitalistic West and the communist East. France had unsuccessfully fought local insurgent troops there for two decades. After they abandoned the effort, the United States assumed their place. The purpose changed from maintaining Colonialism to containing Communism.

The Ia Drang Valley was an infamous deathtrap for the French, and then it became the location for America's first major battle in the war, and probably the bloodiest one of the long conflict. At Plei Me, a Special Forces camp in the Highlands near the valley, four hundred Americans were surprise-attacked by wave upon wave of a Viet Cong force totaling four thousand men. When it was over, America had never experienced so high a body count ratio in any of its previous twentieth-century battles.

Rick's actions throughout the siege are legendary for the bravery he displayed. At the battle's conclusion, a small group had been separated, pinned-down, and needed air evacuation. That rescue mission successfully completed, he was the last man to board the last departing chopper. After takeoff, word arrived that another group was cut off from their extraction point, LZ X-ray. Rick requested to be flown into the entrapment. He strapped on as many ammo belts as would fit, placed an M16 automatic rifle in his right hand and a grenade in his left, and jumped ten feet to the ground. His actions so inspired the men that they were able to survive a bloody firefight and make it through a hellish night until reinforcements arrived at daybreak.

In a separate tactical action just days later and again in the Ia Drang Valley, Rick's brave rescue effort helped save another group from annihilation after they too were surrounded by the enemy deep in the jungle no-man's land at LZ Albany. Rick had now thrice demonstrated the bravery of a war hero. He was decorated with the Bronze Star and the Silver Star for heroism as related to these three exceptional combat actions at Ia Drang. His actions largely contributed to the more positive American outcome as compared to the earlier French disaster in the Ia Drang "Valley of Death."

Rick continued serving full-time in the army as a career officer, advancing to full colonel before resigning from the military. His men were especially well cared for, but his sleep was regularly disturbed because he keenly felt the weight of every man killed under his command. Rick was consumed by thoughts about those who had died. A close friend said that a little bit of Rick was lost with every man he lost. Rick was close to each man under his command, and he was serious about their well-being. Many commanders chose not to identify with their men, believing it kept them more clear-headed when making the hard decisions. Not so with Rick. Those who knew him said that if there was a life to be saved, Rick couldn't ignore it. As personal resolution, he chose to resign his commission instead – doing so just prior to the standard twenty-year full retirement mark.

Details of his story are in the books Heart of a Soldier by Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart and Touched By A Hero by Rick's wife, Susan, as well as in the Hollywood film We Were Soldiers Once...and Young directed by and starring Mel Gibson. In 2006, a life-sized bronze statue of Rick was commissioned and placed at the Walk of Honor at the National Infantry Museum in Fort Benning, Georgia. The statue is based on a much-publicized iconic photo of Rick on patrol in the Ia Drang Valley.

After leaving the military, Rick attended the University of Oklahoma on the GI Bill. He earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in literature, followed by a doctorate of law. During this more leisurely time in his life, Rick – who was multilingual and certainly a modern Renaissance man – began his lifelong private practice of writing songs, novels, and plays; these works were generally based on his international experiences. For a short season, he worked as a college professor in South Carolina. Then Rick moved to New York City, where he accepted an appointment as vice president of safety and security at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MSDW), which was the world's largest financial institution at the time, as well as the largest tenant in the World Trade Center (WTC). It occupied thirty floors, from the forty-fourth to the seventy-fourth. Rick immediately set about using his skills, experience, and education to introduce programs and procedures that would later be employed twice over in saving many more lives.

It was in this last career that Rick again distinguished himself in the role of rescuer, although now as a civilian not as a soldier. Recognition didn't come from combat-related bravery, but rather for his accurately anticipating both of the two terrorist attacks on the WTC and subsequently dedicating himself mentally and physically to the associated goals of damage prevention, readiness preparation, and employee protection. He cautioned anyone who would listen that the WTC complex (consisting of more than just the two well-recognized Twin Towers) was a prime terrorist target, and he predicted an attack would come. First, he tried unsuccessfully to convince his employer to move to a safer location and then he tried to convince the Port Authority in charge of the WTC to better secure and provision the buildings, especially the unsecured truck delivery section under the Center.

On February 26, 1993, the anticipated terrorist attack arrived in the form of a truck filled with explosive urea nitrate-hydrogen gas. It was driven into the open basement of the North Tower, known as Tower One, with the expectation that the ensuing explosion would drive it into the South Tower, known as Tower Two. Rick was on the scene but survived the impact, in part because of his advance preparations. His heroic actions that day saved the lives of hundreds of his coworkers and other tenants. Rick loved to sing, had a ready sense of humor, and was almost always wearing a smile. In the heat of the evacuation, Rick incorporated these personal characteristics to enhance his extraction efforts. Coworkers reported Rick calmly issuing the necessary instructions, even jumping on a desk at one point and pulling down his pants in order to get their attention and counteract their panic. Rick became a verified hero for the fourth time. Rescuer and Lifesaver were some of the titles frequently read and heard among his growing and publicly recognized accolades.

In 1998, just five years after that first attack, Rick was filmed in a documentary in his office on the forty-fourth floor of the Center. Therein he detailed probable future terrorist warfare methods and objectives. This was long before Osama bin Laden and other Islamic militants had become infamous for their threats and deadly activities. In the video, Rick correctly predicted there would surely be a second attack on America and that it could once again be directed at the WTC because it was such a large and purely American symbol. The earlier attack was more likely to embolden the enemy for another attempt than it was to deflect attention to another target. Rick's reputation had grown in light of his accurate and successful contributions related to the first WTC attack. So Rick took advantage of this and utilized the years between the Trade Center attacks to further train the MSDW staff through regular safety drills, as well as continue to badger the Port Authority for improvements in emergency lighting, security, fire protection, and stairwell egress within the buildings. He was an unpopular man with the Authority, who thought him a crazy pest, but he forced them to provide many necessary safety and security measures in areas beyond those where he had direct authority or responsibility.

Rick and his new bride, Susan, booked a vacation flight to Europe, set to leave on September 12, 2001. During the time away, they intended to plan Rick's retirement. The day before their departure date, just three years after the interview for the documentary, the forecasted second attack came. What transpired then became both his life's finest chapter and his final one. Months afterward, the History Channel made a film about Rick's performance that day entitled The Man Who Predicted 9/11. The film follows Rick's dramatic timeline between 8:45 a.m. when the first plane hit North Tower One, and 9:58 a.m. when South Tower Two fell (after being hit at 9:03 a.m. by a second plane just seventeen minutes after the North Tower One was hit).

Here's a brief summary of that final one-hour-and-thirteen-minute period in Rick's life. After the first hit, Rick called Susan to tell her not to worry because he was fine and would get everyone out of his building safely, and then the line went dead. After hearing the intercom announcement from the Port Authority telling everyone to stay inside his building, Rick responded in a mix of strong Cornish and American slang expressions. In summary, what Rick said was, "I'm taking them out!" Acting without authorization, he immediately began evacuating the occupants. After the second plane hit his building just above the MSDW floors, all possible escape for the 1,355 other business occupants was instantly gone. Because Rick had refused to follow the Port Authority recommendation, he had gained seventeen vital minutes of security, permitting 3,700 MSDW staff to have already safely exited the tower.

Various employees of MSDW later reported seeing him active across all thirty of the floors occupied by their company. Just as in combat, he was everywhere – calm, pleasant in the face of others' panic, and reassuring by his personal presence and charismatic demeanor. Rick was heard singing God Bless America as he went about directing his one-man evacuation. Because of Rick, almost every employee of his company made it out of the building; only five didn't. Think about that legacy: They left and they lived! Otherwise, the toll of the dead on that day of horror would have far exceeded six thousand instead of being limited to about three thousand.

Rick remained in the tower and was soon back in the stairwells, moving along the aisles, shouting into his bullhorn to gain attention, locating anyone lost or injured, giving sure directions, comforting the hysterical. As he led more survivors out, Rick continued to sing so that they would remain assured and more easily follow his lead, even when the dim lighting and smoke obscured their view of him.

When it appeared that everyone was out, Rick returned with the professional rescue workers for a final look. That's where he was last seen. He was inside South Tower Two – the first one to fall – when five hundred thousand tons of steel and concrete collapsed and buried this five-time hero, ending his selfless life and concealing his body forever. Rick died exercising the virtues he'd learned and he'd lived: duty, honor, and courage. Rick died a victim of his predictions, but he died as he had lived – watching out for others before himself.

Although he was still on the job that fateful day, Rick's body was already ravaged by prostate cancer that had penetrated deep into his bone marrow. Few people knew of the serious condition that forced him to live in pain and diminished his physical strength. The treatments and medicine caused him to gain weight. For a man who always exercised and kept his body fit, it was an embarrassment he chose not to explain. It was not the illness and it was not the Islamic murderers that took his life that day; he laid it down in a Christlike manner for others, many of them strangers. Jesus said Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends (John 15:13). It was not the Muslim extremists who left the most profound impression for us to remember about that day; it was Rick Rescorla. Rick, the model soldier, chose to stay until his mission was accomplished in the manner he believed and lived: the first one in, the last one out, with no one left behind.

A characteristic trait common to brave heroic defenders and public servants is their modesty. There are three identifiable clues in Rick's life to sustain the assertion that he had it. The first is that he didn't offer or accept performance excuses related to his illness, to the point of striving to keep his limitations secret. The second is that although he and Susan had been together for several years, it was not until she was unpacking some of his personal items after a move that she discovered a box full of his military medals and became aware of his status as a hero with multiple decorations and commendations for exceptional bravery in battle. Rick had never mentioned these to her and had deliberately kept them out of sight. Through annual visits, Rick had always kept in close touch with his family and friends in Hayle, England, and neither did they know much of his heroic record. The third is Rick's abiding conviction that he could have done more for his men and for his coworkers, even though he accepted more responsibility for those whom he served than was reasonable for anyone else to ever expect of him. Heroes rarely think of themselves as having been heroic; they often believe they should have done more. (See the Irena Sendler and Kimberly Munley stories.) Rick never read his commanding officer's book about their Ia Drang Valley actions – even though it was his photo on the cover – and he never watched Mel Gibson's interpretive movie. He said he didn't do so because he never thought of himself as a hero. At his 9/11 memorial service, everyone disagreed with Rick's self-assessment. He was called a warrior, friend, leader, and the bravest man they ever knew. That's exactly the kind of attention Rick would have avoided.

The life of Colonel Cyril Richard "Rick" Rescorla, JD illustrates that in a crisis, there isn't much difference between soldier or civilian, war or peace, defense or offense, professional or volunteer, survivor or victim, natural or man-made, and prevention or reaction. A hero's objectives and motivations within the crisis are always the same: the protection of others over self. When we see someone in uniform, such as a soldier or a sailor, a nurse or a paramedic, a firefighter or a police officer, we should tell them, "You're appreciated for your good work." In doing so, we may be thanking yesterday's hero or encouraging tomorrow's hero-in-the-making. Someday, perhaps that uniformed hero might save you, me, or someone close to us. Perhaps that uniformed hero may even be you or a loved one.

...that the congregation of the Lord may not be like sheep which have no shepherd. (Numbers 27:17)

* * * *

Author's Notes: The police and other positions of public safety in society are – unthinkable a generation ago – being maligned and attacked by segments of the general population, by so-called community leaders, and by politicians holding high federal office. Consequently, open displays of support and encouragement for our brave servants are increasingly needed to create balance.

The following are lyrics from a Johnny Cash-Dave Matthews song titled For You as it was used in the film We Were Soldiers Once...and Young. The film covered battle actions in the Ia Drang Valley. I offer it as a poetic tribute to Rick's heroic and selfless life – both his military and civilian seasons.

I will drink the cup, the poison overflowing. I will lift you up, watch over where you're going. The first one in the last one gone, I'll be the rock to stand upon for you.
Phoebe Ann Mosey

Aim High

The helpless commits herself to You... (Psalm 10:14)

Our collective imagination of the early American West is populated by dramatic, mythological portraits of Plains Indians (now known as Native Americans) and homesteaders, endless buffalo herds, explorers and mountain men, cowboys and cavalry, stagecoaches and rattlesnakes, bank and train robberies, cattle drives and feral mustangs, Wells Fargo and hanging judges, gold and silver discoveries, wigwams and war dances, gunfights and outlaws, rugged individualism, saloons and gambling halls, vast prairies occasionally carved by barbed-wire fencing. We remember untamed and lawless ghost towns named Deadwood, Tombstone, and Dodge City located near rivers like the Pecos and Red or on trails such as the Santa Fe and Chisholm. Thoroughly woven into this colorful scenario are the myth and the reality of the rifle. Especially remembered are the names of those individuals who capably handled their rifles in service to themselves, their community, and greater history – names like Wild Bill Hickok, Kit Carson, the Earp Brothers, and George Armstrong Custer; as well as the names of their nemeses, those who used the rifle to prey on decent society like Butch Cassidy, John Wesley Hardin, Jesse James, and William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid). City slickers, gamblers, outlaws, and marshals carried a revolver or derringer; practical ranchers and hunters carried a rifle. Handling a gun of any nature often made the difference between eating or going hungry, between preservation or loss of home and property, between life and death – often without warning.

In our modern society filled with its incalculable selection of round-the-clock sports, theme parks, movies and plays, gaming casinos, virtual reality and other digital entertainments, we find it nearly impossible to understand the high interest engendered by a nineteenth-century shooting competition or by a traveling Wild West Show with its exhibitions of marksmanship. Those few recreational sports that existed west of the Appalachians were fairly pragmatic and not very leisurely in nature. What could be more grounded than demonstrating your practiced skill with the very same device that provided your livelihood and ensured your safety? This was the passion and the allure of marksmanship competition.

The word marksmanship accurately expresses the correct gender originally associated with this skill. It was an avocation dominated by men generally firing rifles, and occasionally shotguns and handguns. Just as most readers are able to readily name several of the NFL's top quarterbacks, a person living in the nineteenth century could name the country's top shooters, and the big salaries and advertising dollars followed them just as they presently do our athletes and celebrities. The fashionable promoters and suppliers weren't Adidas, Nike, or Reebok; they were Winchester, Smith & Wesson, and Colt – the guns, as they said, that won the West. Nearly everyone owned and used one or more of these, but only a handful of men were good enough to make their living exclusively from related showmanship. In the vernacular of the times, they were referred to as champions; today, we would call them stars.

The careers of two of the most renowned and capable of these sharpshooters were often linked in a common endeavor. Both would easily have earned the modern top-notch label of superstar because they were better known and more respected for their abilities than were their peers. Even more substantially, their careers had a tenure lasting a half-century each. One was Buffalo Bill Cody; the other, Phoebe Ann Mosey – yes, a lady who shone in a man's world while retaining every degree of her femininity and modesty. At a time when it was universally agreed that a woman's place was in the home and that women were indeed the weaker sex, she was America's first female superstar, and most likely also the world's, beating men at their game across the globe. Phoebe was exceptionally successful at combining confidence with competitiveness; and all things being equal, she never lost to a man.

Unlike most entertainers today who shamelessly engage in bad behavior in their private lives, and who are even known to deliberately exaggerate it publicly for the extra attention it generates, Phoebe's long career was morally flawless; she was consistently a paragon of virtuous behavior, and thus an unfailingly positive role model. After meeting her, it was often said that she was both much more of a shot and much more of a lady than expected. Every photograph taken of her – and there were many – reveals the same thing: a conservatively dressed woman in an ankle-length skirt with a long-sleeved blouse buttoned tight to the neckline. This was her private and her public persona; there was no disconnection between them and there was never a scandalous interlude. What the photos generally fail to reveal is the very capable world-class athlete within the modest clothing, who was able to ride a horse or a bike, tumble or flip, run or jump, all the while armed and hitting the center of her targets. While her vocation may be a challenging judgment in light of modernity's evolved perspective on firearms, the core standards for modeling personal character do not change; and judging Phoebe's by any age or culture only serve to further validate the wholly quality manner she consistently lived in private and in public.

The lore of the old Wild West is full of colorful legendary names like Calamity Jane, Bat Masterson, Geronimo, Pancho Villa, Judge Roy Bean, and Belle Starr. Most of what's recalled about these personalities is more fiction than fact. If you find that Phoebe's name isn't familiar to you, it's okay, as that's expected and not uncommon. However, by sharing the facts about her life – which are sufficiently exciting that no fantasy need be added – I hope to make her name, reputation, and personal character memorable by the conclusion of her story. A couple of generations ago, writing more about Phoebe would have been unnecessary, as everyone in America and in much of the world was intimately familiar with her life. Like so many others, the passing time has caused her to be mostly forgotten or dismissed. Yet, Miss Mosey remains America's greatest woman athlete within her sport and within her times as measured by dominance, achievement, longevity, and personal integrity – many say the greatest regardless of gender. All this while only five feet tall, under a hundred pounds in weight, and having acquired no formal education or professional training; she was wholly self-taught. She was variously known in the press as Rifle Queen, Maid of the Western Plains, and Western Girl. Lakota Chief Sitting Bull was so impressed with Pheobe's abilities that he first attempted to purchase her; failing that he symbolically adopted her as his daughter, fondly renamed her Little Sure Shot, and developed a respectful and lasting friendship. Phoebe like his nickname so well, she continued to employ it throughout her career.

Phoebe's relationship with a rifle, ironically, did not come from being raised in the West. It was born of dire necessity in Darke County, Ohio, where her Quaker family lived the hard life typical of pioneers. During the exceptionally harsh winter of 1866, her father, Jacob, was caught in a blizzard. He was returning to the farm on foot from his day job at the mill fifteen miles away. He made it back to the family's log cabin later than usual with his extremities frozen and his speech gone. Never recovering the full use of his hands after the exposure, he died a few months thereafter. Without his supplemental income, the farm was soon lost.

Although only six years old at the time and the fifth of six siblings, Phoebe was inspired to help meet the family's needs for survival. It began with what she always credited as one of the best shots she'd ever made. Propping her father's heavy, forty-inch-long Kentucky muzzleloader on the windowsill of the home, she took aim at a rabbit, pulled the trigger, and made a successful headshot – a critical method because it left more eatable meat than a body shot. Phoebe said of that experience: "I know we stuffed in enough powder to kill off a buffalo. ...I got the rabbit but my nose was broken."

That rabbit kill would be the first of three defining events in her life. Through it, she gained a confidence with guns that served her well throughout her life. Her family was initially uncomfortable with the young girl assuming so much risk and responsibility. In her favor, however, was a natural gift for using guns combined with an avid interest in them. What gradually developed was a regular pursuit of wild game for the family's consumption: rabbits, birds, and the occasional largesse of a deer.

The second defining event in her life was not in any manner as pleasant, or as brief, as that first exhilarating shot. On such experiences as the following one, a lifetime of success or failure is often founded as one subsequently chooses to become bitter or better. Over the next three years, the family's situation did not improve. Phoebe's mother made the decision to board her at the county poorhouse in the nearest town, Greenville, a practice and an institution unknown today but common for the times. At the institution known as the Infirmary, a local farmer arrived, seeking a helper for his wife and new baby; in exchange, he promised to provide an education. Ten-year-old Phoebe was sent to live in their home. That's when the horrors began in such an egregious fashion as to make her previous difficult years at home and at the poorhouse seem idyllic in comparison. It would be two long years before twelve-year-old Phoebe again tasted freedom, then another three before seeing her mother and reestablishing the woodland life she had enjoyed so much.

The farmer and his wife both misused and abused Phoebe. It's unknown whether sexual debasement was perpetrated because her modesty prevented her from ever acknowledging it, but it is certain that they enforced excessive physical and emotional hardships. The wife was especially cruel. They would drive her extremely hard, feed her only enough to keep her alive, deny her love and compassion, beat her around the neck and head, and lock her in closets. Phoebe said that they were "wolves in sheep's clothing." She determined to never speak their name again and, for the rest of her life, she would only refer to them as the He-Wolf and the She-Wolf or Mr. and Mrs. Wolf. The educational part of the bargain was never provided. She was, instead, guarded as a virtual prisoner and used as a slave.

This ill relationship climaxed one winter day when the wife repeatedly struck Phoebe on the ears, then locked her outside in the deep snow, barefoot and without a jacket. Her offense had been falling asleep in the evening while darning the She-Wolf's clothes. Phoebe said, "I was slowly freezing to death. So I got down on my knees, looked toward God's clear sky, and tried to pray. But my lips were frozen stiff and there was no sound." She nearly met the same cruel fate that took the life of her father; but after she passed out, the He-Wolf brought her inside despite the ranting of his wife. Finally, the sought-after escape opportunity presented itself and Phoebe hopped a train back to Greenville, returning to the life offered by the poorhouse. For the next three years, she worked as a seamstress. Later, fifteen-year-old Phoebe left on foot to make the twenty-mile trip home to reunite with her mother for the first time in five years.

By then, her mother, Susan, had remarried; but financial circumstances hadn't improved despite the new relationship. The most immediate risk was a contractor's lien against the home, which seriously threatened their right to continue living there. Phoebe again left her mother and siblings to live on her own; this time as a professional hunter, supplying game to Cincinnati restaurants and hotels. Her meat was sought for its top-quality condition related to her clean, select shots. In time, she earned and saved enough money to pay the lien and guarantee her mother a home free of debt for life. This was the third, and likely final, defining event in her young life.

Barely into her teen years and already a full-time wage earner, she'd learned priceless lessons in hard work, budgeting, and frugal living from which she never departed, regardless of the amount of money she earned. And earn it she did – unheard of big money for a woman, or even a man, in those lean and chauvinistic times. At the peak of her career, Phoebe was earning around one million dollars annually (2010 value). Always consistent with her comfortable, but never ostentatious or conspicuous, lifestyle was an abiding sense of caring for society's needy elements, especially widows and orphans. Throughout her lifetime, she contributed a generous portion of her earnings to poor farms and orphanages, always remembering her own humble origins and difficult childhood.

Career marksmen of the period traveled from location to location to participate in shooting contests for cash and other prizes. The host community or business rarely failed to promote its local champions and wager them against the visiting challengers. Irishman Frank Butler arrived in Darke County when Phoebe was still fifteen but had already solidly established her reputation with a rifle. At age twenty-five, Frank was one of the more proficient and better-known traveling professionals, so it was only natural that he challenged Phoebe to a Thanksgiving holiday match after she was backed as the hometown favorite. Phoebe won the match with a perfect score to Frank's double miss. Afterward, Frank wrote: "I was a beaten man the moment she appeared, for I was taken off guard. Never did a person make more impossible shots than did that little girl. It was her first big match and my first defeat."

She'd won his respect, but even more, the always gracious and demure teen had won his heart. He was ten years her senior, as significant age differences in relationships were typical of the times. Frank held great appeal for Phoebe as well. He was handsome, had an Irish accent, and they shared a common interest in marksmanship. Frank didn't smoke, drink, or gamble – all of which complemented her Quaker values and quickened her mother's approval. After a season of courtship, she became Mrs. Frank Butler – a position she held for the next forty-six years without a hint of scandal or unfaithfulness on either side.

As their relationship matured, Phoebe's shooting took on greater importance and Frank's became less so. Instead, he assumed increasing responsibilities as her manager and agent – a reverse of nineteenth-century roles. Their union produced no children, and both of them happily continued their professional careers in tandem throughout their lifetimes, while readily admitting neither had any capacity for, nor interest in, domestic life. In their middle age, they liked to say that their young friend Johnny Baker was their adopted son, but it was not legally so and it was only said out of fondness as he was a long-term recipient of their loving support.

Shortly after marrying, the couple joined what was then the greatest traveling show on earth, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Colonel (an honorary title) Cody had been an Indian scout for the U.S. Army Calvary, a Pony Express rider, a Plains hunter and guide, and an agent of the railroads during their western expansion years. He was also at the top of the list as a prominent and capable marksman. His career hit its full and satisfying stride at early middle age, with him as the premier entertainer. He had a commanding and attractive physical presence, combined with a natural sense for high showmanship. By luck or intuition, his entrepreneurial timing was perfect. He brought the best of the Wild West to the eastern states and to the civilized world, just as its popularity was at its peak and just as the real West was being tamed by barbed-wire fencing, Indian reservations, loss of game (especially buffalo), gold and silver discoveries, Ned Buntline's dime-store novels, cattle drives, transcontinental railroads, courthouses, and territories qualifying for statehood.

The Wild West Show was a unique mix of rodeo, broad dramatic plays, and circus. It offered a taste of life on the old frontier to an America that was rapidly industrializing. Residents of the crowded urban centers flocked to Buffalo Bill's show in order to live for a moment in the Wild West. Within his show, Cody established the modern superstar system more than anyone before or since. For a short season, Cody fulfilled that superstar role singularly; but he soon found his equal in a female star with whom he profitably shared the world stage during the final decades of the nineteenth century and on into the first decades of the twentieth century. Cody's very capable and personable manager-agent, Nate Salsbury, discovered Mrs. Butler (aka Phoebe Ann Mosey), and signed her to a prominent role in the show. The two weapons experts had different natures, but they liked each other and worked well together. Cody might have fulfilled a role as a type of surrogate father figure to Phoebe.

Once onboard the Wild West Show, Mrs. Butler adopted a stage name, Annie Oakley, with the Oakley possibly taken from a district in nearby Cincinnati or from a relative. She dropped Phoebe altogether in favor of her middle name, which she modified into a soft and friendly Annie. Annie Oakley stepped out professionally for the first time in Louisville, in front of seventeen thousand paid viewers. Thereafter, she only missed five performances in her career (much like the sports iron men Cal Ripken and Brett Favre), four of them due to an incidence of blood poisoning that nearly took her young life. (From this point forward in the story, I refer to her not as Phoebe or Mrs. Butler, but as Annie.)

The show's transportation entourage was comprised of eighty-two railcars holding a retinue of five hundred live animals and actors. Performances numbered more than a hundred annually. They featured reenactments of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and an attack on a settler's cabin, the Grand Entry of the Rough Riders of the World, and the Deadwood stagecoach robbery, as well as riding tricks and, of course, several demonstrations of shooting skills. Remarkably, American natives participated at a time when the Indian Wars were still in progress. Several had even recently opposed General Custer at Little Big Horn in the Montana Territory. Some of these native participants were already well known, such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The show's fame could readily be seen during the 1883 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago – known as the White City. Cody opened directly across from the fair's main entrance, thereafter easily holding his own against a world's fair that drew twenty-eight million paid visitors when the population of the nation was well under one hundred million.

Neither a housekeeper nor a liberationist, Annie was a professional performer who practiced high standards of personal femininity, morality, and fashion. She stated: "God intended women to be outside as well as men, and they do not know what they are missing when they stay cooped up in the house enjoying themselves with a novel." She successfully avoided being manipulated by advocates of either of the extreme beliefs of what a woman should be. She was a career high-achiever as well as a reserved Victorian lady. She moved the bar higher for womankind when she tastefully, uniquely, and subtly combined the two roles. An example of Annie's practical, center political position is that she favored only educated women being allowed to vote rather than full suffrage, but at the same time she advocated that all women be trained in the handling of weapons. Her advocacy on behalf of women and guns went as far as providing female firearms training and then encouraging her graduate students to remain armed beyond the classroom.

Her life was a living proclamation of the Second Amendment. She taught 15,000 women, free of charge, how to shoot a gun during her seven years of "retirement" living in South Carolina. Although I was unable to find any direct quotes on the subject, Annie lived the Second Amendment and could not have conceived of a time in America when it would be under threat of extinction or severely restricted. She openly said that all schools should have a firing range and provide firearms lessons in sport and self-defense for both sexes. Gun-free zones may have inadvertently converted our schools into easy killing fields. A modification of Annie's concept may be a reasonable way to protect against and deter violence in our largely unarmed schools. Some education corporations are training and arming their staff and making available limited containment weaponry. A few schools employ an armed professional (usually active, off-duty, or retired police) to supplement the entrance scanners for metal detection. Presently, all schools are forced to rely on an inhospitable maze of internal and external locked doors and corridors while advising students and staff to hunker-down in an active shooter scenario. An approach that is today's lame duck-and-cover (related to atomic bomb survival in the 1950s) equivalent to reducing the casualties inflicted by the presence of heavily armed mass murderers. We all want our children to be safe when out of our care at school, so maybe this is another area in which Annie has something to offer us today.

Annie was especially concerned with living above reproach and projecting an image of modesty; some say she was obsessed with maintaining that image. Her motivations had multiple sources: the shame from her abuse by the "wolves," living a man's role in a man's world, engagements in seedy venues like burlesque and vaudeville establishments, a job that was literally under the lights and open to public scrutiny, and finally her natural sense of decency formed during a Quaker childhood. She sewed her own conservative stage outfits, avoided the noisy nightlife, rarely drank, and even left instructions in her will that her body was to be prepared only by a female undertaker. She scrupulously guarded her reputation from suspicion. The most overwhelming challenge to her legacy blindsided Annie in 1903 when she was no longer traveling with the Wild West Show. Sensation-seeking Hearst-owned newspapers reported the incredible. She was said to have been arrested in Chicago for stealing a black man's trousers in order to finance a cocaine purchase! In actuality, it was a seedy woman who foolishly used Annie's name during the arrest. Without any fact-checking, Hearst ran the farcical story nationally.

Annie was devastated, but she was not incapacitated. Unsatisfied with quiet letters of apology and simple retractions, she sought full absolution through the court system from all fifty-five responsible newspapers. Hearst aggressively resisted providing any remuneration and further attempted to dig-up dirt to smear her and thus discredit her court testimonies. He found none. It took six years and most of her savings, and it required personal appearances in every courtroom, but she won all except one suit. Because of her earlier experiences, she hated injustice and anything that kept people down. She was fueled by righteous anger. This series of legal actions remains the largest personal injury tort in American judicial history. It was the most intense battle of her career and visibly aged her and reduced her life savings. Throughout her life, she was determined never to lose her reputation and never to return to poverty. The fight against Hearst newspapers involved elements of both of these motivations, but in very real terms she demonstrated that she emphasized her name above her purse.

Decades prior to cause-based events like Farm Aid or the Concert for Bangladesh, and well before there were celebrity spokespeople representing every conspicuous disease, Annie was supporting tuberculosis victims through personal financial contributions and heightening its visibility through uncompensated public appearances. She had a vast collection of precious metal awards earned over a lifetime of competition; that is, until she melted them and used the proceeds to build a sanitarium in memory of her two sisters who died of the disease. Annie's roles as benefactor, philanthropist, and teacher were always performed quietly and with discretion. It's for these reasons they are often overlooked or underplayed by biographers, who mostly focus on her overarching fame as a sportswoman. After her death, it was discovered that Annie had given away her entire fortune to assist her family, sponsor girls through college, support orphans, and fund charities. Frank once summarized their charity work in the following manner: "It is the brotherhood of mankind to find what the grief is and help where you can."

I've not offered any specifics regarding her many adventures with Cody's show, but one is illustrative of Annie's gentle politics. While she was touring Europe with the Wild West Show, a royal command performance was ordered by Britain's Queen Victoria. After the show, the Prince of Wales, Edward Albert, desired to meet her and summoned her to the royal box. He was widely known as an immoral wife-cheater. Annie deliberately broke protocol and shook long-suffering Princess Alexandra's hand before his. In doing so, she stated, "I'm an American and in America, ladies come first." A possible second motivating factor might have been that Annie was frequently snubbed by the men-only British sporting clubs; thus, she would have seamlessly executed a subtle double point.

During the Spanish-American War, she made the following offer to President McKinley:

I for one feel confident that your good judgment will carry America safely through without war. But in case of such an event, I am ready to place a company of fifty lady sharpshooters at your disposal. Every one of them will be an American; and as they will furnish their arms and ammunition, will be little, if any, expense to the government.

During Teddy Roosevelt's presidential term, she made another offer to organize a women's regiment in which she was willing to actively serve. T.R. declined, which is somewhat surprising and inconsistent, because later during WWI, he approached a reluctant President Wilson with a similar request for himself. As an alternative during the First World War, Annie began attending the army camps on her own initiative as a volunteer, inspiring the troops with a combination of skill performances and training sessions. After the war, she raised money for the Red Cross, visited wounded soldiers, and gave charitable exhibitions for their entertainment. She said later in life that this time was one of greater fulfillment for her than her time spent with the Wild West Show.

The professional lives of Annie, Frank, and Buffalo Bill demanded almost continuous travel by all available means of transportation – train, auto, and ship. In October of 1901, one of the show's two extensive trains collided head-on with another, unaffiliated train. The cost to the show was nearly incalculable even though there was no loss of human life. After some delay, the show was performing again, but the financial losses from the accident – when combined with the declining interest from changed times – eventually led to its closure. During the wreck, Annie was violently thrown from her berth as she slept. Initially reported as having died in the crash, she had actually been carried by Frank to a temporary hospital. She suffered some paralysis, required several surgeries, and lost a year and a half of her life to convalescence before returning to her career. Stress-related to the accident had two immediate effects: her hair turned white and she retired from Cody's show.

A second serious travel-related accident occurred in November of 1922 when a car the Butlers were driving flipped over and crushed Annie's hip and leg. She was forced to wear a steel leg brace and to walk with the aid of a cane the reminder of her life. Nothing short of death seemed able to slow sixty-two-year-old Annie for long. Beginning late that year, she was again setting marksmanship records and winning competitions against much younger opponents. On a summer afternoon in Long Island, the petite sharpshooter gave the last public exhibition of her skills during which she never missed a shot.

Death did claim Annie four years later while at home in her sleep. She'd returned to the area of her youth in North Star in Darke County, Ohio, where she was cared for until the end by several nieces. The home is gone now, but a marker has been placed at the location. Her tombstone in Brock Cemetery reads simply: "Annie Oakley, At Rest, 1926." When death separated Annie from Frank at age sixty-six, Frank stopped eating and, in just over two weeks, joined her in a companion grave setting. They died that November with their integrity fully intact and their fame still operative; neither life nor death had diminished their reputations.

Will Rogers later remarked of Annie's life: "Nobody took her place. There was only one. ...And, when I think of Phoebe Ann, I remember it's not what you do that makes you, it's what you are." During her lifetime, she was idolized globally by millions as America's Sweetheart. Educators considered Annie Oakley a role model of character and success. I offer her life as one with special value for today as well. Many liberal commentators speak sneeringly of Sarah Palin "doing her Annie Oakley thing" as an attempted insult, when in fact it's high compliment, proving it's best to know the full historical context before attempting to attach negative sentiments. (Their misuse of the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe's fictional protagonist, Uncle Tom, as an intended slander is another example of uneducated, racist labeling as he is a Christlike martyr of noble character.)

Annie is universally remembered as a symbol of the Old West who epitomized the capable, independent frontier woman, yet she never permanently lived farther west than Ohio, the place where she began and where she remains. Larger than her associated Western legacy is her life motto, which she lived and frequently shared: "Aim high." Les Brown, the author of Live Your Dreams, wasn't speaking directly of Annie when he wrote: "Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit. ...Shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you'll land in the stars." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it just a bit differently, "If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it." Their words surely support Annie's motto and her legacy.

...You are the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:14)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Annie insisted on spelling the Mosey family name as Mozee, while her brothers adopted Moses. Other spellings have also been recorded. This interesting to the extent that there remains speculation on whether her family had Jewish roots. I found no clear resolution, but do note that another of this book's heroines, a generation later, shares the name Moses as in Eva Moses Kor ("We Are More Than Our Pain"). Both Eva and Phoebe were unusually small in stature as was another heroine and expert in the use of firearms, Kimberly Munley (See "The Training Takes Over"). These three female protagonists demonstrate the truth in the old western-oriented expression: "Dynamite comes in small packages."
Russell Stendal

But You Care, Don't You?

When a man's ways please the Lord... (Proverbs 16:7)

The window for openly evangelizing in Colombia, South America began to violently slam shut in the late 1970s. Farming, which was still the country's largest industry, became committed to the production of cocaine, marijuana, and heroin. Drugs were fast on their way to becoming the dominant factor in the nation's economy and, shamefully, the primary market was not domestic; rather, it was the United States. Simultaneously, the country's population experienced severe fractionalizing and headed into anarchy; and things are still much the same today. The numerous sociopolitical breakdowns consisted of primitive indigenous Indians, rural subsistence farmers, national military, drug-lord organized paramilitaries, left-wing factions like FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest one), tribal-based anti-Christian terrorists, narcotics-trafficking cartels – referred to as the Mafia (with corrupt police officers and bribed drug enforcement officials in tow) – and insurgent anti-government guerrillas backed by Communist immigrants from Cuba. Colombia has been described as an ideological jungle with each group striving against the other – often through violent means – for control and power in order to impose its own rapacious agenda on the nation and appropriate whatever monies are available. Drugs were the source of substantial loose cash, and thus an easy means to finance the conflicting ends.

Nearly a thousand pastors, priests, and missionaries were forced out of the country at this time. Entire denominations abandoned Colombia; the few that stayed became tangled in deep compromises with various elements of the pervasive drug trade. One guerilla leader was confirmed as responsible for the deaths of four hundred pastors, holding the deadliest record in modern Christian history. It's believed the torture techniques used by some of the criminal factions had their origins in the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions that once operated in Colombia and its neighboring regions.

A single Christian family remained uncompromised and, despite the threats, were determined to stay. By remaining, one family member in particular eventually achieved the rare status of modest acceptance by all the factions and was thus able to move relatively freely among them. The ease of access and general acceptance had not come easily, and it had not come without exacting considerable personal cost. He maintains this status, despite the ever-shifting political landscape. This unique trust was extended to a man of many talents and tasks: writer, electronics technician, commercial fisherman and farmer, pilot, missionary, publisher, land developer, Bible translator, radio broadcast personality, pastor and preacher, lecturer and teacher, ministry founder and executive president, corporate board member, filmmaker, and always, family man. He's a gringo from Minnesota by the name of Russell Martin Stendal.

How Russell arrived in Colombia has become the stuff of family legend and missionary lore. At the age of four, he and his dad viewed a picture book about South America titled The Awakening Valley. Photos depicting the hard life of Indians in Colombia arrested his attention. Russell questioned as to why things were so bad and what they could do to help. Then came the most challenging question, a personal one: "You care, don't you, Dad?" As a response, he was told about people known as missionaries who were called by God to provide foreign assistance. Without waiting for bedtime prayer, Russell immediately knelt in the family room and prayed for God to call his family to become missionaries committed to helping the Colombian Indians find a better life. Upon rising from his knees, Russell wondered if they would be able to leave the next morning. Departure day did eventually come, but it was four years later. At the age of eight, Russell – the oldest child – and his four other family members were on their way to Colombia as missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Soon the Wycliffe jungle pilots were young Russell's heroes. Fifty years later, four generations of the Stendal family are still in Colombia, continuing to fulfill their ever-expanding objective.

Their mission outreach began with the primitive Kogi Indians of the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountain Range in Northern Colombia. The Kogi tribe was one of the first to make contact with white Europeans via the Spanish explorers of the sixteenth century. They were consistently overlooked, however, for the next four hundred years, leaving their ancient way of life undisturbed. This was due to a combination of their harsh, remote location and a culture that forbade communication and contact outside of the tribe on penalty of death. Until recently, they were still living a Stone Age lifestyle. The Stendals' first attempted contact with the Kogi was through a non-Kogi Indian who was multilingual and willing to act as interpreter. True to the tribe's standing reputation, he was poisoned when the tribe learned of his work. The family eventually gained acceptance through a combination of two unique circumstances with key tribe members, both involving miracles of God's healing and timing. God had to open the door that no man could open.

Missionaries are often accused by secular anthropologists of displacing the natives from their supposed idyllic paradise-like lifestyles. These indigenous peoples are, however, rarely living in anything close to Eden; more often they are barely subsisting under barbarous circumstances. Kogi life has been characterized by extremely high infant mortality, short life expectancy, numerous serious diseases and worm infections, malnutrition, and drug addiction to a cocaine-based traditional concoction. They were the poster children for the deprivations that first motivated four-year-old Russell after viewing the geography book. In light of the chaotic political situation existing in Colombia since the 1980s, the Kogis' living standard was left unimproved. Had the Kogi managed to evade their primitive conditions, they would have been subject to elimination, manipulation, or exploitation by the many warring factions swirling around them – all of them having far more power and consequence then a primeval tribe could have withstood. Missionary assistance from the Stendal family provided the Kogi with a level of aid and protection not otherwise available, even from their government when it was intentional about providing it, and it was rarely so disposed.

The family believed in ministering to the Indians' bodies as well as to their spirits. Ministering to their bodies meant helping them acquire skills in farming and fishing and education on hygiene, health, and production of safe drinking water. Improving the lives of the Indians was their original and continuing primary focus, but being able to minister to the Kogi and other tribes first meant gaining their acceptance. Once accomplished, it meant helping them find their place within all the competing group identities of modern Colombian society. As has been so true in other times and locales, the native Indians were at the distant end of society's pecking order. The Stendals, however, gave the Kogi a singularly great gift: Russell's dad completed the translation of the Bible into their language. He delivered it to the chief and proceeded to read certain passages. Upon hearing it, the chief proclaimed to his people that they had just received the truth and that the word-of-mouth myths passed down among them for generations had become distorted and were no longer accurate or acceptable to follow.

Young Russell gained his missions-related jungle skills early by regularly helping his parents, especially his dad, and by living at times with the tribe. As their aid progressed, they noted that the Kogi were maturing and, on a larger scale, that Colombia was changing. For their missions work to go deeper into Colombian society beyond the Kogi tribe, Russell's ministry would require a change of means and direction.

Russell became a bush pilot while still in his teens, and a series of small planes served to assist him with several of his varied new undertakings. At times, these included transporting people or supplies. Later, they developed into dropping parachutes containing Bibles, radios, and medicine into remote village locations or delivering parts for transmitters, towers, or antennae on any one of forty mountaintops within his private, radio evangelism network. One plane served for four years and came to be fondly known as the Pink Panther for its color and its animated exploits. This 1953 Cessna has since been retired and can be viewed in restored condition at the Voice of the Martyrs campus in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Flying small, low-powered aircraft in the mountains – often alone, at night, and in areas known for tropical storms – served to yield a series of nearly unbelievable death-defying experiences from which Russell was safely delivered. These would be difficult to accept without factoring in divine intervention. They include being targeted in a crossfire between two jet fighters, multiple engine failures, midair fires, automatic weapon hits from the Mafia, frequent collisions with chickens and trees, crash landings, night landings in the jungle, and hazardous grass landing strips; all with unfailing, miraculous safe endings and all transpiring with used parts installed by unqualified mechanics. These close air escapes continue to be the status quo as the ministry still employs the use of small planes in dangerous conditions on into its fourth generation. Russell says that his jungle pilot experiences are the fulfillment of his boyhood dream of an exciting life, but that there are times when it just plain gets too exciting.

Early on the morning of August 14, 1983, the twenty-seven-year-old bush pilot was planning to depart the rural village of Canyo Jabon in southeastern Colombia. He thought he'd be leaving the same way he'd arrived, by flying out in his Cessna 170. Russell was there for a business meeting to transfer his start-up fishing business to the local Indians as a benevolent gesture. It was then that his life went on a 142-day unscheduled sabbatical. It was the time and place of his first kidnapping. He'd often been threatened with kidnappings, but he had successfully avoided them thus far. This day he was unable to do so, and he was held longer than any of his subsequent captivity experiences. Marxist guerillas sold drugs, fleeced the locals, and kidnapped Americans in order to finance their long-running anti-government rebellion. Now they'd set another trap and marked Russell as their target. They mistook the young pilot for a rich North American gringo who could be cashiered for some big money.

Russell was forced to lay down his fully loaded, double-barrel twenty-gauge shotgun and surrender without a fight in order to save his captured friend from being killed in retaliation for any lack in his cooperation. After securing Russell, the insurgents spitefully sprayed his cherished Cessna with automatic weapons fire to ensure he'd never fly it again. They then raced upriver into a secure jungle area under their control. Unknown to his Communist captors, Russell had a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver strapped to his left ankle under his pant leg. With the first distraction, he fired the handgun at his captors until depleting the cylinder. It was a brief firefight that wounded his guard but failed to gain his freedom. From that point forward, he was always partially tied and vigilantly guarded. His home became remote hideaways with frequent moves to secret new locations.

Constantly looking for escape opportunities but never finding them, Russell switched to a long-term strategy. His new plan was to make the best of a bad situation. He would take his captors captive! The empty days and nights of captivity became times of prayer and meditation. As he closely observed his captors, he realized their lives were more prisoner-like than was his life. Russell was free inside, even if tethered on the outside; and there was a good chance a cash ransom would be paid and he'd be released to return to his wife and children. By contrast, most of his kidnappers were men and women who'd been taken from their families as young boys and girls, given weapons, and expected to dedicate themselves to a terrorist lifestyle, always with the distant promise of a worker's paradise after the final victory. They were threatened with death themselves, or death to their families, should they try to quit the movement. The guerillas were physical captives, but more importantly, they were spiritual captives. Russell was at liberty inside because he'd embraced the truth of the good news which had given him real freedom. He came to realize God's immediate solution for the guerillas' painful predicament was him.

Russell determined that taking his captors captive could be done by a two-point personal approach. First, he would quietly engage the insurgents in personal conversations on controversial but substantive issues of interest to them. He readily found those issues to be creation, America, President Ronald Reagan, the Bible, Christianity, God, Communism, and capitalism. But, of course, his positions were always the polar opposite of his captors, so caution was a vital convention to honor so as not to push too hard too fast. Second, he would begin to share his life experiences, and he determined to be candid with them about every aspect. His approach gained immediate acceptance, and he was provided with writing materials. Russell began committing his story more formally to paper. It would be the book he'd always intended to write but had never started.

In the book, he emphasized his life purpose, his beliefs, and most importantly, his mistakes. Doing so engendered an aspect of human frailty to which his kidnappers related. The mistakes shared included the times when he let his father fully blame a failure on his partner even though Russell shared the guilt; compromised his piloting work through an arrangement with a drug operator; was angry at God; overextended his credit, got deep into debt, and presumed God would fix it; made key decisions without sufficient prayer preparation; and agreed to the promise of some big money in exchange for transporting a mafia personality in his plane. Russell even shared about some of the critical disagreements he'd had with his native Colombian wife, Marina.

When the past caught up with the present, Russell was writing of daily experiences with his captors. The book became completely coincident with his captivity and contained diary-like dialogue current with the unfolding events and emotions of his ongoing captivity. The Communists became so engaged in monitoring his book – even noting the inclusion of their names – that they built a desk and obtained a typewriter for his use. They asked to read the pages while still fresh, and they guaranteed they would preserve the whole of it for him if he would also translate the English version into their native Spanish. Russell likened his experience to Scheherazade and her alleged storybook titled One Thousand and One Nights. It helped assure him of a daily grant of life, just as it did for the fictional Scheherazade who was able to extend her life one night at a time by entertaining the Persian king with her ongoing storytelling before he slept.

Russell was now permitted occasional gift packages from his family, and early on he received his Bible. He immediately began filling much of his day with Bible reading, but he also developed a unique practice of meditating on one psalm each day. He tied the number of the psalm to the number of his captivity day; for example, he read Psalm 96 on his ninety-sixth day of captivity. Russell told his captors repeatedly that they had kidnapped the wrong man. They assumed his having an airplane made him a rich American businessman instead of a poor missionary just living among them while trying to help their people. After many passing weeks with no ransom forthcoming, his captors attempted to break Russell psychologically; this is a technique called brainwashing. During this process, he was fed continuous lies about his family in addition to stories designed to cause fear, all the while being denied sufficient sleep.

He informed them that they had only two choices: kill him or to let him go for whatever modest amount of ransom his family could afford. Asked by the guerillas if he was afraid to die, he replied he was prepared for it. The day Russell reached Psalm 142 in his daily reading, he was blindfolded and transported late at night to an unknown location several hours away. After stopping and having his blind removed, he saw his younger brother, Chaddy, with a mediator. His release had been negotiated for fifty-five thousand dollars, not the million originally demanded. The Communists claimed they'd lost money by holding him. Russell had consistently warned his captors that God would not reward them because they were interfering with His work. In addition to his freedom, Russell received three more pleasant surprises: that before his kidnapping, Russell had rescued an elderly woman who, unknown to him, was the mother of a guerilla leader who helped influence his release; that the guerillas extended a promise his family could operate in their areas – known as red zones – without any further trouble from them; and that the family was able to repair his damaged Cessna during his incarceration.

Russell's redemption wasn't the conclusion it appeared to be; it was a beginning in disguise. He'd come to know many of these men personally, even winning their respect and friendship. It was these relationships – and later those additional ones gained through other kidnappings and difficult experiences with drug cartels, military, and various factions – that eventually led to the freehand he gained in traveling throughout Colombia and in accessing all people groups. Later, some of his captors became Christians and joined him in witnessing to those still in spiritual bondage. The truth of this situation was well illustrated in the title of a Richard Wurmbrand book that Russell had read and that he was applying in his ministry: Jesus: Friend to Terrorists. By working His will through Russell in unexpected ways, God was taking the captors captive, one person at a time and, eventually, one faction at a time. It was not Russell's idea or plan after all, it was God's. God had placed Russell in a teachable position and accepted his willingness to be used in any circumstance. Russell could not be fully used when he was still running with his big missionary plans and ministry projects; he had to learn to discern where God was moving and simply move with Him. He learned to do what Henry Blackaby calls "experiencing God."

Russell says,

God taught me how to be a true missionary for Him. I began to react toward problems and adversity as opportunities to learn important things and as opportunities for God to use me to bring glory to Himself. My life changed to one of victory in Jesus Christ. I still have problems, difficulties, and even an occasional defeat; but now I can clearly see the design and purpose that God has for my life. If I have the right attitude, God can reign over everything that happens in my life and teach me something useful from even the most difficult experiences.

During this first kidnapping, as well as the others to follow, Russell was a pawn between several conflicting ideologies. He sometimes must have felt like Elijah on Mount Carmel as he demanded of the compromising multitudes: "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him" (1 Kings 18:21).

Russell titled the book written during his first kidnapping Rescue the Captors. It's still regularly printed, distributed, and read. It presently has two sequels which are often casually referred to as Rescue II and Rescue III. This series, and the many other books he's since written and continues to write, are serving as a bridge to those many lost, captive, and confused men and women in Colombia and beyond, including the Kogi Indian tribe whose plight first attracted the Stendals' attention back in far-away Minnesota. His writings, along with the success and admirable example of the Stendal family, were noticed by the international church. Many of Russell's projects are in the realm of restricted information and cannot be shared publicly. Collectively, these successes helped to draw other Christian workers back to Colombia; however, the men and women who are converted from within the warring factions of Colombian society often develop into the most effective and motivated team members.

The quality of life in the Kogi Indian tribe has greatly improved in many ways, just as young Russell prayed for; but they remain resistant to the gospel, with most retaining their primitive spiritualist beliefs and continuing to persecute Christian believers who approach too insistently. Additionally, the long internal conflicts and the ongoing drug trade have created new problems for the Colombians, with millions of refugees displaced from their homes, villages, and lands. Death threats, selective assassinations, kidnappings, and extortion are still prevalent, and, in fact, seem to be growing toward that degree of violence experienced by Christian workers in the late 1970s. One former FARC guerrilla, who had served the Communist cause since the age of fourteen, said:

My indoctrination led me to think that everything relating to Christianity needed to be abolished, so I killed many Christians. I displaced them from their lands and persecuted them, and I wouldn't allow them to come together in their churches.

The Stendal family remains in Colombia and continues to expand its ministry despite their staff and family experiencing the likes of regular kidnappings, death threats, and aviation failures. Their story is ongoing, as illustrated by two fresh newsletters sitting on my desk. In the first, Russell states matter-of-factly: "We were twice lined up to be shot by unidentified irregular forces since the last mailing." In the other: "I expect to be released from the kidnapping soon." The ministry has benefited by linking many of its projects to two organizations: Voice of the Martyrs in Bartlesville, Oklahoma and Spirit of Martyrdom in Clarkdale, Arizona. VOM is the much larger of the two and has as one of its goals finding and helping people – like Russell's family – who are in the midst of persecution, but who are willing to stay despite everything they encounter. Meanwhile, Russell continues coordinating the distribution of thousands of Bibles, building radio stations to broadcast the Word into hard-to-reach jungles, airing Bible studies, translating the Scriptures into native languages, mediating truces, and working his God-ordained relationships within the many societal factions.

Even though many seemingly insurmountable obstructions remain, Russell effectively leverages his unusual earned immunity. First Corinthians 9:19 and 22 serve well to summarize the path chosen by Russell and his family: For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Their long dedication is presently being rewarded as they witness a strong regional revival in Southwest Colombia and a general revival throughout the national military. That same guerilla quoted above has now met Jesus and he says, "Instead of being a messenger of hatred, I am now a messenger of peace."

Currently, three generations of Stendals continue to do the possible: sharing the gospel. While God does the impossible: softening the hearts of men to receive it. When the Stendals arrived in Colombia in 1964, less than half of one percent of the population was considered evangelical Christian; as of the end of 2014, evangelical Christians comprised twenty-five percent of the population.

...He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. (Proverbs 16:7)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Remaining current with Russell's on-going activities is not easily do-able as he does not have a website because much of what he is involved in is understandably confidential. What I have shared is past tense and public knowledge. Just prior to Uncommon Character going to print, a newsletter arrived from Russell wherein he reviewed the previous year's projects, beyond his fiftieth year of Colombian-based ministry. Among the updates it contained, he relayed the following information pertinent to this story: Over five hundred of his Colombian coworkers disappeared during the most recent five-year period, all presumed murdered. The man Russell called his most determined enemy (some say the worst terrorist in Colombia) because he'd been attempting to kill him for thirty years, became his friend. Russell won sufficient favor with the FARC guerilla leadership and Colombian government officials that he was accepted as their spiritual consultant. As such, he persuaded both sides to declare a nationwide ceasefire without an expiration date and to subsequently meet in neutral Cuba in an effort to formalize a peace agreement. The multigenerational Stendal family is also extending its outreach into neighboring South American countries by following similar strategies to those it has effectively employed for so long in their adopted home of Colombia.
Kimberly Munley

The Training Takes Over

I will surely go with you... (Judges 4:9)

Where does America get these heroes?" This question was asked by a navy admiral in the movie adaptation of James Michener's 1953 Korean War novel, The Bridges at Toko-Ri. The admiral was reflecting on airmen who – at the cost of their lives – had just destroyed several heavily defended bridges. It remains a valid question, given our continued history of providing the world with so many heroes. Since this century's Middle Eastern wars, the answer has to include Killeen, Texas. It's similar in many ways to other heartland cities recently platted from former farmland. The city is home to a hundred and twenty-five thousand residents. It's been described as having quiet cul-de-sacs and peaceful neighborhoods connected by wide, tree-lined streets. Killeen once differentiated itself as a train crossing – taking its name from railroad man Frank P. Killeen; today it does so by hosting Fort Hood army base.

The base is one of Americas and the world's largest military facilities as measured by its three hundred and forty square miles and combat-ready force numbering in the tens of thousands – including III Corps, known for over one hundred years as "America's Hammer." It is where twenty-two-year-old Private Elvis Presley received his tank and sharpshooter training prior to being assigned to Germany; at the time of the story, it was populated by men and women with Afghanistan and Iraq deployment histories. The mood on the base and in the city is often somber, with flags at half-staff in tribute to the courageous, deceased defenders who were once stationed on the base and whose families often still live in the host city. Unsurprisingly, even in times of peace, the base loses many young men and women to training-related fatalities because of the high numbers of recruits undergoing basic training as well as seasoned veterans exercising for missions.

On Thursday, November 6, 2009, all flags remained in this honorary position for an extended period as fourteen dead and thirty-two wounded victims of a traitor turned mass murderer were mourned locally, as well as across a nation that was, thankfully, still not calloused towards terror-induced loss. Deadly acts of hatred had been premeditated against innocent base staff by radical Islamist Nidal Malik Hasan. His beliefs were well known but were also deliberately overlooked or excused. His actions proved again that errant political correctness not only distorts truth and disguises evil, but it also kills the innocent.

The cowardly domestic terrorist's killing spree was interrupted by a petite, long-haired blond mother who lived near the base in one of those pleasant neighborhoods. As a result, Killeen is now recorded in our history and registered in our memories with opposing acts of violent hatred and utmost heroism; where the former abound, by the grace of God, so does the latter.

Sergeant Kimberly Munley was an army veteran employed as a Department of Defense police officer in Killeen. After moving there, she took on much more than the usual soccer mom's responsibilities. Before Killeen, she spent five years as a police officer in Carolina Beach, North Carolina where her hero, Kim's father, was mayor. Possessing a small build like our other two feminine heroines, Annie Oakley and Eva Kor, Kim was just over five feet tall and barely a hundred pounds. At the time, she was thirty-four, the mother of two young boys, an advanced firearms instructor, and a civilian member of Fort Hood's Special Reaction Team (SRT). She completed prevention training for active shooter scenarios after the April 16, 2007 mass murder of thirty-two at Virginia Tech University, where, on HaShoah Memorial Day, Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu saved many of his students' lives at the cost of his life.

Kim was nearby having her patrol car tuned and washed when a 9-1-1 call reported shots being fired at Fort Hood's Soldier Readiness Processing Center (SRPC). The SRPC was not on the sergeant's regular beat, but she was familiar with the facility as it was located only five minutes from her home. Without waiting for backup or authorization, she headed directly for the base to become the first law enforcement official on the scene. Kim arrived in just three minutes, including the time required to cover the final distance on foot.

As she approached the SRPC building, the sound of gunfire was ringing in the air. Immediately, a soldier ran out a doorway with a gunman pursuing him with automatic weapons fully engaged. The shooter, who was wearing the uniform of a United States Army major, was still acting-out the details of his planned killing spree. Before Kim arrived, he had sprayed more than two hundred bullets, killing thirteen and non-lethally hitting thirty other innocent individuals – all performed in a deluded act of blind subservience to his bloody religion. Still on a rapid and open approach, Kim fired at Hasan, who wheeled around and charged her while emptying his two handguns with reckless, deadly intent. Kim took bullets and fragments to her wrist and both thighs; but she stood her ground, willing herself not to fall. Managing to remain calm enough to aim numerous times, she carefully placed four rounds into the terrorist's center mass – perfectly executing her training under conditions that should have caused anyone to faint or err. She fired until Hasan faltered from his wounds, and then Kim lost conscienceless. Her actions delayed Hasan sufficiently to permit Sergeant Mark Todd to arrive on the scene where he also exchanged a series of bullets with the terrorist until Hasan fell unconscious, paralyzed from the waist down. The killing spree had ended.

It was like a showdown from a Texas-based Wild West movie, and indeed the time was just past high noon. Three-time Academy Award winner Gary Cooper, who played multiple film heroes, would have been humbled by Kim's authentic execution of his High Noon performance. That day in Killeen, reality surpassed fiction. Studies verify that for someone in Kim's position, time seems to shift into slow motion with more seeming to pass than actually does. From the assassin's first shot to Kim's last, authorities say the whole foul act transpired in less than ten minutes with the final showdown under a minute.

The radios and scanners around Bell County quickly announced: "Officer down." Brooke Beato, a close friend of Kim's whose husband is an army captain stationed at the base, said she was not surprised as she heard Kim's name on the broadcast. "I couldn't believe what had happened; but when I heard what she did, I believed it because of who she is – I know her. It was just like her, she carries herself with confidence." The base commander, Lieutenant General Robert Cone, summed it up as "an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer; she walked up and engaged him." Kim executed a tactic in sync with the lessons that emerged from the Virginia Tech shootings. At VTU, first responders erroneously waited for additional backup before interacting with the shooter. As a member of the base SRT, Kim was taught that aggressive action against a shooter results in fewer victims. Hers were straightforward procedures intended to be executed by one or more groups; Kim performed them solo. That's how she acquired her nickname: Mighty Mouse. (The original, diminutive Mighty Mouse was a beloved after-school televised cartoon during the 1950s. Much smaller physically, he was in most other ways like a contemporary TV hero, the man of steel, Superman. See the associated story on Stetson Kennedy.)

Hasan managed to survive Kim and Mark's bullets, so he eventually went to trial. Although court-martialed, found guilty on forty-five counts of premeditated murder, and condemned to death, he presently (as of the publication of this third edition) waits on death-row for the time when his sentence may be fully executed. Unrepentant and looking like a bearded Muslim imam, he writes to ISIS soliciting their formal recognition and reward for his foul deeds while continuing to proclaim his hateful indoctrinations through the media. He is non-contrite, thinks himself heroic, and continues to support radical Islam. By comparison, after two surgeries Kim was out of the hospital in a week and was once more "to the rescue, ready to save the day," as in the animated superhero's slogan. The real-life Killeen hero described what she called a "confusing and chaotic" day; detailing the related events, she added:

When I got shot, it felt like a muscle being torn out of my leg. I never lost consciousness. I wanted to stay awake and know everything that was going on. Things are getting better day by day. Emotionally, I'm just hoping the rest of the officers, the injured, and the families of the deceased are healing as well. The training does take over. In that particular incident, we didn't have much time to think. I know it's going to be a slow process to get back to my normal life, but I know that I can accomplish it and get back to what I do and love to do on a daily basis.

Like so many of the true heroes in this book, Kim wishes she could have acted even faster to save more lives. From the hospital, she modified her Twitter bio to read: "I live a blessed life and thank the Lord every day for it. ...[It's] a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully at night knowing I may have made a difference in someone's life." She knows life's secret: Live one day at a time as though it may be your last. For thirteen people that day was unexpectedly their last.

Fast-forward to April 2, 2014: same base, town, and hospital; but different killer, different victims, and different hero. This time, unfortunately, it was one whose performance day was his last. Unarmed, Sergeant First Class Daniel M. Ferguson blocked the door that otherwise would have admitted Puerto Rican-born Specialist Ivan Lopez into the heavily occupied room beyond. In so doing, Daniel became the second fatality in Lopez's spree, but he'd prevented many easy kills of his coworkers. He forced Lopez to take his spree to the streets, first on foot, then in a car where his rage claimed nineteen victims before adding himself to the list of those dead by a self-inflicted head shot.

Daniel had recently returned to the States after surviving multiple hazardous duty rotations in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, where he earned a Bronze Star. He was delighted to be back with his fiancée, enjoying the relative ease of a quiet position on a comfortable, stateside base. His small hometown in rural Florida knew Daniel as a "quiet, very respectful, bright young man who was just a well-rounded, wholesome, nice person." He was remembered as a member of the Letterman's Club, qualifying in five sports, and active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. In contrast, the man who killed Daniel was a self-proclaimed victim who faked his service injury while being jealous of those who earned them. Again, the flags around the otherwise quiet, close-knit community of Killeen were lowered to half-staff in a show of respect for their most recent fallen hero. Days after Daniel's murder, Kim posted on her Twitter address, @hope2forget30: "Never forget November 5, 2009 and April 2, 2014. God bless the victims of Fort Hood!"

In closing, I borrow the words allegedly spoken by U.S. District Judge William Young after passing a guilty judgment on another domestic terrorist serving the Islamic-fascist cause:

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom; our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we choose. Here, in this society, the very wind carries freedom. It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom so that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discreetly. It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf, have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges. We Americans are all about freedom. Because we all know that the way we treat you is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake, though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden, pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. The day after tomorrow, it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure. Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice – not war – individual justice is, in fact, being done. See that flag? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. And it always will.

Special thanks to Kim Munley and Daniel Ferguson for their proactive first defenses of our soldiers and our way of life at Fort Hood, Killeen, Texas – a home to heroes.

...So she said, "I will go with you; nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Sisera (an ancient Arabian warrior) into the hand of a woman." (Judges 4:9)

* * * *

Author's Notes: I opened this story with a reference to a paraphrased quote from the film The Bridges at Toko-Ri. The idea of applying it to herein was borrowed from two sources: a newsletter from Newt Gingrich dated Wednesday, November 11, 2009, and titled "Where Do We Get These Men and Women?" and a speech by President Reagan at a Medal of Honor ceremony for U.S. Army Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez.

In preparing Kim's story, I utilized secondary sources as opposed to primary research reports. I found conflicting details in my readings, which I have attempted to sort out for an acceptable recounting that emphasizes Kim's unique perspective. I attribute the variances to the many eye-witnesses who, having been part of an exceptionally stressful situation, contributed their views to the composite as best able. I have not attempted to offer a comprehensive retelling of the whole; however, I would be remiss if I did not mention three more heroes from that fateful November day who, although unarmed, attempted to stop Hasan: A.R. Captain John Gaffaney, civilian Michael Cahill P.A., and Reserve Specialist Logan Burnett – the first two died immediately in their efforts and the third was seriously wounded but survived.

I generally reserve the telling of Kim's story to middle school age students and older, but one time I adapted it for a fifth-grade class, primarily because its length fit the remaining timeframe. I was uncertain how it would be received so at the conclusion, I asked for short essays inviting open sharing of student impressions. To my pleasant surprise, a new sticky-point emerged; one that I had over-looked until then, but which is worth retaining. Several students related to Kim's small stature, i.e. light-weight, small, young, and short. They wrote of wanting to develop the Mighty Mouse potential within themselves; that is, to become prepared to do big things even if physically small and, maybe, to let the training take-over when required by the circumstances.

The city of Killeen had previously experienced another incident of mass murder by a deranged gunman. It occurred at lunch-hour (again, high noon) on October 16, 1991, prior to both circumstances described above. It did not, however, transpire on the army base and the heroes weren't soldiers as in the other two situations. At Luby's Café, twenty-three were killed and twenty-seven were injured when an angry George Hennard used his vehicle and two 9mm handguns in face-to-face "payback" for slights supposedly inflicted by unidentified female members of the community. At the time, it was the worst mass-shooting in our history. Again, Killeen provided the world with heroes including Tommy Vaughn who created a life-saving means of escape for many patrons by throwing his body through a solid plate window while sustaining serious injuries in the process and an unarmed, seventy-one-year-old Al Gratia who charged the shooter at the cost of his and his wife's lives.
Parable of the Overnight Success

All It Takes Is Everything

Whatever your hand finds to do... (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

What did most or all of these people have in common before they became rich and famous: Bill Gates and Andy Grove (computer technology); Tiger Woods, Brett Favre, and Michael Jordan (professional sports); Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, and Vladimir Horowitz (virtuoso instrumentalists); Bob Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, and the Beatles (song composition and musicianship); Bobby Fischer (chess mastery); Warren Buffet (financial investments); and Wolfgang Mozart (classical music)? What was the shared key to their noteworthy accomplishments?

Of the following possible factors which of them, if any, is the unknown catalyst: intelligence, luck, wealth, education, opportunity, aptitude, family, timing, connections, coaching, talent, locale, biology, or something else? Each person possessed one or more of these criteria, but no single one was common to all of these paragons. Therefore if there is a common trait to success, and there does seem to be one, it must be something else.

There is something held in common by these superior performers, as well as by most or potentially all others who exhibit remarkable proficiency in their professions. It has been called the shared rule of accomplishment. Several studies of successful people have uncovered that guideline, and much about the answer is surprising. Some of the finer points of interpretation resulting from those studies are, however, debated. For simplicity, I refer hereafter to the identity of the singular element of success as simply the rule.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines world-class as being among the best or foremost in the world, someone or something having an international standard of excellence. The rule states that ten thousand hours of practice are required prior to achieving world-class expertise in the many life-skill performance arenas, especially those of music (composing and playing an instrument), games, and sports. On average, ten thousand hours of practice equates to a ten-year period of preparation in the life of one dedicated to mastering a performance goal.

The ten-thousand-hours factor may have first been clearly identified by University of Colorado/University of Stockholm professor Dr. K. Anders Ericsson and two of his colleagues, Ralf Krampe and Clemens Tesch-Romer. These men expanded on the affiliated research of two German analysts who studied the practice habits of violin performers. Dr. Ericsson concluded that "many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of ten years." The concept was popularized by sociology writer Malcolm Gladwell in his thought-provoking book Outliers: The Story of Success wherein he labeled it the "10,000-hour rule of success." Overall conviction on the unmitigated veracity of the rule remains uneven, with a range of professional nuances offered by those previously mentioned, as well as by a host of additional professionals. Some of the more prominent are neurologist Dr. Daniel Levitin, sports authors David Epstein and Daniel Coyle, and economics author Geoffrey Colvin.

Referencing the rule in Outliers, Gladwell provided a fundamental quote, which he attributed to Dr. Levitin. It was this quote that became the catalyst for the detailed, and still unfinished, intensified discussion of the rule. The quote is as follows:

The emerging picture from such studies (of highly successful people) is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything. In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals and what have you, the number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

Understanding of the rule is furthered by acknowledging its close relation to, and endorsement of, several commonly accepted and well-polished maxims such as "practice makes perfect" and "there's no substitute for hard work." This is a premise about human achievement not dissimilar to last century's sociological debate regarding the shaping effects on human nature of heredity versus environment. To illustrate: Is a person successful due to having exceptional intelligence, appearance, or strength, or because he was born into privilege, location, or wealth? The rule can be simplified as essentially promoting practice as the dominant factor over innate talent in people who display ultimate expertise in a skill or practice. Of course, there may be a host of lesser influences involved, such as timing, mentoring, or opportunity. When considering an application of the rule, it is essential to always bear in mind that it's intended to apply only to those who have risen – or those who want to rise – to the pinnacle of their field; that is, acknowledged achievers of world-class expertise. It does not fully apply to those who are – or who want to be – simply good at what they do or those who consistently exercise their skill only for quiet, personal satisfaction off the world stage.

To gain additional understanding of the rule, it's helpful to review one recent, well-known example that is frequently cited as unusually successful within the field of popular music: the Beatles. Much like many of the other examples of dominance, they appear to have suddenly been discovered; that is, recognized by the public, with massive acceptance quickly following. The Beatles are generally reported as having burst upon the American scene in 1964 after being modestly known in England for a short time.

Gladwell and the other researchers note that closer examination reveals far more. Prior to arriving in America, they had already been together for seven years and had completed multiple extended trips to Hamburg, Germany. Beginning in 1960, they played eight-hour sets, seven days a week during which they had to overcome the twin handicaps of foreign language and a noisy work atmosphere. It's estimated that the band played over a thousand engagements, not including practice sessions and jamming with other musicians. The total number of acquired practice hours prior to 1964 and their American debut exceeded ten thousand hours. That's the rule, and that's what the successful overachievers have in common: ten thousand hours of practice at their trade prior to supposedly becoming suddenly famous (aka overnight successes).

Studies of world-class experts yield two more significant revelations noted again by Gladwell. First, the researchers didn't discover any naturals with above-average ability who floated effortlessly, cream-like to the top while not having to practice as hard as their peers. Second, they didn't discover any grinds who had below-average ability, but who worked twice as diligently as their peers in order to succeed. They only found people of average or slightly above average ability who just kept practicing without quitting until they surpassed ten thousand hours. Success followed thereafter (as determined by name recognition, income, peer appraisals, industry standards, or fame). Other factors like wealth, family support, physical stamina, and education may have permitted them to practice more hours in a shorter timeframe or with less interference and greater ease, but these weren't the reasons they excelled; it was the practice itself.

Once more in Outliers, Gladwell states:

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good. The people at the very top don't just work harder or even much harder than everyone else; they work much, much harder. Achievement is talent plus preparation...and the preparation part of the formula looms far larger than we normally assume.

We may safely conclude that an attention-grabbing career, that is, achieving extremely high expertise in a field, is not the result of random chance over which we have no control; rather – like so much in life – it's based on our deliberate choice. It's a choice appropriate when measured by our level of dedication: how much we are willing to practice, how willing we are to complete all the required preparations, what are we willing to forego in exchange?

Early in my career, I was a commuter; among the audiobooks I listened to on the daily drive to-and-from the office, were several by Earl Nightingale. I recall him sharing a story about an accomplished pianist. After a particularly fine performance, the pianist was approached by someone from the audience who exclaimed, "I'd do anything to play the piano like you do!" The pianist replied, "No, you wouldn't." Explaining further, he said: "If it were so, you would play at my level. But first, you'd have to commit the time. Time in practice is the one thing it takes – hour after hour, day after day, year after year." Doing the hard things that most people are unwilling to do is frequently the difference between the successful and all the rest.

It's okay not to invest the required ten thousand hours or ten years into an endeavor; there's no condemnation in not doing so. Or in accord with a parallel principle researched in David Epstein's book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, it's fine to make a late-in-life start at dedicated expertise after many years of trialing other shallow endeavors; doing so may even prove to be extra helpful. There are studies in the field that catalog the differences between extremely successful early-bloomers and late-bloomers. Some variances will, of course, relate to factors of personality and circumstance, but we must realize and accept that much of the final outcome results from are our decisions, our choices. We're able to achieve whatever level of success that we're willing to commit to at a given life juncture and then follow through to the desired level of accomplishment. Success comes to those who are committed to begin endeavoring especially hard at some specific point in our life. If our goal is to be highly accomplished in our field, then be encouraged – whether beginning early or late – it is within our reach to accomplish. We now have insight into how to achieve the goal. One factor may be more important than any of the others, including even natural talent, and it is therefore readily available to all takers: commitment to practice, lots of it; practice to the point where a skill becomes an integral part of our being.

...do it with your might. (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Sincere thanks and appreciation are offered sociologist and writer Malcolm Gladwell for bringing this concept (herein labeled a parable) to my attention. His ten-thousand-hour theory has been challenged by others who disagree with various elements based on contrary opinions and factors. Other authors have represented various historical individuals as becoming ultimately successful by means of extreme work commitments. Some of those individuals frequently mentioned are Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, the Williams sisters (tennis), Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandi, and Thomas Edison.

This story's core message lends itself to sharing in second-chance venues like jails, recovery centers, at-risk youth residential centers, and prisons. Presented in a positive manner, it's capable of giving hope and incentive – with care taken to prevent its misuse in unintended manners such as a rationale for failure or an instrument of condemnation.
Tommy Thompson

Exploring Inner Space

For they shall partake of the abundance of the seas... (Deuteronomy 33:19)

On Saturday, September 12, 1857, a dual paddle-wheeled steamer nearly the length of a football field was caught in a life-and-death struggle with a perfect storm hurricane off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It was the steamship Central America, under the care of the capable and likable Captain William Herndon. Aboard were five-hundred and seventy-eight passengers and crew. Nearly all of the passengers were miners who, having departed the goldfields of Northern California, were en route from a Panamanian port and continuing northerly up the long expanse of the eastern seaboard. They intended to debark at the port of New York City and, from there, return inland to homes they hadn't visited for several years.

Also on board was the largest shipment of gold in the history of the world – greater than on any of the legendary Spanish treasure ships that traveled the Caribbean seas in recent past centuries. The thirty thousand pounds of gold aboard was in every available form: dust, flake, chunk, brick, jewelry, and coin. Most of the thousands of coins were freshly produced by the new San Francisco mint. The source of the gold was the fabulous wealth that had been found and accumulated during the ten years since its discovery on January 24, 1848, by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, near today's California state capital of Sacramento. The resulting massive gold fever came to be known as the California Gold Rush, and the three hundred thousand participating prospectors were called Forty-Niners – as in 1849, the peak year. (See the related story, "Parable of the Four Farmers.")

Captain Herndon and his crew fought the one-hundred and five mph, category two storm winds valiantly; but despite their frantic maneuverings, the big ship was quickly blown far off course. On the second day, the crew's survival efforts were hampered by lost or shredded sails, a broken boiler, and severe physical exhaustion from hours of fruitless bailing. That evening at 8:00 EST, the steamer surrendered to the high seas and relentless waves; it sunk in international waters about one-hundred and sixty miles off-shore in eight thousand feet of water – a depth of two miles. The captain and crew went down with the ship, but one-hundred and fifty-three passengers were rescued and able to report their accounts of the tragedy. Hundreds of millions of dollars in gold sank with the ship to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where it lay in surprisingly tidy piles for one-hundred and thirty years.

Regardless of whether the gold was owned privately, corporately, or governmentally, most of it was intended to reach the financial markets of New York City. The loss of this extremely valuable cargo was of such a dire magnitude that it helped trigger the nationwide financial panic that ensued only one month after the sinking. At the time, physical gold and silver reserves still backed the credibility of the country's currency.

A deep, saltwater environment is very damaging to nearly every material, natural or man-made, including iron, books, wood, food, and clothing. Uniquely, it's not a problem for gold, a chemical element assigned the symbol "Au" and atomic number 79. This property extends beyond saltwater corrosion to also protect gold against high pressure and water penetration. Additionally, it can resist corrosion from acids, chemicals, impact, and time, all the while retaining its usefulness and bright yellow luster. Comprehensive resistance is one of the key reasons gold is so precious, useful, and sought after. Gold is also very dense, with a brick-sized amount weighing nearly thirty pounds. It's universally utilized in jewelry, currency, and manufacturing, as it's also malleable, bondable, conductible, and able to be melted (though not until 1,934 degrees Fahrenheit). All of these stated characteristics – plus several more unstated ones – singularly qualified gold by process of elimination as the most cherished of all precious metallic elements and assured its position at the pinnacle of worldwide monetary standards.

There are plenty of treasure hunters in this world, and gold holds a fascination level at the pinnacle of their fantasies. So, what's the problem? Just travel to where the ship sank, scoop it up, and become fabulously rich, right? Not so fast. At least three big challenges accompany that goal and block the way to becoming instantly wealthy beyond imagination or need.

First, water weighs 8.35 pounds per gallon; therefore, for every foot of ocean floor, 67,000 pounds of water sat on top of the gold. Swim to the bottom of a pool only twelve feet deep and you will quickly feel the resulting pressure generated by the weight of the water. Most things, including submarines, will implode beyond a depth of two hundred feet – that's shorter than a football field.

Second, the technology for reaching, exploring, or even viewing the strange and unfamiliar ocean bottom simply did not exist prior to being invented by the hero of this story. At two miles' depth, the gold from the S.S. Central America is relatively close to the ocean's average depth of two and a half miles. Just below the surface, things start to change radically. The majority of the ocean is perpetually dark and just a couple of degrees above freezing.

Third, the ocean is unimaginably vast and underexplored. The saltwater ocean – not counting the other sources of water – constitutes seventy-one percent of the earth's surface, and due to its depth, is ninety-seven percent of both the earth's biological habitat and its source of water. Yet we still know very little about it. Just a century ago, we thought that the ocean floor was bare and lifeless. One science reporter wrote that perhaps today we have only researched a billionth of the available sea. Consider the overwhelming task of finding a ship that sank deep into such vastness, during a hurricane, with no surviving crew or maps, in an unknown location.

The few things we know about the oceans are compelling: They contain enough dissolved salt to cover the earth with a five-hundred-foot layer; eighty percent of all life resides there; a half-cup of ocean water holds millions of bacteria, hundreds of thousands of phytoplankton, and tens of thousands of zooplankton (half of all life-sustaining oxygen comes from just the zooplankton, and the other half comes from plants); the combined flow of all rivers is equal to only one percent of just the Gulf Stream; the largest living structure known is Australia's Great Barrier Reef; the tallest mountain, Mauna Kea, is located underwater and has a height of 33,400 feet – 4,400 feet higher than Mount Everest; the longest mountain range on earth is also underwater and is known as the mid-ocean ridge with a length of 40,400 miles, four times longer than the Andes, Rockies, and Himalayas combined; and one point in the Mariana Trench is nearly seven miles deep, making it the deepest spot on earth with a pressure one-thousand one-hundred times that recorded at sea level. The many things we don't know about the oceans are overwhelming by comparison to what's known about terra firma. According to one source, there are 228,450 known species of aquatic life in the oceans with one research project identifying nearly 1,500 new species during the year 2014; but it's estimated that as many as two million remain unknown. Humans have spent more time on the moon's surface than in the deepest ocean realms.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy convinced Congress to explore space and place a man on the moon. It took eight years, one-hundred billion dollars, and four hundred thousand people to complete the task of getting Neil Armstrong there. Since that event, our knowledge of earth's atmosphere has grown incalculably. By contrast, it's commonly accepted by scientists that we still know less about inner oceanic space than we do about outer atmospheric space. The surface of the oceans is a busy place known to commerce, travel, and sport; but just hundreds of feet under, the oceans remain as distant and remote from man's reach as does the outer space beyond our solar system. Arthur C. Clarke said, "How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean."

In October of 1989, a bright, young engineering genius named Tommy Thompson did the impossible: He accomplished what had never been done before and what everyone on the planet thought couldn't be done. Tommy painstakingly pinpointed the Central America's location far out in the Atlantic Ocean, and then he began inventing ways to reach the gold and recover it. Through an innovative combination of research, mathematics, computer forecasting and modeling, engineering, and invention, Tommy was able to solve a mystery that had baffled, frustrated, and misled others for many years. More remarkably, he did so without technical or financial support from Congress or any governmental agency, and he did it in just five years with a budget of twelve million dollars and a team of only thirty people.

Tommy developed and utilized tools both great and small. Three of the more prominent were a specially retrofitted ship, rechristened Arctic Explorer; his deep-sea recovery invention, the now-famous remote operations vehicle (ROV) known as NEMO (equipped with cameras, articulating arms, and lights); and a clever maritime GPS system that could keep the ship on target despite shifting tides, winds, and drifts. The ship was creatively designed to handle his vast array of scientific equipment, an articulating crane, the twelve-thousand-pound NEMO with its massive cables, and the unique GPS system.

After locating the sunken ship, he first fought off other treasure hunters who hoped to capitalize on his brilliant mapping data and recovery methods. Next, he was forced to assist with establishing clear, new rulings in international maritime law. Because the ship was located beyond the traditional three-mile territorial waters of the United States, clarity in this area was necessary to gain a solid green light for operations and for uncontested ownership of any findings. Past legal procedures were often conflicting from nation to nation when the activity transpired in international waters. These two challenges were anticipated, so Tommy was prepared to meet them. He skillfully and quickly outmaneuvered both the gold-seeking claim-jumpers and the legal pariahs that his find instantly attracted.

By employing Tommy's three new resources, his crew successfully lifted a substantial amount of gold to the surface in the fall of 1989. The event concluded a project of five years' duration from its dubious beginning to its victorious end. He wasn't able to reach all the gold; quantities even larger than what he recovered remained at the bottom of the sea at the completion of his extraordinary project. Even so, his accomplishment was called thereafter the greatest successful treasure hunt in history. In total, seven-thousand newly minted gold coins were recovered from the ocean bottom near the wreck, along with five-hundred gold coins of other origins, twenty pounds of gold dust, and five-hundred and thirty gold ingots – altogether about seventeen tons of pure, refined gold. The largest single piece from the ship was called the Eureka bar. It weighed eighty pounds, was shaped like an oversized brick, and was stamped with an 1857 currency value of $17,433.57. In 2001, the Eureka bar was purchased for $8,000,000! Value estimates for all of the gold recovered from the S.S. Central America were generally around one-hundred million dollars in 2001 value; one source placed the amount closer to one-hundred and fifty million dollars. (The values of non-minted [raw] and minted [numismatic] gold are not the same, and the values of both are influenced by a number of volatile factors. Consequently, it's not possible to fix the value of gold for an extended time or in a consistent manner; that is, it's not as simple as just calculating monetary-based inflation over time. A snapshot price is the best that can be provided for any given date.)

Tommy's two biggest challenges were unexpected and didn't occur during the difficult planning or operations phases as he had anticipated. The first was keeping the recovered treasure. Even as the commissioned Brinks Security Company trucks moved the gold to an undisclosed storage location, the companies that had originally insured the S.S. Central America and its cargo greedily blindsided Tommy. Specifically, thirty-nine insurance companies immediately filed suits contesting his ownership of the treasure. They respectively alleged that all or portions of it belonged to them because they'd paid the associated loss claims a century earlier. Tommy's fate depended on the courts upholding the maritime salvage law of finds, or as colloquially called, finders-keepers. This rule has a long international common-law history. More succinctly, it meant that when property is abandoned, it no longer belongs to anyone; so ownership defaults to the finder. Tommy fought an assortment of related, costly lawsuits with the overall litigation lasting more than seven years. While he preferred being at sea or in an engineering lab, he was forced to spend most of his time in courtrooms. He finally prevailed over his many adversaries and the treasure was fully released to him for his discretionary retention, sale, or distribution.

The second unexpected challenge was sharing the rewards of the gold recovery. Tommy had incurred debts associated with his many financial backers. They legitimately anticipated being repaid with interest from the gold profits after the ownership disputes were settled. What occurred is another story that is still unfolding, but which is beyond the intent of the one I've written. Briefly stated, it was a second series of protracted legal battles for Tommy in which he did not act wholly honorably and, thus far, has rendered only negative consequences.

On summary examination, the methods relating to his success don't seem that unusual. In fact, they are quite simple, except that most people don't adhere to them. It's been said that the secret to success is to do the difficult things that no one else wants to do. That seems to have been Tommy's natural inclination. He worked very hard, with lots of energy, while maintaining a positive outlook in the face of severe challenges and frustrations. He repeatedly refused to accept that something could not be done. He always looked at situations from every possible angle in a deliberate effort to see things differently from the way others before him had seen them. If he needed a resource and it did not exist, he studied all the options thoroughly and then he built whatever was required. He asked lots of questions of a host of bright people. Finally, once he made up his mind to begin, he would not quit nor be dissuaded until the task was successfully completed. That's how Tommy did the impossible several times over and earned wealth beyond most imaginations as his eventual reward.

It's estimated that twenty or more tons of gold from the S.S. Central America remained unrecovered on the ocean floor at the conclusion of Thompson's operations. That treasure awaits a future generation's "Tommy Thompson." Is that you? Even if it's not, you're still able to be a treasure hunter. There's a biblical parable that exhorts us to seek the pearl of great price, using all of our resources and strength to do so. Once we find that pearl, we are to sell everything we have to purchase it. The pearl represents Jesus, mankind's greatest hidden treasure. The treasure Tommy diligently dedicated his life to finding was sunken gold; in a very real sense, he sold everything to acquire it. Gold, indeed, does not tarnish or decay, but we can never take it with us; it can't save us or serve us beyond the grave. The pearl of great price will last for an eternity, and we can take it with us. We can profit by observing Tommy's successful life lessons, but we profit best when we apply his work ethics to finding items of eternal value. After death, there are four treasures – if we have found them – that can go with us into eternity because they are everlasting. They are: a good name, good deeds, relationships with others, and our faith in Jesus Christ. If any of the first three is considered debatable, then throw them out and hold tighter to the last one.

...and of treasures hidden in the sand. (Deuteronomy 33:19)

* * * *

Author's Notes: More expansive detail about Tommy Thompson and his gold recovery from the S.S. Central America is available in Gary Kinder's nonfiction book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. After being loaned to me by my son, this book became my initial source of inspiration for continued study via library resources, visits to marine research centers (great adventures!), and the Internet. The fragments I gathered were compiled into Exploring Inner Space. Tommy's life story did not end where mine does and, as of this edition, he's still writing it. Not all of the unrecorded portions having occurred since are positive due to certain choices he made thereafter. How Tommy's life story will conclude is like each of ours: Will it finish well?
Eva Mozes Kor

We Are More Than Our Pain

And you shall know the truth... (John 8:32)

Hitler and his Nazi party murdered more than eleven million people during the Third Reich's decade of totalitarian reign in Germany. At a single location, the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, over one million Jews were imported, processed, and disposed of like so much refuse. Through many deliberate efforts since the war, the world came to remember and commemorate those who died; but some, mostly forgotten for several decades, lived. Reduced to skeletons, six thousand survived the camp, with many having to be carried out in the arms of their rescuers. These numbers are so large that it's difficult to find a workable mental framework to fully grasp them. Reducing the numbers to a single individual helps us understand the severity of what took place. The victims who lived were overlooked by the numerical force and sheer horror of the many victims who died. Eva Mozes Kor is one who lived and knowing her story helps with the vital task of assimilating the larger picture.

Eva, like most survivors, deliberately buried the memory of those desperate years and instead focused on establishing a new beginning. This attitude held sway with most survivors until 1962 when the Israeli Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him before an international trial court. Worldwide, anxious Jews tuned into the proceedings. His trial was preceded in 1978 with the airing of the celebrated NBC miniseries The Holocaust. Together, the trial and the television program forced survivors to initiate a reconciliation of their past experiences with their present circumstances. Both of these events brought painful Jewish memories to the forefront while helping Gentiles understand the wartime experiences of the entire European Jewish population. Only one generation earlier, these Jews were persecuted by Hitler's Nazi Party and by the acquiescing anti-Semitic European populations. Most of the outside world generally only exhibited a lack of sympathy and help by displaying far too many blind eyes, deaf ears, and unwilling hands. For Eva, her reconciliation began with The Holocaust mini-series. She noted that the former death camp occupants were addressed as though all had died and, further, that no one referenced the unique subset to which she and her sister, Miriam, belonged – the Mengele Twins.

Three thousand child twins were forced through the infamous arched iron black gate of the Auschwitz death camp during the WWII years. Without exception, all were used as human guinea pigs in sadistic experiments by the Nazi doctor known as the angel of death, Josef Mengele. Most were slowly murdered and then dissected when their brutal testing was completed. While an estimated one-hundred and fifty twins survived the combination of cruel medical procedures and general deprivation of the concentration camp, none escaped permanent physical and psychological damage. Among the survivors were Eva and her identical twin, Miriam. After her arrival at the camp, Eva says that when first seeing the bodies of dead and distorted children, she firmly resolved not to become one of them. The odds favoring her survival were incalculably low, but for twenty-one months she successfully held on to the thread of life for both herself and her "younger" sister.

Eva and Miriam Mozes can be seen in an iconic photograph – now widely available on the Internet – taken by the Russians at the time of their liberation campaign on January 27, 1945. The stark black-and-white image shows the two of them holding hands as they lead a procession of emaciated children along a narrow corridor lined with barbed-wire. Their path would take them out of the hellish enclosure into the seeming heavenly freedom hard-won by the Allied forces. They look reasonably plump in the photo, but what is not easily revealed is that they're wearing multiple sets of clothing – all they could rapidly acquire – and they've hidden their life-sustaining possessions beneath the layers. After liberation and before departing camp, they organized everything available from the remnants abandoned by the escaping guards. (Organized was a word commonly modified in meaning during WWII to surreptitiously indicate acquiring anything necessary for life by stealth; e.g., food, matches, clothing, shoes, medicine.)

Eva's successful determination to live through the horror and pain led her, decades later, to a remarkable series of redemptive acts that culminated in an international outreach with universal messages of hope and forgiveness. Regardless of race or religion, a world that's filled with suffering victims, martyrs, and refugees need more than ever to hear Eva's story and to receive the power of the healing words she shares. Told in its fullness, her story would contain significant elements of horror, deprivation, and pain; I'm not sharing it in that manner. I have the deepest respect for what the Mozes family suffered during the events of 1940 through 1945. Being reasonably familiar with their travails, I agonize over what a multitude of misanthropic humans was capable of inflicting on this wholly innocent family and on so many more like them. I am sickened in my soul over the needless suffering that came to these families because of unthinking prejudice and unfeeling persecution. The specifics of the Mozes family's tribulation are revealed in Eva's books and videos, as well as revealed in other media detailing the Holocaust and the even-larger record of Nazi Germany's countless oppressions and atrocities – including much that Germany itself meticulously documented. (See the related stories of Rose Valland and Irena Sendler.) With each passing year, more Holocaust deniers pervert the truth whose living documentation diminishes with the inevitable passing of the survivors.

My goal is to center this story on Eva's indomitable character and the living legacy of her life's work; she accomplished the near-impossible by generating light from darkness. Hers is a positive message of fresh beginnings and new life. Eva said of herself: "I am never a worrier. I am a doer. I have discovered the cure for victimhood."

Eva and Miriam were born in Portz, Romania, in 1934. Eva was the firstborn twin. Although only minutes Miriam's elder, being the big-sister-in-charge was a role she accepted and acted out during the entirety of their exceptionally close relationship. From her father, Alexander, who was a successful farmer with little education, Eva learned to be tough and strong; and to resist and outsmart authority, a skill she would need to facilitate their survival and then successfully utilize later to complete her life mission. From her mother Jaffa who was well educated and had a reputation for helping everyone in need, Eva learned to be kind to the less fortunate and to care for others.

In 1940, Hitler gave the northern part of Romania, which contained Portz and was known as Transylvania, to his ally Hungary. At the time, the area was divided equally by those favoring Romania and those favoring Hungary. (See the related story on Romanians Sabina and Richard Wurmbrand.) Along with the acquisition, pro-Nazi Hungarians gained a strong advantage and commenced enacting German-influenced policies, including a purge of the Jews. Eva's father felt forewarned by these activities and made a visit with his brother to Palestine (later to be restored to the independent Jewish state of Israel). He returned convinced it was wise to move his family there, but Eva's mother resisted. Alexander's brother made the move, resulting in his family surviving the war. Eva's was the only Jewish family remaining in Portz's population of five hundred Gentiles.

Despite the previous goodwill engendered by the Mozes family, no one in the city displayed any support as the local Nazi über-collaborators, the Iron Guard, harassed and arrested them. Eventually, the Iron Guard refused to permit the family to leave the country. Instead, they were forced into the Şimleu Silvaniei ghetto, after having their property confiscated. Thereafter, the family of six (including Edit and Aliz, Eva's two older sisters), were loaded onto a railway freight car and transported with far less care than that afforded cattle, as they were packed standing-room-only for seventy hours without food or water, privacy or sanitation. Their destination was the largest of the many death camps in Poland. Upon stepping onto the Auschwitz station platform, the family was immediately separated without good-byes or explanations. Jaffa and the older girls most likely went to the left, along with the old and frail for whom an immediate mass murder by poison gas was followed by incineration in one of the many massive brick ovens. Alexander was likely pushed to the right with the healthy and stronger for whom a temporary life of slavery, deprivation, and persecution would – upon his physical emaciation – be followed by a similar impersonal mass murder simultaneously shared with hundreds of other doomed inmate workers.

Eva soon realized her parents and two older sisters were gone, never to be seen by her again. Eva believes no other parcel of land in the world has ever seen as many families ripped apart as occurred for years on that rail platform. The twins had their uniquely perverse fate awaiting them. It was then that they had their first encounter with Dr. Josef Mengele. He first confirmed that Eva and Miriam were twins, and then sent them with the other newly arrived twins to a special housing unit near his laboratory where Eva's arm was tattooed with A-7063 instead of her name.

Eva and Miriam became part of a group of children used as human guinea pigs in genetic engineering experimentation under the direction of Mengele (twins represented a natural treatment control group). Approximately fifteen hundred pairs of twins (three thousand children) were abused, with most dying as a result of the experiments. Twins as young as five years of age were subjected to medical experiments of unspeakable horror at Auschwitz. If they didn't die as a result of the experiments, they were usually murdered so that their bodies could be dissected to ascertain all causes and results related to the experiments. Mengele performed experimental surgeries without anesthesia, transfusions of blood from one twin to another, isolation endurance trials, reaction tests to various stimuli, injections of lethal germs, sex-change operations, and the removal and swapping of organs and limbs. His goal was to uncover biological advantages for the benefit of Hitler's super-race of Aryan soldiers. His work was pseudo-scientific research of no medical value beyond the limited perverse Nazi objectives.

First, Mengele injected chemicals into Eva's eyes in an attempt to change their color. Later, he injected other chemicals into Miriam's kidneys, which caused them to stop growing, predetermining her ultimately painful death by bladder cancer at age fifty-nine. After injecting Eva with a poisonous toxin or deadly germ, she became acutely ill. When Mengele observed she was failing, he told her, "Too bad, you only have two weeks to live." She presently rebuts: "I proved him wrong. I survived." She knew that if she died, Miriam would also be killed, because she would no longer have any comparative value. Remembering the dead children she had observed upon arriving at camp and her subsequent vow not to let herself become like them, Eva maintained life through sheer determination of will and a motivation to help Miriam survive as well. Eva refused to become a Muselmann, the camp term for someone who had lost the will to live – a common occurrence.

The girls persevered beyond Mengele's lab experiments and lived to see the American planes circling the camp in the weeks prior to their liberation. All Holocaust survivors believe it was necessary to tenaciously cling to someone or some hope in order to remain alive. Eva had Miriam. After liberation, the girls still had no one other than each other. They lived in three different refugee camps over the following year before returning for a short time to Romania to live with an aunt. Although released from Auschwitz, their struggle to attain true freedom had not ended. The USSR maintained control over Eastern Europe and continued its longstanding anti-Semitic practices in the conquered satellite nations, with Romania developing perhaps the most oppressive and corrupt puppet Soviet satellite government. Eva and Miriam briefly joined the Romanian Communist Party in order to survive as postwar orphans. Eva describes her motive as simply joining something akin to a club, the in thing to do. Ever so discerning, Eva quickly realized they were being brainwashed. She says,

Even today when I meet someone who leans to the left, I always tell him: Go, try it out if you like for everyone to tell you how to breathe, what to wear, and what time to go to bed; then maybe it is the right place for you.

They left the party, accepting instead the dream of their father and uncle – life in Israel.

With her street smarts, fifteen-year-old Eva obtained emigration papers from the Romanian government and by 1950 settled in the newly founded nation of Israel. Her ship was the next to last to be permitted to leave Romania before all exit visas ceased; as such, it had a capacity for three hundred passengers but departed with three thousand aboard. After her arrival, she attended absorption training, living in a youth village (a specialized kibbutz). There she was employed as a full-time milkmaid while serving part-time as a draftsperson with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for eight years. Attaining the significant rank of Sergeant Major in the Army Engineering Corps, she provided support services during the 1956 Suez Crisis defensive war. The subsequent military victory helped Eva and Miriam relax sufficiently enough to accept that persecution related to their Jewish heritage might have finally come to its end.

In April 1960, Michael Kor from Terre Haute, Indiana, visited Israel as a tourist. He was a Holocaust survivor from Latvia who was freed by the United States Armed Forces, so he decided to move to the country of his liberators. While in Israel, he met, dated, and proposed to Eva. After marrying in Tel Aviv, the couple moved permanently to Terre Haute where Eva became a U.S. citizen, was licensed as a professional realtor, and mothered two children, Alex and Rina. I met Eva while she was lecturing at an area university. After becoming familiar with her vision, I was sufficiently impressed to share her story and show her videos in schools, prisons, and recovery centers.

After The Holocaust aired, Eva speculated on the outcomes of other children who'd survived the Holocaust, especially the Auschwitz twins. She searched for information and found that none was readily available. Eva then partnered with Miriam, who had remained in Israel. Together, they undertook a related discovery project. They had two aims: one of locating Mengele twin survivors, and the other of finding medical records or Germans having knowledge of the nature of the experiments – especially which chemicals were used. In 1984, Eva formalized their effort by founding an organization called Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors (CANDLES). The acronym was especially appropriate, as their purpose was to bring illumination into one of the shadowy chapters of Holocaust history.

On January 27, 1985, three pairs of Mengele twins met at Auschwitz II–Birkenau to observe the fortieth anniversary of the camp's liberation. The twins continued on to Jerusalem, where they and seventy-four more twins staged a mock trial of Mengele. Attention to these activities created worldwide publicity, which in turn helped to locate more Mengele twins. One hundred and twenty-two living twins were located in twenty countries; but sadly, no medical specifics were uncovered. The U.S. Congress was sufficiently influenced by the results to pass a resolution authorizing a formal search for Mengele, thus enhancing the related activities by notorious Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal of the Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service. There were a number of disappointing near-misses, which meant Mengele was never brought to justice. He last lived in several South American countries under the assumed name of Wolfgang Gerhard. He died of a stroke while swimming at home in 1976.

In 1987, Miriam's kidneys failed due to complications related to her Mengele experiments. Eva, the always-vigilant older sister, traveled to Israel and donated a kidney to Miriam. The surgery prolonged Miriam's life for eight years, but she succumbed in 1995. Had medical records been found, they may have mitigated her complications and extended her life. In response to Miriam's death, Eva founded the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center. The goals of the Terre Haute-based museum are to educate on eugenics, the Holocaust, and – more recently – the power of forgiveness. There is a modest admission charge, and volunteer docents are always available to freely share on these three vital matters. In November of 2003, the museum was seriously damaged by neo-Nazi-inflicted arson. This didn't stop the mission of CANDLES, and by generous local and international donations, the museum was rebuilt to better-than-original standards. It reopened a year later and has since undergone continuous refinements, many of them paid from Eva's personal funds.

For the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995, Eva returned to Germany. She'd made contact with a German doctor who had worked at Auschwitz, though not directly with the always-secretive Mengele. His name was Dr. Hans Műnch, and he had agreed to sign an affidavit documenting Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz and the general use of poison gas extermination with attendant incineration ovens. To offer something of equal value in return, Eva determined to provide Dr. Műnch with her personal letter of forgiveness. That's when Eva says the healing first began. The keen realization was that she had the power to forgive; subsequently, she found that forgiveness is for the victim as well as the perpetrator. Eva took that first step and provided a heartfelt letter of forgiveness to Dr. Műnch.

A friend later asked if she could also forgive Mengele. This was yet another monumental step – one far greater than Eva first anticipated, but one that she came to accept. After half a century of carrying the weight of hatred for Mengele, she forgave him. Eva also realized she'd held bitterness against her parents for not protecting her, for letting her down. This might seem inappropriate at first, but not when seen through the experiences of a six-year-old child. She became free of her past, free on residual anger, and free of her pain; she was no longer the victim she'd been for half a century – most of her life.

Eva received unexpected international attention when she publicly forgave Mengele and the Nazis. Not all of it was positive. Many felt that it was morally wrong to do so; others felt that she had no right to do so. These oppositions came down on her even though she explained that the acts were personal; she was only offering forgiveness for what happened to her, not doing so on behalf of what had happened to all Jews. Eva continued to explain that forgiving the tormentors did not mean forgetting about the larger experience; in fact, it was important to remember and to share so that the horrors would not be repeated. Much of the opposition and controversy to her forgiveness experiences came from the other twins she'd identified and befriended through CANDLES. Eva said she had been healed through the act of offering forgiveness, but that it didn't mean she had forgotten any of the events or that doing so created a denial of anything that had happened.

Eva's reaction to the opposition was fully positive; she further committed herself to another worthy effort, that of sharing the need for and benefits of forgiveness. Eva's forgiveness was the catalyst for broadening CANDLES' focus to include peace (in Hebrew, shalom) on both a personal and societal level. In the Jewish faith, forgiveness is encouraged as mitzvah or divine commandment from the Torah, and doing so is especially appropriate annually on Yom Kippur, the holy day set-aside to forgive and seek forgiveness. Eva views extending forgiveness as the summit of a very tall mountain. The side up is dreary and difficult; however, after reaching the summit, the sunny, flowering side can be seen for the first time. She asks, why go back down from where you came when you can continue on to the summit of forgiveness and enjoy the beautiful side? Eva shares that she learned the following three life lessons by pushing through the pain to the summit:

  * Never give up on yourself or your dreams; you can do good in life;
  * Only judge people by their actions and their character (see the Irena Sendler story for similar advocacy);
  * Forgive your worst enemy; forgive everyone who hurt you. It will heal your soul and set you free.

The following is borrowed from Eva's website:

Forgiveness means many things to many people. To adequately describe Eva Kor's journey to forgiveness and the ways survivors of trauma can heal themselves, we define it like this: To forgive is to renounce anger and resentment against those who have caused you harm, without the expectation of apology or compensation. Forgiveness is not a pardon to those who have caused the injury, nor does it excuse the acts they used to cause it. These things are no longer the problem for the person who forgives. Forgiveness is the release of bitterness and indignation for our own personal healing. Forgiveness does not require forgetting. It only asks that we refuse to accept our pain as a part of ourselves. We are much more than our pain.

I see that position as wholly compatible with what was written on the subject centuries earlier in the Bible. A publicity release on Eva (also appearing on her website) characterized her as follows:

Powered by a never-give-up attitude, Eva has emerged from a trauma-filled childhood as a brilliant example of the human spirit's power to overcome. She is a community leader, champion of human rights, and tireless educator.

The tract of her life moved decisively from child victim to teen refugee to homeless immigrant to decorated soldier to wife, businesswoman, and mother, to museum curator, writer, and renowned international lecturer; while emotionally it progressed from hurt to healing and from anger to forgiveness. The light from the CANDLE Eva ignited continues to illuminate her consequential and continuing legacy.

...and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)

* * * *

Author's Notes: The war delineated people into distinct categories: partisans, collaborators, liberators, participators, rescuers, survivors, conscripts, and victims. It is reasonable to believe there were no good Germans still living free of confinement within Germany at war's end because all who rightly opposed their heinous behavior had been killed or imprisoned after choosing to resist, rather than yield to, Hitler and his Nazis. There's no record of Germany producing any partisan-like countermovement against the machinations of the Third Reich. Agreement, support, and capitulation were the choices made by the German nation throughout the decade-long Third Reich. Even the modest, internal military plots to assassinate Hitler were largely performed by men in full-time service to his war objectives – men who had a personal distaste for their supreme leader, their Führer, but who still hawkishly served the vile Germanic national goals. Every other country suffering under Germany's dominance produced active partisan counter-movements, but that was not the case in Germany. Many Germans claimed the good German status after the Allies won the war. Whether civilian or military, all Germans still living and residing openly in Germany, or still serving in Hitler's military at the end of the war, were participators; their degree of participation was inconsequential after more than ten years of Nazis home-rule. At the war's conclusion, they attempted to present their choices as having been colored fuzzy gray when they were always black or white; truth or lie, good or evil – none of which are ever gray-toned. Year after year, the choice became clearer. Those few who chose to do right suffered and died along with their families for making that choice well before the long warfare concluded.

The word participator is Eva's; I borrowed it and embraced it, but the opinion offered about it herein is solely mine. So what should be done with all these not-so-good Germans regardless of whether they're dead or alive, whether their whereabouts are known or they're in hiding? Eva has the right answer, and that's forgiveness. It's a timeless answer; that's to say, executing the related action is not bound by time or fashion. Forgiveness can be initiated on a one-way basis as Eva did and as she advocates doing. Eva, the victim, took the first step, and in doing so she fully liberated her soul and partially liberated the soul of the transgressor. Some whom she forgave were long dead, others yet alive. Forgiveness is best, however, when the offending party admits guilt and requests to be forgiven, followed by the offended party granting it. That was the higher way offered to and chosen by Dr. Műnch. The iron arch over the gateway of the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp proclaims to all entering that "Work makes [one/you] free" (in German, "Arbeit macht frei"); it was a lie at that location and it is a lie whenever and wherever it is presented. Only truth makes one free. Accepting the eternal truth of forgiveness set Eva free.

The telling of Eva's story has one more sticky-point: Recognizing that the world is never free of the anti-Semitism her family, and so many others, suffered. It has surged and resurged throughout recorded human history – sometimes very obvious and common, other times more insidious and hidden. Today, it assumes the forms of the BDS (Boycott-Divest-Sanction) movement against Israel's economy, of anti-Zionism (denial of Israel as the eternal home of the Jewish people), and of internationally labeling tiny Israel as an aggressor and occupier whenever it seeks to protect itself from overwhelming risk of annihilation.

The year the first edition of Uncommon Character was published was also the seventieth year since Auschwitz was liberated. Many individuals and national representatives traveled there to pay their respects, to remember the lessons, and to negate the depraved Holocaust deniers. Never one to miss an opportunity to teach, to forgive, to research, to heal, and to bring light out of darkness, Eva returned as well. A few years later as I prepared the third edition, Eva's story found its inevitable conclusion as sad news arrived on July 4th from Krakow, Poland: Eva passed away quietly in her sleep at age eighty-five. She was hosting another educational trip to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the Mozes family was killed three-quarters of a century earlier. The governor of her adopted home state of Indiana, Eric Holcomb, announced her final departure by saying "the world lost a giant" this Independence Day "because everywhere she went Eva brought light into darkness and provided comfort to those in pain unlike anyone we've ever met." Eva told us "I want my time on earth to count for something." These words served as the theme of her memorial service, which I attended with my wife, on the campus of Indiana State University. Our conclusion about Eva's life was unanimous: Mission accomplished! Eva finished well.

* * *

 www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/about/eva-kor.htm
Christopher Langan

Peanut Butter for Every Meal

Now give me wisdom and knowledge... (2 Chronicles 1:10)

The prize money was the best financial break that ever occurred in Chris Langan's life; he used it to purchase a horse farm in Missouri. His act does not appear to be out of the ordinary until it's revealed that at the time Chris was likely the most intelligent living man in the world. He won $250,000 during a guest appearance on the fifth episode of the trivia-based television quiz show titled 1 vs. 100. On his way to securing the top prize of a million dollars, he exercised the option to simply quit competing and depart with the winnings accumulated thus far. It was January 25, 2008, and Chris was fifty-four years old.

It's not surprising that a man of obviously superior intellect would accept an invitation to showcase his talent and take home some easy money. But why quit after only a few correct answers and a quarter-million dollars? He hadn't missed a question, and the opportunity to win another $750,000 remained open to him. Chris offers the following explanation: They were asking him trivia questions. He doesn't know trivia. Trivia deals with such peripheral minutia as who was awarded an Oscar or what team won an NCAA championship. Chris's mind is occupied with data of far greater gravitas, such as the special relativity theory, DNA, planetary structures, and quantum mechanics. The show's host wasn't asking questions of that nature; so Chris chose to depart with his secure winnings, which was a wise strategy because one wrong answer meant the loss of every dollar he'd earned. In an August 20, 2001, Newsday article titled "The Smart Guy," freelance writer Dennis Brabham quoted Chris as saying, "A high IQ is more about problem-solving than knowledge of trivia. A lot of people think, 'Wow, that person has a 200 IQ so he'll do great on Jeopardy!' But it doesn't necessarily work out that way."

A man with Chris's intellect has the means to earn a salary of $250,000, or far in excess of that amount annually; so why was the prize money the best thing that ever happened to him? And for what reason would he retire to a horse farm in Missouri when he could be and should be solving world hunger, placing a camera on Jupiter or a man on Mars, discovering the cure for cancer or Ebola, perfecting alternative energy sources, preventing hurricanes and tornadoes, or finding the next big technological application for digital programming?

An examination of Chris's early childhood development is a reasonable place to begin looking for answers to these questions. He's been reported to have spoken in sentences at six months; taught himself to read at three years; and asked encompassing what-is-the-purpose-of-life kind of questions at age five. He also undertook a study of God at an early age, decided He exists, and committed to believing in Him; which Chris still does in accord with his unique and thought-provoking theories. In his K-12 educational season, he rarely did the assigned reading and homework, mostly showed up at school only to take the exams, skipped grades entirely, and consistently remained far in advance of his peers academically. On test days, he'd arrive just minutes early to review the textbook, and then proceed to quickly ace the exam. Chris studied in accord with his strenuous private curriculum, which included reading and understanding Newton's Principia Mathematica before age sixteen. As further proof that his unique methods were scholastically compatible for him, Chris napped occasionally while taking the extremely challenging pre-college SAT, finished early, and still delivered a perfect score.

Nevertheless, the full scope of his childhood and teen years also reveals some serious negative factors. Chris grew up in extreme poverty, with only one set of clothes, rarely lived in secure housing, and ate a steady diet of free government-surplus peanut butter. At times, there was little doubt about what to expect for meals: breakfast likely involved peanut butter, as would both lunch and dinner. His family never stayed in one location for very long; on occasion, his home was just a tent. Chris shares that when his clothes were washed, he would have to hide somewhere naked until they were ready to wear again.

His mother's first husband, Chris's biological father, is alternatively said to have either died of a heart attack or skipped to Mexico before Chris was born. His second temporary "dad" was murdered; his third committed suicide; and his fourth – who became his legal stepfather – was a cruel alcoholic who physically and emotionally abused Chris, the oldest of the four boys. Unfortunately, the stepfather remained around until Chris's early teen years. To avoid his drunken rages, Chris stayed away from home most of the time. He suffered from being smart, poor, and bruised, in addition to experiencing harassment at school via ridicule and bullying. Thus, home and school were both unpleasant experiences, so he began hanging out at fitness centers and lifting weights. Chris supplemented his naturally large physique with additional strength and bulk. Photographs well into his middle age reveal a solid body with the broad shoulders and chest that would satisfy any pro football lineman. Prior to his fifteenth birthday, Chris was in bed asleep when he suddenly woke to his stepfather beating him about the head. He ended this final abuse by rising to his feet and delivering a knock-out punch that rendered his stepfather briefly unconscious. Dad number four – the last in the series – was thereafter permanently unwelcome in the family household and wisely chose to remain away.

Chris attended small Reed College in Oregon on a scholarship. After the first year, the scholarship was lost when his mother failed to correctly complete the paperwork over the summer break. He was forced to return to Montana and live with his family. Chris began his second year of college at Montana State University, but after only a few weeks, his schooling was terminated due to transportation problems, as neither he nor his family had a decent car, and the walk to school was fifteen miles one way – often in the snow. Both school departures were thus related to poor financial circumstances. His formal schooling resulted in less than one and a half years of higher education.

At only twenty years of age, Chris was finished with all formal school education. He spent the thirty-four years between Montana State and his appearance on the quiz show performing manual labor. Chris shuffled between jobs as a construction worker, cowboy, line assembler, forest ranger, fisherman, fireman, lifeguard, farmhand, and longshoreman; but most consistently, he was employed as a bar bouncer. These various jobs were all occupations where a strong physique served as an asset and none required an exceptionally fine mind. With the ability to bench-press more than five hundred pounds, he's a believer in combining intellectual labor with physical labor; his philosophy is that the best approach to creativity involves a regular mix of both. Finally, at nearly fifty-five years old, he came into the $250,000 prize money and became the owner of a rural Midwestern horse farm. As stated, this was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to him financially.

At this point, it would be acceptable to question whether Chris was really that brilliant. To have potential is a positive, complimentary attribute early in one's life; but potential becomes a waste or even an insult after sufficient time passes and there are still no results to show for the endowed ability. Regarding this matter, Einstein said, "A person first starts to live when he can live outside himself." Commenting on Einstein's statement, Armand Hammer added: "in other words, when he can have as much regard for his fellow man as he does for himself. I believe we are here to do good. It is the responsibility of every human being to aspire to do something worthwhile, to make this world a better place than the one he found." At mid-life, Chris began to seriously consider where he could make his positive mark on the world.

Intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a measurement of one's potential capacity to learn, to think, and to create. It isn't a measurement of your ability to apply the capacity; it isn't a measurement of the degree that the capacity has been successfully utilized in practical applications; and it isn't a measurement of how much you have learned. It's only a scaled measurement of an individual's potential – whether realized or unrealized.

The average individual IQ score across the world is 100; the average for college graduates is 120, not because they have more education than the world average, although that is true, but because people with higher IQs naturally gravitate into settings of higher learning. Einstein had an IQ of 150; with it, he contributed theories and formulas that, without which, it would arguably not have been possible to attain such practical achievements as atomic energy, rocket science and space exploration, or the Hubble telescope. Some experts believe the ability to measure IQ hits a ceiling at 195; an individual may be able to score higher, but it's not accurately measured with the current tools. Christopher Langan's IQ score is 195 (some place it at 210) – forty-five or more points higher than Albert Einstein's!

So it is reasonable to puzzle over why Chris seemingly wasted his gifts. Further complicating our understanding are the facts that Chris is both in good health and not lazy. He has kept himself in excellent physical condition and has toiled hard in demanding occupations all his days; he is neither a couch potato nor an entitlements recipient, although he lived humbly for many years on an income well below the poverty-line. Chris thinks his main problem is that he could never catch a financial break in order to obtain a decent higher education with its incumbent degrees, privileges, and opportunities. However, there are more appropriate reasons to explain why his life has apparently been so undistinguished and devoid of any lasting accomplishments.

More likely, the real explanation is that Chris lacked two critical resources. First, he had no one to provide mentoring, counseling, guidance, and/or role modeling. Initially, this was the result of not having a caring, involved father, followed by never having a surrogate-father figure to replace the series of failed dads. There was no teacher to fill the role because he only attended school sporadically, he was the oldest of the four boys and thus had no older brother, and there was no pastor because the family didn't have a consistent church home. Consequently, Chris did not have the opportunity to develop any mentoring relationships. No one can successfully make it completely through life on their own, especially if they lack the other of his missing critical resources.

The second resource he didn't possess was practical intelligence. Chris was book smart, but life dumb; that is, he lacked street savvy and the ability to utilize what he knew or learned in everyday living situations. He had natural intelligence, but not the learned grasp or functional understanding that we collectively call common sense, the overall comprehension of how to apply information in real life for his good and for personal problem resolution. Chris never realized, for example, what was obvious: he qualified for a full-ride scholarship to any university of his choosing based on his grades, test scores, and measured IQ. The nation's top institutes of learning compete hard to attract students of his caliber and then continue to compete after graduation to retain them as teaching staff or in research capacities. Conversely, Chris attended two minor colleges, paid many of the associated expenses personally, and finally just walked away in frustration without a formal degree, never to return. Had he applied to the best schools nationally or abroad, they would have aggressively offered him attractive program choices reaching beyond the doctorate level. Chris attributes the loss of his education and his subsequent hard life to just being the guy who got the bad breaks; no hard feelings, that's just the way it went down. He didn't see himself as a victim of anything or anyone beyond plain-old dumb luck.

Missing both critical resources is a deadly combination for anyone, no matter how high their IQ because sometimes raw intelligence isn't enough. This explanation is not a justification so that I can speak of Chris in demeaning tones and phrases. That's far from the point. Many of us lack one or the other of these life skills and to be both book smart and street smart is a double blessing only bestowed on a minority. Nearly all of us have one or more people in our lives to hold our hands while guiding us, or to provide timely advice, or to offer a caution, or to point a helpful finger in the right direction when we are faced with a confusing juncture. It may be a youth pastor, a teacher, a parent, an older sibling, a coach, a grandparent, a supervisor, or a guidance counselor.

We all need someone with practical gifting and life experience to offer a word of discernment or wisdom when necessary, to provide direction along the way, to encourage us when things go right and especially when they go wrong. Study after study confirms that young people seek the advice of peers while ignoring the advice of their close elders; they foolishly accept peer advice, even when it violates established law or custom. They look to their peers for counsel on key life decisions, although their peers have no more information or experience than they do. Guidance from peers may feel right, but it contains no understanding of life's big picture. It's far more likely to be wrong as well as harmful, leading to regrets. Each of us must live tomorrow with the outcome of the decisions we make today.

Throughout much of Einstein's life, he labored on his unified field theory (UFT). Loosely stated, he intended to explain gravitation, electromagnetism, light, energy, and subatomic phenomena all within a mutually comprehensive and compatible set of laws. He came very close to doing so. However, each time he approached a reasonably successful conclusion, his parallel pioneering explorations in the area of quantum physics would create a complication that challenged him to resolve the seeming contradictions that kept surfacing. At the time of his death, a conclusive theory still eluded him. He died believing his theory was correct, but theories have to be proven through pragmatic means like research, experimentation, observation, and mathematical proofs. Einstein knew and accepted this parameter and he subjected his results to it. From time to time yet today, breakthroughs occur which seem to indicate, still not conclusively, that Einstein may have been right.

The pièce de résistance in Chris's life is that for a long time he's been working quietly alone (likely with belated assistance from his wife, Gina LoSasso, a clinical neuropsychologist with a 182 IQ) developing a comprehensive theory he calls his Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU). It is not yet complete, but those who have reviewed it thus far have been impressed and have called it the theory of everything and the theory of theories due to its absolutely comprehensive scope and nature. It's a new reality theory of the universe, not unlike Einstein's UFT in its all-encompassing scope. It contends with relationships in complexity-information-design (surpassing anything that Darwinists and Neo-Darwinists are able to offer with their unguided process theories). The CTMU develops the integrated relationship between intelligence, energy, and matter like DNA. It's all the more striking to realize that Chris is developing this well-received theory single-handedly and demonstrably self-motivated. His endeavors are without the usual benefits of education, degrees, grants and scholarships, laboratories, analysts, associates, research facilities, recognition, colleagues, and monetary compensation. Writing for Esquire magazine's "Genius Issue" in 1999, Mike Sager describes Chris's approach as "the double life strategy," where you go to your manual labor day-job in the morning and upon returning in the evening you work equations on your laptop at home without pay for personal aggrandizement.

Chris's story is, hopefully, far from over. If he lives only as long as Einstein, who died at seventy-six, which is relatively young by current averages, he will, as of this writing, have many more years to complete his theory. It's important to realize that Chris still hasn't overcome or eliminated his twin handicaps. He has to continue to push through to a successful outcome with those resources still absent from his life. As we continue to study so much of Einstein's contributions and to reap their practical benefits, we may yet do so – perhaps even more so – with Chris Langan's. The man credited with inventing the computer, Alan Touring, famously said, "Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine."

The lessons of his life are readily available to us, and are as follows: Everyone needs help and a community, because few – if any – make it completely on their own; and if they do, it certainly requires more time and effort than if they had assistance. Intelligence alone is insufficient, especially without the ability to apply it practically in everyday life situations. Very few people get ahead in the world without someone in their court to mentor them; we all need encouragement and guidance, and it's important to surround ourselves with good advisors.

The need for a mentor is not limited to young people. In a June 19, 2012, article in U.S. News & World Report, Lindsay Olson wrote:

One of the best ways to reinvigorate your work life, boost your job search, or help guide your career path is to work with a mentor. A mentor can help guide you through common problems and make recommendations on how to improve your job performance.

Socrates compared a mentor to a midwife in helping to birth good people and good ideas.

American psychologist Lewis Terman's study of gifted children provided research indicating that IQ helps an individual be more successful, but only up to a certain point. Terman sets that point at 120. Thereafter, other factors become helpful, such as determination, character, mentoring, and common sense. The importance of having someone as a mentor, or of being a mentor to someone, is the most vital takeaway from Chris's story. We're likely unable to overcome either a natural lack of street smarts or native intelligence, but employing the principles of maintaining good mentors, reading broadly, and applying ourselves in school or internships will greatly help substitute for what's missing. Consider how much more positively different Chris's life might well have been if he'd been mentored early, as well as periodically, along the route. Some argue that mentors can help us fix our weaknesses; others argue that they help us develop our strengths. I don't see why the two approaches need be mutually exclusive; benefits can accrue from both approaches as we receive good advice and remain teachable enough to embrace them. Recognition of the vital roles that mentors play is as old as, or older than, the Bible. Qualifications, functions, and benefits associated with good mentors are clearly set out in the New Testament book of Titus in chapter two, verses 2 through 10. Marc Freedman has authored a book titled, How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations, in which he believes the following,

...that old and young are built for each other. The old, as they move into the later phases of life, are driven by a deep desire

to be needed by the next generation and to nurture it; the young have a need to be nurtured. It's a complementary relationship that goes back to the beginning of human history.

A characteristic of Chris's that I find endearing is that he has not deducted God from the large equation. Many so-called brilliant scientists and philosophers are educated (book learning) beyond their native and practical intelligence. They begin to substitute everything and anything, including themselves, for God's rightful place. They claim without any substantiation that they'll pursue an understanding of nature, man, and the cosmos anyplace it leads. However, what they consistently do demonstrate is that they always will force in one large exception. If anything leads to a Supreme Creator – or even to intelligent design or irreducible complexity or exquisite fine-tuning – then they avoid it and find a replacement answer, no matter how preposterous, narcissistic, or speculative. Not so with the world's smartest living man.

One of Chris's brilliant predecessors in the field of physics, Erwin Schrödinger, gave balance to the study of the physical universe when he said:

The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order; but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart and that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.

...that I may go out and come in before this people. (2 Chronicles 1:10)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Chris Langan was introduced to me by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. The concept of Chris's having two missing critical resources (practical sense and helpful mentors) in his life, and the statements related to his four "dads," were borrowed from Mr. Gladwell as initially proposed in Outliers.

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 www.quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/30/aspire

 en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger
Captain Plumb

How Well Did I Do?

Curds and honey He shall eat... (Isaiah 7:15)

Upon graduating from the Annapolis, Maryland-based naval academy and completing his stateside flight training, the twenty-two-year-old flyer underwent combat missions over Vietnam, piloting an F-4B Phantom jet, then the navy's newest supersonic interceptor. He expected his final mission to happily terminate with a ticket home to the States, as his active combat duty would be completed in just five days. Instead, as he was held on the ground in enemy territory, his service time extended 2,103 days or nearly six more years. He says of those added years,

I found myself a long way from home in a small prison cell. As a prisoner of war, I was tortured, humiliated, starved, and left to languish in squalor for six years. ...Try your best to smell the stench in the bucket I called my toilet and taste the salt in the corners of my mouth from my sweat, my tears, and my blood. Feel the baking tropical heat in a tin-roofed prison cell.

These are the words of United States Naval Pilot Captain Joseph Charles Plumb, better known as Charlie. He was shot down midway through his seventy-fifth mission in a very unfortunate location – just south of the enemy's capital, Hanoi, and on a very unfortunate date – May 19, 1967, the highly celebrated birthday of revered opposition leader, Ho Chi Minh. The takedown of a jet and the capture of its pilot were two rare events, both highly celebrated in Communist-held North Vietnam during its war against South Vietnam and the United States.

Charlie served a portion of his prison time as pastor to his fellow prisoners. He believes it was his strong Christian faith combined with his belief in the goodness of his country that permitted him to remain sufficiently unbroken and able to encourage others. He credits both of these saving qualities as being instilled in him as a young man in Kansas by his parents, pastors, youth leaders, and teachers. After his release and repatriation on February 18, 1973, the then thirty-year-old pilot was rightly recognized as an American hero and awarded the following formal honors: two Purple Hearts, the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and of course, the POW Medal.

As might be expected of a returning fighter ace, Captain Plumb has many adventure stories to share, and he's been generous in doing so. My favorite is when he tells of enjoying a meal by himself in a Kansas City restaurant a decade after his return from a POW camp, a brief time after his retirement from the navy. Throughout the meal, he noticed a man almost staring at him from a table across the restaurant. Each time Charlie looked up, he would catch the man's eyes looking his way, seeming to examine him. About halfway through the meal, the man rose, walked to Charlie's table, and pointed a finger directly at him while stating, "You're Captain Plumb." Charlie indicated that indeed he was. The stranger continued to report a sequence of facts: "You served on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Tonkin near Vietnam, flew fighter jets, were shot down above enemy territory, parachuted out, were taken captive, and were held for nearly six years as a POW of the Viet Cong."

Captain Plumb readily agreed to all of these but followed with questions of his own. "How do you know me?" and "Why is this part of my life of such interest to you?"

The man's reply was unexpected. "Because I'm the one who packed your parachute." Charlie indicated that he'd thought about that parachute a great deal over the years, but he never thought he'd meet the one responsible having packed it. The man said he had just one question: "How well did your parachute work?" Charlie replied that not all of the panels opened, but he'd made it to the ground safely.

A typical T-10 parachute of that era was made of lightweight silk or nylon and consisted of up to twenty-four panels that, when inflated after deployment, formed a circular dome thirty-five feet in diameter. In the process, it utilized three hundred square feet of fabric. The combined design specification and automated manufacturing process had to be executed with great precision. That was only one of the two critical safety measures. The other was its manual packing procedure. A parachute must be carefully folded – referred to as packing – in a specific pattern. If a mistake is made, the chute may malfunction and fail to deploy properly. The men who pack parachutes are often called riggers, and they undergo a strict training and certification process before being assigned actual responsibility.

Now, years after the war ended, Captain Plumb was being introduced to his rigger for the first time. Charlie continued with his answer to the man's question, explaining that the man was not responsible for the unopened panels. Rather, it was his being forced to deploy at low altitude while still flying too fast. The man had done his job well. Charlie thanked him profusely, further explaining that over the years he had reflected on the incident and was most grateful for the reliable handling of his parachute. Upon receiving this information, Charlie's former rigger was satisfied, shook his hand, and departed. Charlie returned to his meal and continued thinking about their conversation.

That night, Charlie says he didn't sleep well. It wasn't the meal, and it wasn't, directly, the evening's surprising dialogue. It was something else, something he could not immediately identify that was bothering him. Before dawn, he successfully identified the reason his peace was disturbed.

During the war, Charlie had achieved the special status of jet pilot. Few men met the rigorous physical and mental qualifications. He did, and because he did, he was able to wear the brown leather flight jacket with its colorful insignias, club patches, and collar turned-up in a cocky fashion. Even without the jacket, no one could deny he was handsome. At only college-age, Charlie had been entrusted by his government with the operation of high-tech, multimillion-dollar equipment. His F4-B Phantom carried a deadly mixed payload of ordnance including guns, cannons, bombs, and missiles. It was capable of performing interception, reconnaissance, bombing, or strike under his skillful hands. He routinely experienced the rare opportunity of flying in altitudes above 50,000 feet at supersonic speeds nearing Mach 2. He was cool and capable. The men looked up to him; some envied him. Charlie was the real-life version of "Maverick" or "Iceman" in the film Top Gun.

By contrast, his parachute rigger – to whom, at the time, he never gave any thought – was laboring deep in the sweaty bowels of the ship. He was dressed in standard navy-issue of the time: bell-bottom trousers, back-bibbed shirt, and little round white hat; stereotypically identical to every non-officer aboard. He was at sea, but only occasionally saw it. He was serving the sky pilots while only occasionally seeing the sky, much less taking flight in it. His workday was spent below deck, where it was always hot, stationed at the long tables required for packing parachutes. He had to console himself that his job was important and take private pride in doing it consistently well. Few acknowledged him; no one thanked him. That sleepless night, Charlie belatedly became aware that he was one of those ungrateful no ones. He'd served aboard the Kitty Hawk with his rigger for about a year without ever greeting or meeting him. He hadn't shared a meal with the man, showed him his jet, or even thanked him for his diligent service – the service for which Charlie now owed his life.

Let's expand our thinking by applying Captain Plumb's belated lesson to our lives. How many people have packed our parachutes over the course of our life? Who are still packing them today? Of course, they don't literally pack a parachute, but they do figuratively. Who are taking care of us quietly behind the scenes so that we can be a success and reach the sky? Who are faithfully doing so even though we've given them little consideration and have likely never even thanked them? These realizations may make us uncomfortable, but the resolutions can bring great peace to both parties.

The story could end here, but let's go further and invert the point behind the series of questions above. Whose parachutes are we expected to be packing? Who's depending on us to perform, and to do so in a life-sustaining, quality manner? We need to examine and identify them so as not to let them down. They are counting on our performance so they won't crash and burn while relying on our being there for them.

The phrase "packing parachutes" is used in the story as an analogy for serving others to the best of our abilities, especially in life's critical circumstances. Most consider love to be the Bible's predominant theme. The word "love" appears in the Bible (translations depending) around three hundred times. The word "serve" (or a variation such as service), however, appears over one thousand one hundred times – approximately three times as many occurrences. It's reasonable to conclude that God has placed considerable emphasis on our service to others; and that serving others is how to truly demonstrate love.

Everyone is always packing parachutes for others, and others are always packing our parachutes. We hope they are doing their packing jobs well, and they hope we are doing the same with their parachutes. This is love's service as Jesus intends and as He best described when He said, "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." We have heard it said: Love others as we love ourselves. It loses nothing in meaning or intent if we restate it as: Serve others as we serve ourselves or as we'd like to be served. The public ministry of Jesus demonstrated this principle of love in action as service, culminating with the cross. In our mundane daily tasks, let's set our hearts on becoming excellent riggers like Captain Plumb's parachute unnamed packer and like Doug Hegdahl in the anecdote below. Then one day, we will be rewarded to hear something like: Well done good and faithful servant of mine, enter into your rest.

...that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. (Isaiah 7:15)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Captain Plumb said he shared his life story more than a hundred times annually, estimating that he told the story well over five thousand times after his release from the enemy prison camp in 1973. Charlie stated that he intended to do so as long as there was an audience for it. He went on to say, "What I've got to share is not really a war story; it's the story of a guy who had a big problem. As long as people have a problem, there'll always be an audience." He titled his story "The Triumph of an Ordinary Man" and he titled his book I'm No Hero because he believed his appearance and background to be that of an average man. His motivation in sharing was to lift people into thinking better of themselves.

He stated those six years of pain-filled confinement provided great personal training, but that the primary reason he was able to survive them is that he'd been exposed at several life junctures to people he calls parachute packers. He rarely referred to actual riggers; most often he meant individuals like his high school basketball coach and his fellow navy service men. Captain Plumb had several subsequent lessons to share, all the while confiding that they are rooted in having survived prison; and that having survived, he couldn't think of any challenge in life he wasn't able to overcome thereafter. He said, "I truly believe that if I could put each person through those years, they would come out with the self-confidence that I have." He emphasizes that each of us must struggle against life's adversities and inertia to emerge triumphant, improved, and successful – just as Charlie had to do in Vietnam. That is, we must "learn to fight off prison thinking, in which you think of yourself as a prisoner – you blame everybody else, you think you are the victim of circumstance and not the master."

In closing this episode about Captain Plumb's wartime experiences, I share three brief story lessons from his life that I located on a couple of Internet websites and which I found further substantiated in an article found on Captain Plumb's website ("Bold and Spellbinding" by Bob Baker, Los Angeles Times staff writer at speaker.charlieplumb.com/about-captain/triumph/). Each is a lesson largely rendered in the Captain's words, as he is an accomplished storyteller and motivational speaker; and as such, he is best qualified to present them. His anecdotes contain points worth our contemplation. Also, I highly recommend his full autobiography, I'm No Hero and any of the several DVDs (all available on his website or at Amazon.com).

Charlie's Story #1:

There was a crusty, old man named Francis Smith, my high school basketball coach in Overland Park, Kansas. It was his last year as a coach and we lost the last game. We were walking off the court and all I could think to say was, "I'm sorry, Coach, I guess we're just a bunch of losers." Coach squeezed my shoulder and said: "Son, whether you think you're a loser, or whether you think you're a winner, you're right!" I didn't understand what he meant! I asked him the next day at school and he said, "Life is a choice, a choice between happiness and sadness, profit and loss, even life and death. Don't give away your choice by blaming others. I don't want you coming back in four or five years telling me the reason you flunked out of college was because you went to this school and didn't learn anything. I don't want you coming back in eight or ten years saying you got a job but you couldn't work with your mean ol' boss, and you couldn't agree with any of his philosophies, so you quit just to show him. I don't want you coming back here in twenty years telling me you married some gal and she was beautiful before you married her but after you married her, then she turned out bad and wouldn't support you with your family decisions, so you divorced her and that's the reason for your problems. The difference between happiness and sadness is not what's around you; it's the way you think about what's around you. And if you think you're a loser, or you think you're a winner...you're right!"

Charlie's Story #2:

There was a kid named Doug Hegdahl, a navy seaman and parachute packer who fell off his ship in a freak accident in the South China Sea and wound up a POW at the age of nineteen. He used to tell us, "I wasn't captured, I was rescued!" In 1969, the North Vietnamese decided to release a few prisoners early, as a public relations gesture. The senior officer in my camp chose Hegdahl because he had managed to alphabetically memorize the names, ranks, next-of-kin, and phone numbers of about two hundred and fifty POWs. Here he comes home. He's got all this back-pay in his pocket and he hasn't seen a woman in more than two years, and he's loose on the streets of San Diego. What would you do? Remember that in the navy, this kid was just a parachute packer. He started to travel. He went from north to south, east to west, contacting families, telling them that their prisoners were alive. Eventually, in person or by phone, Hegdahl spoke to a relative of every prisoner whose name he remembered.

Charlie's Story #3:

He recalls telephoning home from the Philippines the day after his release and finding out that his wife had divorced him and was already engaged to another man.

I came back and you wouldn't believe the good advice I was getting from the professionals. The lawyers were saying, "We're gonna sue her and her boyfriend, we're gonna put her in jail for what she's done to you." The psychologists had good advice too: "Charles, you need to get mad about this. You need to get bitter. After all, if anybody has the right to be bitter, you do." Well, I didn't learn much at the school of hard knocks over at the University of Hanoi, but I did learn this: Coach Smith was right! Life is a choice. Life is a choice in a prison camp in Vietnam just like life is a choice each day. Don't give away your choice by blaming somebody else for your problems. And I said to myself, "Mister Lawyer, Mister Psychiatrist, I can sue everybody I can think of, I can feel sorry for myself, I can fall into a corner and atrophy and die. Or I can take Option Number two. I can pick up the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle, put them back together as best I can, and put the energy in a positive direction. Thank you very much; I think that's what I'll do." And I did.

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 speaker.charlieplumb.com/about-captain/triumph
Parable of the Flat Earth

Everyone to the Starting Line

A time to plant... (Ecclesiastes 3:2)

To introduce this story, I offer poetic lyrics addressing time and change from a song by Literature Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan titled "The Times They Are A-Changin'":

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast. The slow one now will later be fast. As the present now will later be past. The order is rapidly fadin'. And the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a-changin'.

Those are the closing lines from Dylan's prescient 1963 ballad accurately predicting the outcome of that transitional decade's restlessness and upheaval. This isn't a statement indicating the changes were good or bad, but just that what Dylan forecast occurred with otherwise unexpected rapidity and without any reversals to date, i.e. consequential changes within the social structure that were not generally recognized or understood.

This parable is somewhat about the concept of time; but it's more about the concept of change although the past, present, and future play key roles. When I taught for the Indiana Department of Corrections, I attended a week-long developmental course titled "Thinking for Change" which contained some parallel concepts to that of this story. Herein, I am motivated by the close relationship between change and thinking in our lives – and, as so often is the case, personal choice may enter the equation as an influential factor. I determined that the best approach was to wrap the parable around an unusual word, apriorism, in order to enhance the related sticky-points. As a concept, it's found a residual place not far back in my mind.

This word is apparently so underutilized that the Microsoft editing program highlighted it as a misspelling; I've since added it to my laptop's internal dictionary. It is derived from the Latin phrase a priori which means reasoning or knowledge proceeding from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience. The Merriam-Webster definition of an apriorism is when "knowledge rests upon principles that are self-evident to reason or are presupposed by experience in general." An informal working definition is hasty or faulty decision-making based on fallacious perceptions, generalizations, thinking, or concepts. In other words, it's when one depends on a preconception, which is to say, a deeply held conviction that's considered accurate regardless of circumstance, veracity, or fact. An apriorism can take the form of a judgment, concept, habit, or belief. Its conceptualization can be influenced by an experience, a mentor or teacher, an observation, a prejudice, a book, a doctrine, or a speech. It is generally resistant to modification, update, or discard.

In researching apriorisms, I found two websites that provided practical explanations under the general category of logic fallacies. The first, Ditext.com offers the following: "Apriorism: 'invincible ignorance': closing one's eyes to evidence alleged against something one believes in ... is frequently described as an attempt to deduce facts from principles, instead of inducing principles from facts." The second, SemanticScholars.org offers: "Apriorism: This fallacy consists in refusing to look at any evidence that might count against one's claim or assumption. An extension of this fallacy consists in being unwilling or unable to specify any conceivable evidence that might possibly count against one's claim." In his book Love Your Enemies, Arthur C. Brooks offers:

...we actually refuse to use new information when we have entrenched beliefs. Psychologists have consistently shown that virtually everyone falls prey to "confirmation bias" a propensity to believe evidence in support of prior beliefs and to reject evidence that contradicts these beliefs.

Beyond the fact that an apriorism may not be true or reliable, there is another serious inherent problem: change. Change is inevitable, and change may radically affect the sustained accuracy of the apriorism. Change is not the problem per se. The problem is whether we update our thinking to reflect the change or whether we stubbornly hold firm to a calcified status quo regardless. The danger is in the latter, not the former. Just because we sincerely believe something does not make it true; it just may mean we are sincerely wrong. Philip K. Dick says: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away." This statement is even more compelling when the word truth is substituted for reality. I'll begin with a closer examination of a pair of broad historical assumptions and then, I'll present a detailed singular example which will be followed by a series of brief examples attributed to well-known industry experts as more exacting proof-points.

Until the fifteenth century, two things were commonly accepted by nearly all of the population throughout the preceding centuries. The first conviction was that the earth was flat; the second was that the earth was fixed in the center of the universe, with the sun and planets orbiting around it. Both of these serve as large-as-life examples of apriorisms; however, we now know these to be incorrect. Today, science is considered more refined, and we've replaced these older faulty apriorisms with new, (hopefully) accurate ones. Or, have we? Examples of post-modern emerging "truths/facts/realities" that may be as faulty as a flat earth-centric universe are legion.

We may never again confuse a spherical earth with a flat one, but there are still plenty of other faith-like, quasi-scientific myths that are accepted as facts. We need to get the answers right. If any of our existing apriorisms cannot tolerate testing, then most likely they are fundamentally weak at their core and require revision. These are the kind of tests with which we should greet incoming data, regardless of the source. It's understandable – but highly unfortunate – that young people, who are inundated with deficient digitally-delivered info, would emotionally panic or demonstrate flawed choices; but adults are tasked with responsibility for applying enough caution and discernment to enable distinguishing reality from bizarro-world. In reviewing David Robson's The Intelligence Trap, essayist Emily Bobrow writes:

Folks with multiple degrees and professional expertise are often blind to their biases....Beliefs often arise from emotional needs, which we intellectually rationalize post hoc. Clever people are as prone to irrationality as everyone else...yet they are more skilled at justifying their superstitions....Williams James once said, "a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

A colloquial explanation of why this matters is that flawed information leads to flawed decisions and choices, and flawed decisions and choices ultimately lead to flawed endings. In automated information processing technology this is known as "garbage in, garbage out."

It has been commonly believed, since 1948 when Claude Shannon (known as the father of information theory) first proposed it, that the human brain receives eleven million bits of sensory perception information per second into its unconscious portion, but that its conscience portion only accepts fewer than fifty bits per second. What happens to that huge quantity of rejected data and what qualifies the mere fifty bits for acceptance? The 10,999,950 bits may or may not remain stored in the unconscious portion of our three-pound brain with its eleven billion neuron processing capacity. The fifty are accepted because the information therein agrees with the information consciously already accepted based on pre-existing experience, belief, education, memory and so on; i.e. what we consider to be real. That which was rejected was done so because it was either not useful or not considered real. This widely agreed theory helps to explain why apriorisms develop and why recognizing them and changing them are such significant challenges.

We must vigilantly guard against faulty apriorisms that move through society serially in a regressive direction from good beginnings as solidly indefensible, to limited acceptability by a minority, to majority espoused, and finally to wholly desirable and aggressively defended. Historically, consider the number of incorrect apriorisms that hundreds of millions of Germanic people progressively (this is a very insidious and intentional social change process that initially sounds so positive and often develops the into the opposite) came to accept during the decade or so leading up to World War II, all of which facilitated Hitler's dictatorial rise to power and then left him in control of extensive geography far past the point of sanity. These incorrect apriorisms included: Germans are a superior race, genocide and mercy killing are acceptable means to an end, Jews (God's chosen people) are responsible for the world's problems, Jews are not wholly human but rather ape or pig-like, Polish and Slavic peoples are racially inferior, and Germany was ordained to rule the world for a thousand years. A similar case can be made for the Japanese people during the same time frame. They had only slight variations in their apriorisms relating to national pride and practices, significantly beginning with their belief that the emperor was god and ending with a military-religious cult of Kamikaze suicide. I have seen references to two informally named mental disorientations: tunnel-vision and drinking the Kool-Aid. Twentieth-century German and Japanese aprioristic cultural thinking is a historical example of this kind of phenomenon.

If inclined to think that mankind has moved beyond accepting fallacious syllogisms as religious-political doctrine, consider the world's present situation consisting of sixty-plus radical Islamic nations with their billions of people (many also scattered throughout non-predominately Muslim and/or Arab nations) who hold similar beliefs to those of twentieth-century Germans and Japanese, and who are aggressively acting on them in similar extreme degrees both externally and internally to the Islamic community (inclusive of murder, coercion, mutilation, persecution, torture, denial, genocide, subjugation, and conquest). Externally, Jews and Christians are so severely and regularly victimized by Islam that it ranks as one of the two most prevalent sources of their persecution, genocide, and martyrdom throughout the world today, just as it frequently has since the seventh century AD. When Russian Communism failed, Islam filled in to compete with China, North Korea, and Cuba as the dominant killer of Jews and Christians. This is especially flagrant in East and Central Africa and the Malay-Indochina Peninsula. Internally, these violent inclinations are perpetrated internecine against their women and children, even unto their wives and daughters, as well as between their various sects over the slightly differing disputed minutiae in their beliefs.

If inclined to believe that the United States is immune to large-scale aberrant thinking or philosophies, consider the numerous southern states that for centuries indulged in, defended, and attempted to propagate a lifestyle that gained its privileged position by reducing another class of citizens to property ownership and usage akin in practice to farm livestock. Likewise, the original colonies (later states) that disguised land theft and aggressive population expansion as "manifest destiny," again facilitated by reducing another class of citizens to an inferior status with greatly diminished rights and representation.

Let's reduce the scale of analysis a few notches through a detailed examination of a singular and innocuous commercial-industrial example. It holds a quintessential position in the world of marketing and is known as the Quartz Crisis or the Quartz Revolution. In 1968, the Swiss manufacturers of mechanical watches held a comfortable sixty-five percent share of the worldwide watch market, with their share of revenue and profits varying from eighty to ninety percent. The Swiss dominated the world watch market for centuries, but during WWII they gained hegemony. Their neutrality permitted them to almost solely and monopolistically continue manufacturing consumer timepieces while other nations were forced to undertake military applications.

Swiss-manufactured products were beautiful and extraordinarily accurate, hand-assembled, jeweled-movement watches – truly works of art, the finest anywhere. Their products were expensive but worth the price as based on reliability and those highly sought-after intangibles of keen fashion sense and prestigious status. Beyond producing a product of high-caliber quality, the Swiss watch manufacturers were also great innovators, as evidenced by their many related inventions and numerous patents.

Twenty years later, the Swiss held only ten percent of the industry's share and revenue. What happened? A change occurred, and the Swiss failed to embrace it, either because they didn't recognize it or because they refused to accept it. Consequently, they retained only a small, specialized segment of the market with most of their glory as manufacturing history. During that period, quartz-based electronic watches quickly gained in popularity and availability; they were suddenly dominating global sales. Oddly, it was an employee of a major Swiss watch company who invented the electronic watch. When, however, he showed it to his employer, it was deemed only interesting enough to exhibit at an upcoming technology exhibition for use as an attention-getting demo display.

The company didn't protect their invention with a patent because they thought it was too cheap or gimmicky and thus not able to engender sufficient commercial interest to justify manufacturing it. Others, like United States-based Texas Instruments and Japan-based Seiko, saw it at the show and reached different conclusions. Future purchasing demand quickly proved the new competitors to be right and the embedded Swiss to be wrong. Additional features were gradually added to the electronic watch: for example, alarms and full date displays. In an effort to find niche markets, some even added non-time-related components like pagers and calculators. After a twenty-year run, even these innovations could not fully insulate the general wristwatch market against eventual serious market erosion by unexpected new and more sophisticated digital innovations. The wristwatch market suffered freefall when nearly everyone came to carry one or more Internet-capable, wireless communication devices like cell phones, PDAs, tablets, and MP3 players – all capable of flawlessly accurate time reporting, and – once inconceivable – also able to deliver photography, GPS, language interpretation, games, calculation, voice recognition-response, encyclopedic research and so much more.

One working explanation of an apriorism is how we view something; that is, our perception that things are best or right a certain, specific way and thus they are supposedly fixed, immutable, and universal. For an analogy, think of apriorisms as different pairs of glasses that we put on. Everything is seen through those lenses, and those lenses consistently influence our vision of the world. The view through those glasses affects judgment and decision-making by coloring, blocking-out, and distorting them in specific, set manners. The Swiss wore glasses that showed their dominant past continuing ad infinitum as they presumed consumers would continue to purchase only mechanical fashion watches.

For additional manufacturing examples, I'll review the time frame from 1876 to 1981, moving from oldest to most current. The following is a series of brief vignettes showcasing famously unsustainable, know-it-all apriorisms. These examples, and multiple others, are available unattributed on many Internet sources. Although each opinion is proffered by a respected industry expert, all rapidly proved shortsighted and inaccurate – just like the Swiss watchmakers and the flat-earth centrists.

1863 – The Paris-based art salon rejected oil paintings submitted by Impressionist Renoir, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Manet, Sisley, Bazille, and Cezanne because they were not considered good enough (not sufficiently traditional or appealing). Those paintings today are among the most highly respected, sought-after, and valuable art ever produced.

1876 – Western Union prevailed over the communications industry; however after studying the newly invented telephone, management concluded it had "too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication and therefore it has no value to our business."

1899 – Charles Duell, the commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, said that "Everything that can be invented has already been invented." He anticipated no longer being needed and perhaps becoming the last commissioner. Despite massive growth in employment, the patent office is currently so backlogged that, depending on the category of the patent, the wait times are from one to fifteen years.

1903 – Alfred Russel Wallace, naturalist and friend of Charles Darwin, wrote that our sun was the center of the universe and that it was unlikely any other galaxies existed. Today, we know the sun's true position is not the center and that over an estimated one-hundred billion galaxies exist with an average of one-hundred billion stars/suns in each.

1911 – Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the French commander of all allied troops in WWI, said that "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." When a military conflict is undertaken today, no troops are sent in until airstrikes have been in play for the first thirty days. Air superiority and air support are together very significant parts of waging and winning war.

1932 – Albert Einstein, the famous physics theorist and one of the developers of the atomic bomb, said that "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable."

1946 – Darryl F. Zanuck, head of the movie company 20th Century Fox, said that "Television won't be able to hold any market because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." Alternately, average daily viewing time is one-hundred and seventy minutes per capita and rising.

1947 – Howard Aiken, a pioneer in data processing systems, said that "Only six electronic digital computers will be required to satisfy the computing needs of the entire United States."

1962 – Decca Records rejected the Beatles saying, "Groups using guitars are on the way out and have no future in the industry." At present, as has been the case for the past fifty years, nearly every rock band has a minimum foundation of three guitars, one each performing lead, rhythm, and bass lines.

1964 – United Artists rejected Ronald Reagan for a lead film role in The Best Man saying, "Reagan doesn't have that presidential look."

1965 – A Yale University professor of management advised his student, Fred Smith, the founder of thirty-billion-dollar FedEx: "Your concept for an overnight delivery service is interesting, but in order to earn a grade better than a C, it has to be feasible."

1967 – Dr. Lee DeForest, the inventor of both the vacuum tube and the radio, said that "Man will never reach the moon, regardless of all of his future scientific advances." Two years later, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, where Neil Armstrong took his historic first step onto its surface.

1969 – A famous surgeon concluded his research saying that "For most people, using tobacco is beneficial for their health." America is still desperately fighting to contain this deadly habit.

1977 – Kenneth Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), said that "There is no reason for anyone to have a computer in their home." Simultaneous to Mr. Olsen making that statement, I was entering the computer industry with an employment offer from Burroughs Computers (later Unisys). At the time, I held considerable admiration for this man and his company. Nevertheless, his apriorisms blindsided him and helped destroy the company. The personal computer prospered while the mainframe manufacturing industry went the modest way of Swiss watches, eventually even reducing the giant industry leader IBM down to its present far less influential size with its significantly reoriented functions.

1981 – Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, is variously reported to have stated: "640k of processing memory ought to be enough for anybody." Entry-level laptops currently have four to eight gigabytes of RAM processing power (aka main memory), with the figure consistently moving higher. Six hundred and forty kilobytes would not be sufficient to operate a state-of-the-art calculator.

(When telling this story, I sometimes break the whole into two parts. The preceding, with its primarily impersonal perspective, as part one; and what follows with its primarily personal perspective, as part two.)

We all hold apriorisms about the world around us, and we also hold them about ourselves and how we fit into that world. We saw the belated humor in my previous historical examples in the areas of science, technology, and business. We are, however, all influenced by our deeply held personal apriorisms. Here are some that are fairly common for most young people, as well as for many adults:

  * No boys will like me if I tell them "no" when they come on to me.
  * Church is for old ladies and losers.
  * I'm not smart enough to make the honor roll.
  * I can run stop signs or speed just like everyone else.
  * I'm not pretty enough, or handsome enough, to get married to anyone really nice.
  * Shoplifting is not a real crime; they build losses into the product prices.
  * It's not fair, or that's unfair.
  * Marriage, sex, and family are any way you want to interpret them.
  * College is too expensive, so I'll never be able to afford to go.
  * No one cares about me; suicide (or mass shooting) is a way to get their attention.
  * I don't like who won the election, so I can disrupt his/her term in office.
  * I can control the drugs, a few times will be fun and it won't hurt me.
  * I don't get along with my mom/dad because she/he never understands me.
  * Cops are the real problem, they're the enemy.
  * That teacher just doesn't like me or has it in for me.
  * This is a boring town; nothing good ever goes on here, so there's nothing here for me.
  * I'm not coordinated enough to join the team or to play a sport.
  * I'll prove that I really love him by sleeping with him.
  * It's okay to be in this country illegally, they probably stole our land anyway.
  * I won't have any problem driving home after just a few drinks.
  * I practice safe recreational sex so I won't catch AIDS or any STDs.
  * Mom and Dad will never find out, or my spouse will never find out.
  * Jesus is just one way to God/Heaven; every other way is just as valid.
  * The man is holding me down, or it's my skin color, or they're racist.
  * Divorce is better for the kids than seeing us live unhappily together.
  * No need to save or plan for lean times and retirement, there's always bankruptcy and government aid.
  * The police are prejudiced against my race.
  * Everybody cheats in their marriage, what's the harm?
  * I know that he beats me and the children; but he doesn't mean to, he really loves us.
  * No one from my family has ever had a good job, so I won't either.
  * Living off the government isn't a sin, they owe it to me.
  * Aborting my baby is no big deal and it's legal.
  * Why not grab all the entitlements I can even if I have to fib a little to get them?
  * I'm handicapped, or I have ADHD, or I'm bipolar; so I can't help it or be held accountable for what I do (or fail to do) because I'm a victim.
  * I won't get pregnant if we're careful or if it's the first time.
  * White, male Europeans are to blame for everything wrong in the world.
  * Who needs math and science? I'll never use them.
  * I'm not fulfilled in my marriage, so I'll get a divorce.
  * Cutting corners when reporting my income is an acceptable way to provide better financially for my family.
  * Jews – especially Israelis – are an inferior, trouble-making race.
  * You can't get a really good job unless you know somebody on the inside.
  * Cheating on exams is okay if you're having a hard time with that subject.
  * Foul language and cursing are just words, they're no big deal.
  * It's not my fault, or I can't help it.
  * Cutting classes, not doing homework, or sleeping in class won't make any difference.

These personal apriorisms are likely to be just as unreliable and will just as readily misfire as those industry ones held by Decca Records, Western Union, and the rest of those businesses and their experts in the earlier examples. Our apriorisms are often incomplete, inaccurate, or completely messed up. Therefore, we shouldn't be so quick to judge, label, or form rigid opinions about others and about ourselves. From our limited perspective, we almost never see the whole picture or have all the applicable information. We must keep watching and learning, and then be willing to change our thinking when it's clear that our beliefs are wrong. This is a process known as forever-becoming. If it sounds like a bad thing, it isn't.

In the last few decades of my life, I've seen much unexpected political, economic, and technological change: the fall of the USSR and the Berlin Wall, the rise of digital concepts and intelligence, the invention of products like the MP3 player, PC, and cell phone, hundreds of entertainment channels when previously there were only three (NBC, ABC, and CBS), the divestiture of AT&T with hundreds of new telecom competitors, the demise of the former big three car manufacturers (Ford, GM, and Chrysler) due to the rise of dozens of new car manufacturers in former emerging countries; the global resurgence of radical Islam and the rise of domestic and international terrorism, the skyrocket climb of stock market indexes, China becoming a world-marketer, DNA and gene experimentation with production of modified foods, major financial institutions collapsing in the market plunges, cloning, and traditional retirement plans replaced by previously unheard-of new investment strategies. Even as I record these examples, more occur and the ones I list are ever-more taken for granted by those in the most recent generations.

Social change has been just as extreme and unpredictable – perhaps more so: selling of infant body parts, gay marriage and redefinition of the nuclear family, live-birth and late-term infanticide, prevalent anti-Christian and anti-Semitic bigotries, acceptance and promotion of promiscuous sex, dissolution of traditional marriage and family, decay of civility and celebration of rudeness, advocacy on behalf of killing police officers, denial of physiological personal identity, demeaning the office of president, creation of dozens of alleged genders from the two basic ones, deliberate destruction of American exceptionalism, promotion of violence as an acceptable means of expressing political grievances and disagreement, the rise of the dictatorial regulatory state, dumbing-down education, massive growth and acceptance of welfare lifestyles, radical-Islamic persecution of Christians and Jews, and so much more.

The following are eight specific maxims that are helpful in sharpening our judgment going forward. I'm willing to say that these are always true and worth holding onto because they do not change. I state this with confidence, despite having just presented cautions about risks of constant change and the dangers of apriorisms. I can confidently state this because eternal truths do exist, and truth never changes; it isn't relative, it's constant and permanent. It is our insurance against absolute chaos.

  1. Apriorisms filter all our incoming data. In doing so, they may cause us to miss and/or ignore something that's new or doesn't fit neatly into our existing beliefs/mindsets.
  2. Apriorisms must be kept open to change. The future requires us to be prepared to accept change, not reject or ignore it. Things change and people can change too; we are not hard-wired in a singular fashion. If we don't change, we risk a life of regrets filled with shoulda-coulda-woulda.
  3. The future is not a seamless extension of the past. We can't always predict tomorrow based on what happened yesterday. Today is best lived for its unique merits and opportunities.
  4. A successful past can inhibit our flexibility in the future if we get stuck in what-used-to-be and what-used-to-work. The creators and early adopters of new concepts are mostly outsiders who are not vested in the past and who have nothing to lose by adopting the new and departing from the old.
  5. When a change occurs, the meters and metrics are reset to zero – fresh thinking and new starts are required of every participant. All competitors are equal and back on the starting line together; no one holds a lead. Linger too long with a head full of old thoughts and perceptions, it will result in losing serious ground that may never be recovered.
  6. Change may sound like it's all problem-prone on the front-end, but it isn't because it frequently creates more opportunities than threats as it plays out.
  7. Our incorrect apriorisms can hold us back and cause us to think that we're victims or losers. When we operate under old or false precepts, we're stuck in position; when we're quick to accept new or accurate ones, we are free to move forward with a more positive outlook.
  8. Seeming advantages can be disadvantages, and seeming disadvantages can be advantages.

I'll reinforce that final point through a reinterpretation of a well-known episode between David, the Israelite shepherd boy, and Goliath, the Philistine man of war. David was inexperienced in warfare, was small, and had no body armor, spear, javelin, shield, sword, or armor-bearer. Goliath was an experienced warrior, was well equipped, had a singularly huge physique, and had an armor-bearer to assist him. On closer look, we know that giants have many health problems and shortcomings – often including poor eyesight, requiring them to engage in close physical interaction. David stood afar off, where his small, unencumbered stature became an impossible target; yet he was still capable of the quick, free movements needed for using his unconventional and undervalued long-distance sling. Add to these natural pluses and minuses the supernatural power invested in David by the God whom he trusted, and he becomes the surprise victor that has inspired so many over the centuries. ("David said to the Philistine, 'You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.'" 1 Samuel 17:45). Building upon David's triumph, the nation of Israel continued forward victory upon victory to become an ancient Middle Eastern superpower for several generations.

Change is natural; change is expected; change is part of God's plan. Consider nature itself, with its splendid display of changes such as the life cycles of the tadpole and the caterpillar, or in the cyclical unfolding of the four seasons and the revolving night sky.

In a dramatic encounter between Pharaoh of Egypt, the head of the world's superpower, and Moses, the Israelite from a small tribe of nomadic shepherds, there's another ancient illustration of the downside of refusing to acknowledge the introduction of new perspectives into a long-standing established order. Pharaoh actively declined to accept any hint of change and clung tenaciously to his dated apriorisms. He was stubbornly oblivious in the persistent face of Moses' many patient intonations about the soon-coming new direction. Multiple times Pharaoh's only action was stiffening his neck, while rivers turned to blood, frogs occupied the land, and lice plagued the people and livestock. Following in rapid sequence came flies and diseases, boils on men and beasts, crops devastated by hail with what little remained consumed by locusts, darkness during the day, and the death of every firstborn male throughout the land – even the eventual loss of his army, transportation, and weaponry in the waters of the Red Sea. Once the center of civilization and the envy of its neighbors, Egypt has never again been a dominant world leader. Over the following three thousand years, it often functioned as a third-world country subservient to a series of stronger nations from ancient Greece to modern Britain.

Returning to a more recent illustration that's coincident with the Swiss watch episode – except that this was an American faux pas, it was commonly believed from 1950 through 1969 that the product label Made in Japan indicated that Japanese manufactured goods – like electronics and automobiles – were inferior. There were domestic bumper-stickers that read: "Made in Japan from old beer cans." For the two decades from 1970 through 1989, the Japanese subsequently became good imitators as they observed and followed the Americans and Germans. In the States, however, most were not paying attention. Finally, from 1990 through 2009, the Japanese appeared fully transitioned into industry leaders with innovative features and lasting-build quality. Retaining the notion that we produced better products than the Japanese deprived the United States of its leadership position and market share in both multibillion-dollar industries.

What made the positive, transitional difference for Japan? An American by the name of W. Edwards Deming did. He had fresh, postwar engineering concepts that were rejected in Detroit but accepted in Tokyo. His ideas included TQM (total quality management), continuous improvement (kaizen), non-union labor forces, and close manufacturing tolerances. Deming likely encountered reactionary statements such as "Let's get real," "Are you dreaming or what?" "That's not how we do it," "So you know better than all of us?" "That's impossible," "It's not that easy," and "You just don't understand." Most of us have personally heard iterations of these from time to time. Occasionally, we have failed ourselves by believing them and choosing not to move forward.

Each of us is just like those Japanese products. We often start out rough around the edges and flawed. With time, we develop into fairly good imitations as we observe our peers, select good heroes and role models – maybe have a mentor, make the right choices, and generally mature. With persistence and passion, however, we finally become excellent, quality originals (having acquired good character) that no one else is exactly like. These three developmental stages were true in my life (I share about these in the Epilogue). Most important, at the conclusion, we are able to finish well. The apostle Paul summarized it this way: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7). I'll close on a light note with lyrics from another classic Dylan song, "My Back Pages":

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats too noble to neglect, deceived me into thinking I had something to protect. Good and bad, I define these terms, quite clear, no doubt, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

...and a time to pluck what is planted. (Ecclesiastes 3:2)

* * * *

Author's Notes: The sticky-points in the "Parable of the Four Farmers" and the sticky-points in the "Parable of the Flat Earth" may appear contradictory. The first is a caution about making changes, and the second is a caution about ignoring changes. The resolution is found in the following supporting statements: Avoid changes for the wrong purposes, such as greed, running from a problem, or dissatisfaction. Change may be generated by external circumstances, and thus forced on us; or change may be generated by our internal thought processes or personal choices, and thus be far more optional. When change is right or best, proceed – after prayerful consideration – in faith. Neither an attitude for nor against change is correct in every situation. We would do well to imitate the ancient Israelite tribe of Issachar who reportedly remained constantly alert to their changing times and thus remained immediately prepared on behalf of their families and country.

My story concept on the relationship of preconceptions (apriorisms) and change is not unique to me. The initial catalyst was a VHS training video I watched in the early 1980s during my first years in the telecommunications industry. The video featured futurist Joel Barker and was titled The Power of Vision. The core concept stayed with me over the years, was consistently expanded through personal experience and multiple complementary sources, and became one of my regular shared stories in post-career volunteer venues as it was frequently customized to promote immediate objectives. Its final iteration is this extended parable in short-story format. Two additional sources on the study of influences for the origination and acceptance of ideas and beliefs are Safi Bahcall, author of Loonshots, and Jerry B. Harvey, author of The Abilene Paradox.

From one perspective, the positions related to basic human issues really are fixed: God eternally fixed them in Genesis and literally set ten elemental ones in stone. His apriorisms will prove to be final, straight-forward, and correct. The book of Genesis is an easily accessible touchstone to foundational life issues, and it proves to be a helpful tool when seeking answers to them, and to so much more – it's God's Razor. At the very least, Bible-inspired and grounded viewpoints should be part of a full discussion mix regardless of positions for or against. Within this parable, it's been established that today's aprioristic "truths" frequently become tomorrow's joke or regret. The greatest and most fruitful change possible in any life is that of being spiritually reborn into God's family. Taking off the old, and putting on the new; His eternal Spirit in place of our old dead one, the mind of Christ replacing our former carnal one. This is the biggest fresh start in life. Like the metamorphosis that yields a butterfly from a caterpillar, we can truly begin anew. Solomon counseled in the book of Ecclesiastes that the ending is more consequential than the beginning. We are offered the opportunity to finish well despite any and all earlier stumbles, false starts, sins, upsets, and failures. F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second chances in life; God says he is wrong.
Stetson Kennedy

Killed Just for Shaking Hands

The battle is the Lord's... (1 Samuel 17:47)

With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace, and beauty. The thing is, Stetson did what he set out to do.   
~ Studs Terkel, historian and author

During the decade of the 1940s, Stetson's first-hand field research, bold investigative actions, and creative solutions helped to respectively cripple and expose the twin evils of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Jim Crow Segregation. Stetson (whose first name was William, but which he never used) was born in 1916 into an aristocratic family in the Deep South city of Jacksonville, Florida. As his last name implies, he was related to John B. Stetson, the dual founder of the iconic hat manufacturing company and Stetson University of DeLand, Florida. Yet at an early age, he committed his life to assertively opposing many of the questionable historic values that white southern society long held dear – sufficiently so to have fought a bloody four-year internecine conflict fifty years earlier in a desperate, largely unsuccessful, attempt to fully retain it.

Stetson authored eight influential sociology books: Palmetto Country, The Florida Negro, Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West, South Florida Folk-Life, After Appomattox – How the South Won the War, Southern Exposure, Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A., and perhaps most importantly I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan (later retitled The Klan Unmasked). The first four books relate to his folklore research, while the last four books have common themes, are the best known, the most influential, and the most enduring. Within them, Stetson exposed the disreputable subjects of the KKK and Southern racial injustice. This final tetralogy was considered too inflammatory for any stateside publisher to print; it remained for the famous French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who identified with Stetson's cause, to publish them from abroad.

In his early years before the anti-Klan-related work and writings, Stetson began as a pioneering folklorist. As a teenager, he gathered both black race-related and white race-related materials. His interest and output began while a student at the University of Florida. It continued after being commissioned to the WPA's (Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) Federal Writers Project to pursue, not just folklore, but oral history and ethnic studies as well. Beyond folklorist and writer, his professional career encompassed the supplemental, often overlapping, roles of environmentalist, labor activist, journalist, editor, and – more than all the others – human rights advocate.

While at the WPA, he adopted a bold working style that was prohibited in the South. Kennedy chose a field research partnership with black novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Prevailing ethics required them to travel separately because dominant Southern apartheid prohibited them from any inter-racial and inter-gender contact or attraction, whether personal or professional. These kinds of broad prohibitions were collectively known as the Jim Crow laws, and, as Stetson said about them, they could frankly get you killed just for shaking hands – both colors, white and black. It may well have been his WPA experiences with Hurston that alerted him to the possibilities in the work he later came to fully adopt.

Jim Crow law was the South's post-Reconstruction Era racial segregation legislation. It evolved when Democratic President Andrew Johnson facilitated the replacement of the beneficent Freedman's Bureau Acts with the odious Southern white-favoring, anti-Reconstruction Black Codes. After the next national election, these were prohibited by Republican President Grant's administration. It was at this time that Jim Crow was surreptitiously installed in place of the now illegal codes. Jim Crow acted as the open, pseudo-legal cover for the evolving separate-but-equal institutions of post-war Southern redeemer society that was in vogue from the Reconstruction Acts to the Civil Rights Acts, nearly a century in duration. In practice, Jim Crow was an almost complete denial of civil liberties perpetrated against (what was then internationally called) the Negro race by the previous chattel slavery states. Jim Crow laws were not enumerated as formally against blacks as the Nazi's Nuremberg laws were against Jews; there were, however, many similarities related to racial purity, societal mores, and presumed ethnological supremacy. They were also similar in application and comprehensiveness, with Jim Crow as equal in severity to Southern blacks as Nuremberg was to German Jews.

During Stetson's lifetime, the Klan's relationship to Jim Crow was as its covert, illegal strong-armed enforcement branch – a combined and hasty lawman, judge, jury, and executioner. Segregation, white supremacy, and discrimination were enforced formally in the daylight by the police and sheriff's departments, and then clandestinely, often in the dark of night, even more harshly by the fear-mongering, violent KKK, with many of the same men participating in both groups.

The Klan that Stetson witnessed was the hate group's second reincarnation or phase. The first began relatively harmlessly in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee as pranks practiced by six Scotch-Irish white college students who'd recently returned from Confederate service. In ironic twists, one student's name was James Crowe and another's was John Kennedy (no known relationships to either the laws or to Stetson and President Kennedy). Their night activities involved riding horses while dressed in white sheets decorated with occult images. In a short time, the prankish vandalism turned into minor acts of terrorism against the large population of recently freed blacks. These acts continued to escalate in seriousness until they became fully integrated into the Democratic South's pervasive, tyrannical anti-Reconstruction (aka redeemer) blood-soaked resistance (openly supported after Lincoln's assassination by his successor, Andrew Johnson – with barely any discernible difference between his attitude toward white abolitionists and black Freedmen [recently emancipated slaves] and that of former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis). As the organizational structure formalized, membership increased exponentially and secret rights of initiation were added – justifying its label of the Invisible Empire. The notoriously brutal ex-Confederate Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest accepted the top leadership position as its first Grand Wizard. Eventually, Forrest resigned from the KKK as its activities became too obviously lawless for the peacetime cloaking that he belatedly donned.

This first phase was the Klan's shortest, but most savage with its armies of marauding nightriders controlling the South during Reconstruction. Historians characterize this period of our national history as both a follow-up civil war and as the very worst domestic terrorism before or since. As the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified, the Klan's reactions intensified in near open reactive protestation. Despite its relative brevity, this KKK was measurably the most murderous and brutal in intensity, with many pro-Reconstruction (formerly pro-abolition) Republican whites barbarously killed side-by-side with northern blacks and Southern Freedmen. This difficult period in our post-war history was characterized by historian and Senior Research Scholar Allen Guelzo as a rare time when the political violence was visited mostly on the victors as opposed to the defeated. He states that in every respect the Civil War might as well never have occurred. In other words, the rights, safety, law and order, and freedom were that were brought with blood were not realized at that time in the South. It ended in roughly a decade due to heavy opposing pressure from federal Reconstruction policies and Northern Republican lawmaking. It was accompanied by martial law, the Klan and Enforcement Acts, and the occasional suspension of Habeas Corpus; all initiated by an indefatigably forthright Republican (the party which began under Lincoln) President Ulysses Grant. It marked the first time the Federal government was involved with private criminal activity. Thus, it was the second time that former Supreme Commander of the Armies, Grant, successfully fought violent Southern race oppression as well as opposed General Forrest, as the cavalryman again chose to engage in a disreputable avocation.

The seed for the resurrected second phase of the Klan was planted a couple of decades later coincident with the 1915 release of D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a film based on Thomas Dixon's 1905 pro-KKK, obsessively racist novel The Klansman. Dixon intended, as he said, to "revolutionize northern sentiment by a presentation of history [that is, historic revisionism] that would transform every man in my audience into a good Democrat." The Klan would soon come to dominate the South's ubiquitous Democratic Party for the remainder of the century, as well as thereafter negatively influence the national Democratic Party for more than half of the twentieth century. Griffith's film was by far the biggest blockbuster of its time as it was viewed by a majority of the adult population. The brainwashed storyline deliberately erred by depicting the Klan as protecting American morality against the depraved practices of free blacks.

Two-term Democratic Party President Woodrow Wilson and his first lady hosted a premiere showing of Griffith's depraved racial film via a private screening at the White House; it was the first movie ever shown at the White House. The already favorable reception of the film by Southern bigots was further and formally enhanced nationally through enthusiastic acceptance and underhanded indirect endorsement by a sitting President. Prior to being elected, Wilson was a historian and an academic who misused his influence by his prejudicial determination to eliminate positive textbook references to the black race and to President Grant (a supporter of equal rights to both free men, northern, and freedmen, southern). Upon assuming the chief executive office, Wilson removed all black employees from federal service within the District of Columbia except for one token, the incumbent presidential valet. If Wilson was not a confirmed member of the Klan, he was believed to have quietly favored the clandestine organization and his direct actions turned back some of the gains made on civil rights.

With the promotional wind of both the film and the presidency at its back, the Klan was fully reconstituted by a disgraced Methodist minister, William Simmons. In 1915, he initiated the renewed Klan by burning a cross above Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, and declaring himself the Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire. The regional Klan quickly roared back and membership soared. This Klan targeted new groups for harassment, which now included Catholics, Jews, union organizers, civil rights workers, and immigrants, as well as blacks. Over one thousand white Americans and countless black Americans were lynched, the favored means of the KKK's vigilante "justice." This Klan's membership was no longer comprised of former Confederate rebels but rather promoted itself outwardly as sustaining traditional biblical and American values while actually steeped in deadly occultism.

The second phase continued for the next half-century, with only a slight disruption created by anti-fascist feelings engendered during the Second World War. This phase had the longest tenure and became the most entrenched in society, extending beyond the southern states. It was able to infiltrate, and very often control, local and county governments and law enforcement agencies – often reaching even state and federal levels. Hoover's FBI was generally unable, and sometimes unwilling, to bring down phase two of the Klan despite decades of on-and-off efforts. Its organizational structure was penetrated by members belonging to, or sympathetic to, the Klan. The secret internal nature of the Klan was its greatest protection, but it also benefited from overt membership numbers and wide, covert acceptance.

The Klan and apartheid Jim Crow dominated southern society from Stetson's childhood through his middle age; their influences saturated every aspect of the social order. Many journalists, lawmen, ministers, businessmen, and politicians joined the Klan; and at the federal level, several long-serving Democratic senators and congressmen were members. The House Un-American Activities Committee protractedly neglected its charter mission and continued to declare the Klan to be an acceptable element of American heritage, as did the Hoover FBI by pointedly failing to pursue credible leads and warnings.

The Klan became so strong that at one point it took firm hold in some of the racially integrated Northern states, well beyond its Southern roots. In Indiana, D. C. Stephenson of Houston, Texas, established a base in Evansville, in the southwest corner of the state. Facilitated by Stephenson's considerable sales and organization skills, membership reached 350,000, or nearly one out of every three Hoosier men. The Indiana Klan controlled cities, counties, and even the governorship of Ed Jackson as well as other top state posts. They sustained control through membership, sympathy, threats, and bribe-based patronage. Stephenson accurately bragged, "I am the law in Indiana."

Stetson referred to the KKK as "home-grown fascists and racial terrorists." Beyond his experiences with the WPA, he had other good reasons for holding that view. When Stetson was a child, his family employed a black maid named Flo who was "almost like a mother" to him. After Flo was short-changed by a white bus driver, she attempted to recover the money due her. The penalty for this was a nighttime beating and serial rape by a KKK gang. Stetson also had a disreputable uncle who'd achieved the high-ranking and amoral position of Grand Titan. Both of these circumstances left negative impressions on young Stetson.

Stetson accurately believed that the Germans and Japanese were racists who utilized Klan-like terror on an international scale. His peers had gone overseas and were doing their best to oppose them. Because Stetson was prevented from active service in the armed forces due to a childhood back injury, he was frustrated and disappointed that he was unable to be inducted into our military. (Additionally, he was the size of fictional Steve Rogers before morphing into Captain America – a trendy comic-book hero at the time.) Stetson resolved to perform voluntary, substitute patriotic duties; he would fight racist fascism on our home front instead.

Stetson determined to do so by taking on the Klan. He left Florida and temporarily moved to Georgia because, at the time, Atlanta was the headquarters for both the KKK and its related, Nazi-influenced youth group, the Columbians. Stetson decided to infiltrate both organizations. He did so by assuming a new identity since his real name was already well known and hated by the Klan. Stetson went by the name of John S. Perkins, the fictitious nephew of his Grand Titan uncle, Brady Perkins. He took the Klan's blood oath, wore their hooded gown, burned crosses, and made hate speeches. This role-playing eventually earned him the position of Klavalier. It was equivalent to an enforcer in the Mafia, so it was sometimes referred to as the murder squad. His time undercover was a dangerous double-edged sword: He could be mistaken by anti-Klan factions as a KKK collaborator or revealed to the Klan as an informant.

While working undercover within these organizations, Stetson collected and recorded solid information gleaned from the inside, with much of it suitable as legal evidence. Stetson says: "Perkins was busy collecting the stuff, and Kennedy was busy making use of it." The discovery data included secret code words and handshakes, planning decisions made during meetings, and the details of their group rituals. Stetson would tip a trusted authority about the Klan's planned activities so they could intervene and prevent some of the potential violence. But event-by-event prevention amounted to a frustrating only a small portion of the Klan's perpetrated depravity. Action was needed on a larger scale. He determined it should be in the form of debunking the KKK as alleged Christian patriots. He wanted to reveal their true nature as savage criminals.

The Klan had widespread support at many levels of Southern society and beyond, causing it to be difficult and risky for Stetson to know whom to trust with his information because he could be double-crossed at any time, as he was on a couple of occasions. In 1947, he decided to bypass the usual authority channels and feed the secret details he'd collected to Robert Maxwell, the producer of the exceptionally popular Superman nationwide radio program. Radio at the time was the single-most influential mass communications media. During the war, Superman – the greatest comic-book superhero – had fought and defeated Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito; why not now take on the Klan? The anti-Klan series concept was accepted, and production consisted of four episodes a week for four weeks running under the title Clan of the Fiery Cross. These sixteen audio broadcasts are available today on the Internet and may be heard on YouTube.

Stetson's plan was effective because it stripped away the Klan's mystique, which was formerly its most tenacious strength. By trivializing and exposing the Klan's rituals and code words, he caused a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership. In the radio episodes, Superman took on and defeated the nefarious Klan. Through Superman, Stetson made a mockery of the Klan and shed light on the wickedness it perpetrated figuratively and literally under the cover of darkness and cloaks. Youth all across the nation began to accept that the KKK was a dark force and an enemy of our American way of life. No decent father now wanted his child to know that he was a member of the Klan.

The reaction was immediate and substantive, as fathers and husbands formerly active in the Klan found their confidential positions reviled by their families and their best secrets open fodder for common disdain. Attendance at Klan meetings fell off, dues went unpaid, recruiting failed, and membership waned. The media initially helped create this phase of the Klan and the media subsequently helped destroy it.

Beyond the Superman episodes, and while the Klan was still reeling from the initial punch, Stetson and his co-conspirator informants continued their infiltration of the KKK and of other related white supremacist groups. They helped the authorities revoke the Klan's corporate charter, they testified against them in court, and they fed the meeting minutes – including the names of prominent citizens who were Klan members – to famed muckraker Drew Pearson, who then revealed them nationally on his Sunday night radio program. Evidence recovered by Stetson from the wastebasket in the office of the Klan's Grand Dragon was submitted to the IRS, resulting in yet another blow: a crippling financial tax burden of $685,000 in 1960 dollars.

Stetson quickly followed-up the Superman series by introducing a second strategy based on an entirely different approach. He called it Frown Power, an effort to encourage people (one-on-one) to pointedly frown whenever they heard bigoted speech (a method ahead of his time, today this is referred to as micro-civil resistance). This was intended to help ensure that prejudicial Klan-like behavior would have trouble gaining favor and becoming re-established. Stetson believed ridicule to be a very effective weapon.

Through Stetson's efforts, a terrorist movement that the FBI, state National Guards, Congress, and several attorney generals unsuccessfully opposed, or willfully tolerated, was eventually nearly eliminated by one brave man with creative ideas. What these agencies were unable or unwilling to do with power and prestige, Stetson did in a short time by personal courage and clever thinking. Stetson was the real superman who took on the KKK, but he used the comic-book hero Superman as his public cover.

Despite Stetson's good works and successes, he made many enemies. At one point, he stated that he was "the most hated man in Florida." The leadership of the KKK now focused their attention on the man who had brought them so much misery. Grand Dragon Sam Green announced a bounty on Stetson of $1,000 per pound of flesh. As reported to and by his friend Studs Terkel, Stetson describes his situation with the Klan as, "They were trying to catch me and I was trying not to be caught....I was scared all the time. I was even worried when I was asleep." Even his family refused to associate with him. First, his dog was shot as punishment and warning. Shortly thereafter, his home in Fruit Cove (now a Jacksonville neighborhood) was sequentially broken into, invaded by armed men, and finally firebombed resulting in the destruction of much of his lifetime's research and writings. For a while, Stetson carried a shoulder-harnessed .32-caliber S&W automatic handgun and heavily armed his wife, his home, and those of his neighbors who were friendly in order to secure some measure of personal safety. When it became known that the KKK was behind the dynamite bombing of churches, businesses and homes, he left Florida to live the next decade of his life in France. It was there, in 1954, that he wrote his most sensational exposé of the KKK, I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan (later retitled The Klan Unmasked. Eventually, Stetson returned to live once again in Jacksonville, Florida, at Beluthahatchee Park where he reissued his books in 1990.

Harassment of Stetson periodically renewed even into his old age. In 2011, the accuracy of his undercover writings was challenged by Ben Green, a writer (of no known relationship to Sam) who alleged that after months of studying Stetson's field notes, he could not substantiate some of the facts in The Klan Unmasked. Thus, concurrent with his death in 2011 at age ninety-four, he was no longer just fighting to preserve his physical life; Kennedy was fighting to salvage his reputation, protect the legacy of his work, and uphold historic truth. As a refutation of these accusations and to help clear Stetson's reputation, David Pilgrim of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan had this to say in a summary based on his independent research: "Infiltrating the Klan was an act of great courage, and the information in the books and on the radio shows led to the arrests of some Klansmen, the derailing of domestic terrorist acts, and the unpopularity of the Klan organization. That is good enough for me." Additional detail is available in Pilgrim's introduction to the most recent edition of The Klan Unmasked.

Toward the end of his long life, Stetson stated: "Not everyone who devotes a life to a cause lives to see it come to fruition, and I consider myself lucky to have done so." Despite the obstacles placed in his path, Stetson remained active and productive until the end. His contributions were not limited to opposing the Klan; after its defeat, Stetson continued to devote his life to promoting social justice and human rights. Throughout his lifetime, Stetson frequently had to make difficult but significant choices: One was to find the best alternative way to serve his country, another was to exchange personal safety and peer acceptance for improving the common good, and yet another was to expose and oppose evil rather than tolerate or contribute to it, as were the more popular and accepted choices of Stetson's compromising peers and neighbors. It would have been easy for Stetson to concede his beliefs and lifestyle to match those of his contemporaries, thus having a comfortable life filled with peace, friends, and security. Quietly resisting negative peer pressure is indeed a step in the right direction, but a further step is openly opposing it. Stetson chose to walk in that more determined direction and took that extra step, which he summarized as: "To stand against a movement is painful, but to stand against one's people is even more so."

Our lives are full of unavoidable choices that we must make. The alternatives for acting with integrity or with immorality are consistently before us. The associated choices we make determine the kind of person we become. Floating mindlessly along with the common, acceptable current is the same as making a choice. Practices are not right just because they are approved, accepted, or tolerated. They are right only if they are God-ordained and support His purposes. Other people, our personal physical and financial needs and wants, and a corrupt world all naturally tend to influence our actions to default toward the unprincipled; but we can promote righteousness by making the difficult choices. We may go the broad, selfish way of Nathan Bedford Forrest, D. W. Griffith, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Dixon, William Simmons, D. C. Stephenson, and the majority population of Dixie-Democrats who for centuries serially supported slavery, the Confederacy, the KKK's racism/white supremacy, segregation, and Jim Crow apartheid (and those who are still fueling inter-racial dissidence via the ever-evolving camouflages of government-regulated economic dependency, race-baiting political divisiveness and diversity, and discriminating birth/population control advocacy); or we may go the narrow way, demonstrating an overarching concern for, and inclusiveness of, others as Stetson Kennedy did. The choice is ours alone, and we cannot be forced against our will one way or the other. (For example, in 1860 as civil war threatened, no Republican Senator or Congressman owned a slave or failed to support Lincoln's Republican presidency; favoring the first and opposing the second were wholly choices of the Democratic Party and the casus belli.) Stetson said, "Don't ask what's wrong with me [for choosing to oppose the KKK and/or Jim Crow], but rather ask what's wrong with all the people who went along with it."

Any study of the KKK quickly reveals there's a life-and-death difference between claiming Christian status and acting and/or being Christian, i.e. Christ-like living. Some outwardly adopt a veneer, a surface-only Christian appearance, as a cover to disguise their real intentions while hoping to fool others. Some are not well anchored and are too easily fooled themselves. Actions of this nature do a serious disservice to real Christianity. The acid test is simple enough, and it was revealed to us more than two thousand years ago: By what motivations do they act and what fruit do they bear? The intent (beginning), the means (middle), and the fruit (end) must all be uniformly virtuous. The truly moral voice and position are nearly always a minority position – often calling from the wilderness, often unpopular, often singular. If there's broad agreement, it's likely time to step back and examine where the enabling compromise crept in. Popular does not equate to right.

Stetson was raised among neighbors who were false Christians, dominated by loyalty to a political party, tradition-bound, and white-supremacy educated and oriented; but his morals were rooted in a higher law than Jim Crow. He rejected a skin-color centric lifestyle that complacently yielded to the popular, bifurcated society that surrounded him. In regard to the dignity of human relationships, Stetson, like the great men Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant a couple of generations before him, conformed his will to those eternal and universal truths first revealed to mankind at Mount Sinai: All are equal under God's Law and all are subject to it. St. Paul admonishes us to not be conformed to the way of this world but to be transformed to God's ways with a renewed mind. To underscore this point, an aged Stetson summed up his life by saying, "You can't embrace me without at the same time embracing fair play and equal opportunity."

Stetson's anti-Klan actions seriously crippled the violent terror network for a season, but they did not end the general practice of segregation in the South (euphemistically called southern tradition by those below the Mason-Dixon Line), nor completely eliminate every vestige of the KKK. Due to the ongoing practice of Jim Crow laws and the population's deeply held prejudices, the Southern Klan had fertile ground for a third and final reincarnation. This occurred after the effects of Stetson's successful opposition had sufficiently waned. The KKK thereafter re-engaged as a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. It was, however, eventually dismantled by that same movement in roughly a decade, as increasingly publicized and televised integration efforts received favorable nationwide support and Southern apartheid became openly subject to international scorn and censure. The Klan that is occasionally observed today is an emasculated, fringe group of neo-Nazi skinheads only remotely related to its previous potent phases.

Confronted as to why he'd reissued his books in the early 1990s long after de facto integration, Stetson compared their theme to the Nazis' Holocaust against the Jews, indicating it was history that should never be forgotten, buried, revised, or untaught in the hope it would thus never be repeated. It's in that same spirit that I've included Stetson's life story. Reissuing his books was not an attempt to find cause where it had been satisfied and no longer existed. False acts of this nature are currently used far too often. They are appropriately called race-baiting and playing the race card. These insincere acts occur whenever a public posture is adopted that pretends to heal and restore race relations but is actually furtively designed to reopen the wound for selfish gain. The proponents act outwardly as champions of human dignity, but inwardly remain bigots. Stetson modeled the role of a true champion because he not only stood to gain nothing for his altruism, he stood to lose what he had. This is the ultimate test.

The false champions are bigots who are worse than the alleged ones at whom they are waging their fingers; they think they see a sliver in their brother's eye while ignoring the two-by-four in theirs. They contribute nothing personally as they seek to diminish others' sacrifices. We have many active examples in American society, many of them abusing and hiding behind the fig-leaf title of Reverend. They falsely appropriate Christian coverings while promoting fleshly race division instead of the color-blind spiritual unity of true faith. One of their apparent racial prejudices – with little attempt to hide it – is their name-calling of any blacks who dare to step out of line and support white or non-Democratic politicians and non-Democratic policies (e.g. school choice and education vouchers) as well as their open disdain for blacks who "out" themselves as conservatives or Republicans and thusly question the weaknesses in Democratic party-line or character flaws in its promoters. Much of this is intra-racial racial injustice as opposed to the wholly inter-racial kind of injustice that Stetson observed during his lifetime, but he would have surely been in opposition to it had it developed in his lifetime – perhaps even making it the subject of his next book (as have, to some extent, the following black authors: Alveda King, Star Parker, Thomas Sowell, Alan West, Larry Elder, Jason Riley, Shelby Steele, Ben Carson, Candace Owens, and Alan Keyes). By my reckoning, Stetson would be very surprised to witness how the former party persecuting the black race is now unquestioningly embraced by it and declined any objective re-examination, even in light of freely available and proven-effective alternatives. He was a resolute blend of liberal and conservative; a man more interested in promoting justice and off-setting injustice than in gaining personally or in promoting labels. Stetson was a living illustration of the "purple" concept, as discussed in the Afterword.

Stetson Kennedy's comprehensive lifework on behalf of our country's black citizenry is commensurate with William Wilberforce's in nineteenth-century England when he secured a ban on slavery throughout the British Empire. If mankind had more like these who were dedicated to uncompromising humanitarian missions, it surely would have been possible to have alleviated or truncated the parallel massive sufferings, as examples, of the Native American Indian and the Jews of Europe as well as the considerable number of other oppressed races, nations, and religions throughout history's timeline and around the globe now. Mankind has witnessed a fair number of defenders of a culture who were also members of that same culture, such were Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, William Wallace, and Martin Luther King Jr. However, defenders of a culture belonging to another culture are much rarer, but all the more heroic for overlooking the differences and bridging their interests. Such were, for example, Irena Sendler and the other gentile rescuers of the Jews during the Holocaust; as well as those who intervened across social barriers like our story heroes Russell Stendal and Haym Solomon. These outsiders dedicated and often gave their lives for the benefit of a non-native culture. They knew the answer to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Such a person was Stetson Kennedy.

When a young shepherd observed God's people submitting and cowering in a defeatist attitude before the advance of an oppressor openly brandishing malicious intent against his people, the youth questioned his king, his brothers, and the whole Israelite army by asking: "Is there not a cause?" (1 Samuel 17:29). This is an enduring question worthy of our continued and prolonged individual speculation. Stetson, who was small of stature, an outsider, and one possessing unconventional weapons, found and followed a noble cause on behalf of his brother. Like David, he used the humble and unorthodox means available to him and approached the giant head-on without hesitation and with confidence in the right, not the might.

"...and He will give you into our hands." (1 Samuel 17:47)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Stetson Kennedy was first introduced to me via the book, Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Thereafter, I had the opportunity over the course of writing Uncommon Character to spend several months respectively in Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Florida, while visiting and researching some of the places that Stetson Kennedy lived and labored, as well as leisurely reading several of his books at the local libraries. Both cities now present a much-changed environment than when he applied his charismatic, but unpopular, personality to their politics. Today, he would be pleased to witness the enlightened way his former locale has developed. This is also true of my adopted state of Indiana. Since the time of D.C. Stephenson's demise, Indiana has been governed in a manner qualifying it as a model for other states and one that I'm pleased to currently call home.

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 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stetson_Kennedy#Beluthahatchee_Park
Ronald Reagan

America's Lifeguard,   
the World's Cowboy Lawman

The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart... (1 Samuel 13:14)

His first decade of life overlapped the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and, fittingly, his final decade overlapped the demolition of the Russian-led Soviet Union, a long-hoped-for dismantling in which he acted a larger-than-life role. There's so much epic legacy composing Ronald Wilson Reagan's story between those decades that many books, hundreds of pages each, have already been written. Many more continue to be published as additional details are gleaned from newly opened archives, as others seek to commemorate him, and as the passing of time further underscores the significance of his contributions. Historian and author Richard Brookhiser says, "For all but the hard left, Reagan occupies a slot on the expanded Mount Rushmore...."

President Reagan, universally known as the Great Communicator, is arguably the most influential and dominant world statesman in the latter half of the twentieth century, just as Winston Churchill (also known as a great communicator) was in the first half. Both men were decidedly cognizant of the monumental wickedness respectively represented by totalitarianism, and each knew how to lead figuratively and literally in opposition of them. The greater the challenges, the greater the men who rise to meet them. Their combination of motivational speech and intentional action brought relief to millions of hopelessly repressed people.

It's more than a passing curiosity to compare Reagan to another American president whose vision and mission lead America through its most troubled time – a time when Americans fought each other and devastated much of their country. It was our Civil War and the man was Abraham Lincoln. Despite the century that separates them, Reagan and Lincoln have substantially more commonality in their backgrounds, personalities, styles, and accomplishments then a casual view reveals.

Both men had humble births and austere childhoods, fathers who provided little influence and with whom they had deficient relationships, and mothers who provided much influence and to whom they were close. Both matured as young men in geographically-close small Illinois river towns, sustained multiple disruptive household moves while young, and had exceptionally modest education for the high rank to which they rose. Both were great orators, storytellers, and jokesters. Both knew many people while having few close friends, were generally thought of as loners, and married strong-willed women who were fairly unpopular. Both were exceptionally criticized and unreasonably disrespected, called vile names by the press and by opponents, often referred to as ignorant while in truth they were brilliant, and sneered at by the career politicians of patrician background. Both liked reading and writing for relaxation, were athletic and rugged outdoorsmen in superior physical condition, and were able to change deeply held personal positions when the time was right to do so in spite of opposition from their parties. Both were exceptionally active letter writers (extraordinarily skilled in the art), selected strong personalities to serve in their cabinets, and were shot by obsessed, handgun-wielding men. Both had warm personalities, were known for their honesty and personal generosity, were willing to stand alone, and were always close to their constituents. Both were elected to two presidential terms, served little to no time in Congress, were big-picture strategic thinkers willing to compromise even when it angered their closest supporters and advisors, manifestly influenced their times and history into future generations, and openly and unashamedly displayed devout Christian faith with accompanying good works.

The parameters for telling Reagan's life story are so daunting that forward from this point, I've settled on using a unique literary device as the best approach available to me. I'm presenting two series of compelling images, rather than attempting to put forth the countless words necessary to convey the broad scope his life deserves.

The first series is the longest, but with the shortest images. They're offered in random sequence as follows:

  * Romantic leading man starring in over seventy Hollywood films and twenty television programs
  * California governor who broke the University of California-Berkley and City of Berkley protests
  * Young lad nicknamed Dutch, rising from rags to riches in fulfillment of the American Dream in which he heartily believed
  * Political mediator respected by friends on both sides of the aisle
  * Victim of an attempted assassination maintaining witty humor while fighting for his life
  * Des Moines, Iowa radio personality informing his audience with a pleasing, mellow voice
  * Wise and tireless public servant toiling twenty years past the age most men retire
  * Sharing his spirited storytelling and savvy humor with the press and opponents during debates
  * Protestant leader bonding with Pope John Paul II to form the duo that defeated Russian Communism
  * President joking with his Secret Service contingent who knew him fondly as Rawhide
  * Youngster of eleven, accepting the Lord's salvation as he read an engaging Christian novel, not seeing the words as much with his poor-sighted physical eyes as with those of his spirit
  * Outlining the foundations of the modern conservative movement in his unceasing speeches delivered to every segment of society for a decade before even entering politics
  * Collegian lettering in football and swimming
  * Recovering, post-surgery patient waving from the hospital's ICU window to an assembled crowd of well-wishers
  * Offering his favorite candy, jelly beans, to guests and visitors at the Oval Office as he munched on one himself
  * Honoring the veterans gathered on a windswept Normandy Beach with a snappy salute, a warm handshake, and a proud smile
  * Bighearted giver quietly writing impromptu personal checks to assist needy individuals or worthy causes
  * Commander-in-chief equally adept at employing a uniquely targeted combination of military force and personal diplomacy known as the Reagan Doctrine (his foreign policy strategy)
  * Folksy-yet-urbane corporate spokesman appearing weekly on long-running prime-time television for G.E.'s General Electric Theater and Twenty Mule Team Borax's Death Valley Days
  * Broad-shouldered rancher easily manning barbed-wire fencing and a chainsaw
  * Smiling and waving to the press corps as he departs or arrives via the presidential helicopter
  * Devout Christian unashamedly praying in public and sharing one of Jesus' parables at the Moscow Summit
  * Revitalizing the Republican Party with well-delivered convention speeches from 1964 to 1992, beginning with "A Time for Choosing"
  * Gentleman overtly conscious of his assumed role to model only the best example at all times
  * Tax-cutting nemesis of big government and the welfare state
  * Corresponding late into the night from his White House desk, like Lincoln before him – touching people, not reading public opinion polls
  * Developing a genuinely warm relationship with General Secretary Gorbachev while engaging him in productive dialog moving toward disarmament and peace
  * Legally blind army captain helping win WWII on the home front by producing four hundred training films and promoting war bonds
  * Advocate and implementer of the practical economic theories collectively known as "Reaganomics"
  * Gravely wounded chief executive surrounded by Secret Service agents pushing him into a waiting limo
  * Influential global titan frequently teamed with Britain's Thatcher, Russia's Gorbachev, and Israel's Begin
  * Labeling the U.S.S.R. an evil empire instead of following State Department compromised protocol
  * Archetype for every well-meaning politician who followed later
  * Chairman of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) who, ironically, later reined in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) while he was president
  * Nuclear summit arms-reduction negotiator with steely resolve staring down a series of Soviet dictators, and walking away from Mr. Gorbachev's SDI ultimatum at Reykjavik
  * Fatigued fighter, fondly called The Gipper, offering a habitual wave and a blank grin as he resists the encroaching loneliness of life with Alzheimer's
  * Nancy's beloved spouse and her dedicated husband for fifty-two years
  * Noble statesman of proven integrity and tested character
  * At rest in the Washington National Cathedral while receiving homage by five living presidents and numerous dignitaries from around the globe

A further honing of those many general images of Reagan resulted in seven more that provide a salient picture of his motivations and goals. Frequently, when a word or picture image of our fortieth president is invoked, it's messianic in nature. Not messianic in the ultimate and eternal sense of Jesus as Messiah, but messianic in the moderate and temporal sense of one who has offered a significant portion of his life to saving a substantial number of others from troubling and unfortunate circumstances, and has subsequently achieved laudable success in the effort. The second series is shorter, containing only seven select messianic images. They are slightly more detailed, more definitively supportive of my main story theme, and presented chronologically:

  * Embarrassed youth who, once again finding his father passed-out drunk in the snow-covered yard, half pulls and half carries the man to the safety and privacy of their home
  * Robust teen lifeguard stationed on a riverbank overlooking the threatening currents while maintaining a watchful eye on others who, realizing it or not, depend on him
  * Big screen actor – occasionally performing the associated physical stunts – film-after-film rehearsing his character studies so that he's mentally prepared to perform his many roles as heroic leading or supporting man, the one who stops the bad guy, makes the winning play, or rescues the damsel in distress (often playing the cowboy)
  * Hollywood-handsome real cowboy, physically capable of taming the land and animals at his expansive Western ranch, arrayed in a characteristically appropriate white hat while mounted on a sturdy horse
  * Hospital patient, recovering from near-deadly wounds, having some unusual free time to contemplate the reasons his life was sovereignly spared from an assassin's bullets fired at close range
  * Stylishly suited chief executive of our nation standing boldly near the interconnection of the Brandenburg Gate and Berlin Wall, inspiring the world with his soaring rhetoric and a renewed sense of urgency to complete his ordained mission to end the Cold War by eclipsing Communism and its biggest proponent, the USSR
  * Leader of the free world – with a keen appreciation and understanding of biblical history and prophetic end-time events – successfully pressuring Gorbachev to release the USSR's captive Jewish population who were denied emigration while being force-fed the mandatory national religion of atheism, thus triggering a second exodus from captivity to the safety of the Promised Land as more than one million Jews rapidly responded to the opportunity by making aliyah south to their eternal homeland, Israel

There are additional messianic images available to us from his life, such as the college sports victories and Screen Actors Guild battles, but the ones emphasized above most appropriately illustrate the many phases and major themes of Reagan's life. A person who had just one of these experiences would be justified in assuming a messianic perspective. The combination of these seven images prefigures a person, like the mythical Phoenix, who could potentially rise out of the ashes of the country's decay and capitulation to apply himself to restoring America's former glory. Reagan was certainly en route to climactic accomplishments in the arenas of peace, prosperity, freedom, and goodwill. His final lifetime record is like the man himself: epic in scope and so comprehensive and dynamic that if it were fiction, it wouldn't be credible.

The messianic images are of greatest interest because they capture the experiences that best reveal Reagan's closely held motivations and objectives, thereby helping us to understand why he chose the path he did. Within these seven, is there a key that acted as a catalyst for many of the images – especially the messianic ones? Reagan said, "There are sin and evil in the world and we're enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might." Without a doubt, Reagan is expressing messianic language and is prepared to pursue a compatible role.

Having recognized this, it's natural to ask subsequent questions like the following in regard to his overtly messianic nature and its established legacy: Where did he learn to do this? What was the source of his vision? How did he have the confidence to proceed so single-mindedly, with so much assurance? What did he so powerfully believe about his purpose in life? How was he able to stay on the charted course? What was planted in his psyche at an impressionable age, and how did it get there? In short, we're in pursuit of the small story that's not so obvious and not so well covered, yet it's the driver behind his larger story that is already so well known and accepted.

His redemptive spirit was first hinted at, then revealed, and finally confirmed at a riverside park during his teen years. Lowell Park, situated on the Rock River, is the pride of Dixon, Illinois. It was named after James Russell Lowell who wrote two of his best-known poems there, "The Washers of the Shroud" and "Ode to a Waterfowl." Thereafter, his family donated the undeveloped land and its three hundred acres of natural scenic beauty were enhanced by several famous designers, including Frederick Law Olmsted of New York City's preeminent Central Park. The city was only twenty years old and had a population of about five thousand during the 1920s when the Reagan family made it their home. Dixon is located roughly at the midpoint on the Rock River's three-hundred-mile-long course.

The City of Dixon's website offers this description of naturally wooded Lowell Park:

Until you have walked through this nature wonderland, you will not appreciate this wonderful gift that was presented to the City of Dixon near the turn of the 19th century.... It has stood through all these years as a place whereby people could relax and enjoy recreation to its fullest.... We hope you will enjoy the picturesque scenery and that someday you'll visit this magnificent park on the National Register of Historic Places. The scenic overlook from the park has been an artists' delight for nearly a century. You can view the scenery for miles and observe the river meandering along its course.

The Rock River begins in Wisconsin, north of Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, and flows in a gradually southwestward direction to the Mississippi River. Its watery neighbors are Lake Michigan and the Wisconsin River. During its course, it connects the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri. The river's flow is enhanced by several tributaries as it pursues its winding southwestern route through a number of cities, the largest of which is Rockford, Illinois.

Central Illinois summers are just as hot and humid as the more publicized ones in the Deep South. Thus, before the days of widely available public and private swimming pools – and well before air-conditioning was efficient and affordable – people of all ages gathered regularly at the Rock River in Lowell Park to dip, exercise, play, and cool off. This was a common practice, despite the facts that the vast majority of the population was unable to swim and the river possessed dangerous currents.

Reagan was a natural athlete, well-built with a strong interest in the sports of swimming and diving. Fifteen-year-old Ron took lifesaving lessons at the YMCA. He pursued and won a summer job at the park as its first lifeguard. Later, he converted this experience to varsity level competitive swimming at nearby Eureka College, where he captained the team. In the years preceding his hiring, several people had drowned while bathing on the river near the park. He held this position through late high school until college graduation, for seven straight summers. Even though the public bathing area was near his favorite fishing spot (later renamed Dutch Landing after his boyhood nickname), it was all business now. Depression-era jobs were exceedingly difficult to obtain, and he sorely needed the income to help support his family and to pay his tuition, additionally, the summer community came to rely on his skillful oversight of the river. Reagan worked at the lifesaving station twelve hours a day, seven days a week in the warm seasonal months. When he was eighteen years old, he was offered a position at an Olympic swim-training camp; Reagan turned it down, stating that his family needed the income afforded by his continuing as a lifeguard.

During his seven-year tenure as the primary park lifeguard (other supplemental hires reported to him and were trained by him), Reagan had ample opportunity to earn his fifteen-dollar-a-week paycheck, as the six hundred foot wide river had a strong, hidden undertow; especially if the sluices in the downstream dam were open as was unpredictably sometimes the situation. Bathers who moved along the steep bottom beyond their comfort zone or who were swept from their footing by the current always promptly received his attention – all too often involving life-and-death circumstances. After each of these desperate situations was redeemed and the survivor safely recovered, Reagan would place a notch in a large tree trunk. He said any rescue he could walk to wasn't a real rescue, and it didn't receive a notch; that is, only the deepwater rescues where he was personally imperiled received a commemorative mark. He called it the difference between his housekeeping duties and real emergencies. When his tenure at the river concluded and he was ready to move on, witnesses counted seventy-seven notches. There was never a life lost while he was on duty. His life was often on the line as panicked swimmers – many of them much larger than his modest frame – could easily have choked him or dragged him under. Drawing a parallel with the young George Washington story herein, God sovereignly preserved Reagan's life (at the river and later at the hands of an assassin) because He had greater purposes for him later, and He knew Reagan to be a man He could trust to faithfully perform them.

Reports in the area newspapers corroborate Reagan's personal accounting and later recollections. His situations often made the pages of the local paper and, occasionally, the headlines. This was especially true of one after-dark rescue when another lifeguard had quit the struggle. Reagan was reported to have tossed his thick glasses onto the shoreline and dove in, as he says, half-blind due to poor eyesight combined with the dark. Another article reported young Reagan setting a record time in a swim competition held regularly on a stretch of the river.

Think of it! How many twenty-one-year-olds can substantiate that they single-handedly over a period equivalent to a third of their life, snatched seventy-seven lives from dramatic near-death situations? Perhaps there is none other. That kind of perfect success ratio combined with that degree of challenge and that kind of high purpose could not fail to make a deep and lasting impression on Reagan. Perhaps it was not just a single impression, but a range of unforgettable impressions including those of possibility, of mission, of special purpose, of unique selection, of confidence, or of universal human need. In his autobiography, An American Life, Reagan said that lifeguarding offered him "one of the best vantage points in the world to learn about people." His personal memory of these events has left us, but the notched log still stands as a silent witness to his deeds, along with the testimonies of witnesses and survivors. Each river rescue was a type of re-baptism and a precursor to his ultimate ministry.

Reagan's lifeguard experiences surely became the collective gateway experience to his greater callings at the Berlin Wall, Normandy Beach, Reykjavik, Warsaw, Moscow, Washington, D.C., Sacramento, and the various Republican Convention locations. Lifesaving enabled all those other wonderful iconic images outlined earlier to come to pass. When Reagan became president in 1980, he pledged himself to restore "the great, confident roar of American progress, growth, and optimism." The assassination attempt and associated near-death experience early in his presidency, in tandem with his subsequent miraculous recovery, served to reconfirm his messianic purpose and give him fresh resolve to complete it urgently. Reagan said, "All of us have to have a place we go back to. Dixon is that place for me. There was the life that has shaped my body and mind for all the years to come." He fondly recalled the time when he was recovering from the assassination attempt and he opened an especially meaningful card. The man offered get-well greetings and a prayer, but the correspondent also mentioned that he was one of those whose life was saved by Reagan many years ago in Lowell Park.

In his book Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History, John Patrick Diggins wrote:

From his earliest teen years as a lifeguard when he pulled ashore drowning swimmers, to his last presidential days in office when he sought to obtain the release of hostages in Lebanon, Reagan saw himself as a rescuer; the romantic hero who saves lives from the treacheries of nature and politics.... Reagan would, in turn, be a rescuer in the arenas of politics and diplomacy, saving people as he saw it from the dangerous currents of the liberal state and the evil empire.

What he learned on the Rock River led Ronald Reagan to become America's lifeguard. The image of the young lifeguard eventually morphed into one perhaps even more uniquely American. It's that of the cowboy lawman with a horse, a ten-gallon white hat, and a pair of big-barreled six-shooters strapped to his hips. It was an understandable and easy transition for observers to make, and one fully justifiable, given his movie roles and Western rancher's lifestyle. The iconic cowboy became even larger and far more public than the lifeguard image. The self-reliant Western cowboy traveling a wild and lawless land is how the rest of the world symbolizes America. So as Reagan's messianic leadership gradually extended beyond our shores, it was an easy transition for foreign nations to visualize Reagan not as a lifeguard, but as the Western cowboy.

Reagan as the world's cowboy lawman came to pass because Western Europe needed rescuing from near-death under socialism and its impotent military, while Eastern European and the Western Asian satellite nations needed rescuing after decades of militant subjugation by Russia in every measurable way. These many nations were literally held captive within the suffocating prison walls of imposed atheistic Communism. On their behalf, Reagan strategically outmaneuvered the Soviets while decreasing intercontinental nuclear threats, immediately resulting in a better world for all of them. His bold rhetorical challenge at the Wall between East and West Berlin, "Tear down this wall," (four simple, four-letter words) when combined with his other actions, resulted in hundreds of millions in formerly captive populations being set free. Many other figurative walls went down along with the barbed wire and concrete one. As president, he was able to issue that admonition and make it stand because the world knew it was backed up by a ready military, a strong economy, a consistent record opposing Communism, and his overwhelming popularity. Even more than these, he understood it was based on a righteous position. Reagan said essentially that the "struggle between freedom and totalitarianism today is a test of faith and spirit." He carefully chose when and how to play his strong hand.

Reagan the lifeguard first saved America from going under. Reagan the cowboy then utilized that newfound personal and national strength to rescue much of the captive world from its extended peril. He became known as the man who won the Cold War. Britain's "Iron Lady," Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said, "He won the Cold War without firing a shot, he did it by turning enemies into friends." Words were President Reagan's most effective weapon.

It is never justified to say of Reagan's successes – especially the domestic ones – that he simply continued the policies of the man he followed in office. Little, if any, of what he inherited deserved to be retained nor was it. The nation was in the malaise of economic depression, energy shortages, and autocratic price controls on retail sales. There were historic record-high levels of inflation and unemployment, our military was out of date and rudderless, and entitlements and budgets were out of control. Additionally, Iranian radicals were holding Americans hostage and burning our embassy, home-grown radicals were controlling our college campuses, and auto manufacturing and electronics quality were a decade behind the Japanese front runner. Capital and jobs were traveling abroad, major cities had gone bankrupt, and a permeating and embedded attitude of post-Vietnam quagmire-related defeatism imbued society. We'd become a distant runner-up to the Soviet Union, no longer the strong, moral leaders God intended.

Offering a brief analogy in place of a longer description, our nation was, at the time of the Carter presidency, a larger version of the failure that Detroit is at the time this was written. Reagan led us out and into the city on a shining hill that he seemingly alone envisioned America was intended to be and was still capable of becoming. There is great potential power inherent in ideas, beliefs, and personal vision. Just as surely as men like Hitler demonstrate that in a negative way, men like Reagan demonstrate it in a positive way. Somehow, despite apparently being surrounded by everything contrary to the American Dream, he was able to cling confidently to his faith in it – a faith that put God first and enabled him to see His hand still at work in America. Reagan summed it up thusly: "Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to God." Biographer Bob Spitz (Reagan: An American Journey) summarized President Reagan's personal life creed very close to Reagan's own words,

Honor your county, cherish your family, give thanks to a higher being, stand up for what you believe in, and refuse to be bullied by tyrants.

With that strategic framework, the President Reagan engineered an era of prosperity that lasted thirty years and five presidential terms beyond his time in office. It was indeed the Reagan Era. The transition for America from the height of its liberalism to the opposite height of its conservatism – what he called the New Morning – can be lyrically recapped by employing Dickens' introduction to A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period....

The measure of Reagan's influence can be seen in the ferocity and tenaciousness of his enemies – those who commit any lie in an attempt to defraud him. They fabricate lies and spread calumny because they know there's no negative truth available to use for their false purposes. During his lifetime, and especially regarding everything related to his presidency, Reagan was severely criticized – most of it unjust and inaccurate. For example, Reagan stopped publicly attending a formal church shortly after being elected president. This was presented as either evidence of his hypocrisy or as proof he wasn't a Christian. The reality was far more practical; he did not want to disrupt the worship service by having the focus be on him and subjecting the congregation to the disruption of the security measures necessary for any president, especially one who had just survived an assassination attempt that eventually killed one and severely wounded several of those in the crowd near him.

As of my writing Reagan's story, thirty years after his presidency – ten years after his death and one hundred years after his birth, some hate-filled perjurers still engage in an enduring effort to diminish the man and his record. Radical homosexual activists consistently accuse Reagan of cutting funding to AIDS research during his terms as president. Fact-checking informs otherwise, as it was first recognized during his presidency and he was the first to advocate funding federal AIDS research. Some sufferers are said to have received unheralded and unsolicited handwritten letters of sympathy and encouragement from the president, occasionally with a personal bank draft enclosed.

Other perjurers continue to misrepresent his veto of Congress' so-called South African Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, as was maliciously depicted in the 2013 Hollywood film The Butler. Reagan did veto the compromised bill because the economic sanctions within it would hurt the majority black population the most, create a vacuum the USSR would occupy to spread pro-communistic dissent, and damage the corrective internal efforts already underway by the country's President (resulting in unintended favor accruing to his pro-apartheid enemies). In other words, President Reagan made the correct move by using his veto.

The people who attack him with such virulence do not really oppose Reagan the man, as he was especially likable; they oppose the Judeo-Christian values he represented and their Author. The bottom line is always the same: It is God they're after; it is God they hate. Their bitterness is usually founded in some false personal grievance from their past or from sin in their present. As they lose face or political position, they rage more as they lose more. The dark always attempts to diminish the light, but the light overcomes; that was the solid promise firmly held within Reagan's well-selected new morning and shining hill analogies. You cannot subdue darkness with more darkness, only light can subdue darkness. You cannot subdue evil with more evil, only love can subdue evil. These are truths not understood by President Reagan's ceaselessly raging enemies.

We needed rescuing in many fiscal and moral ways, thus adding credence to Reagan as America's lifeguard. Applying the most concise phrases possible, here's a recap of the extensive legacy Reagan endowed to America: economic recovery, a sound economy with decades of prosperity; the defeat of our long-standing enemy, the evil empire of the USSR; a renewed American spirit and lasting sense of optimism; a practical but God-fearing perspective on political leadership; a strong military; a sound conservative template; and a worthy paradigm of what a moral man and an honest politician should be (along with Lincoln), the best the nation had witnessed since George Washington first demonstrated the criteria in the realms of military, politics, citizenship, and faith.

Hear again Reagan's messianic speech, "A Time for Choosing" (note the echoes of Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill) and marvel at its scope, mark its sincerity, and embrace its promise:

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us that we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

America may yet experience another "rendezvous with destiny," but to qualify, we will need another Josiah-like president (2 Kings 22-23) to lead the necessary values revival, one such as we were granted in Ronald Reagan. I close with words borrowed from Margaret Thatcher's eulogy of President Reagan at the National Cathedral: "We have lost a great president, a great American, a great man, and I have lost a dear friend."

...and the Lord has commanded him to be commander over His people. (1 Samuel 13:14)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Some years after compiling my story, I happened upon the book My Father at 100: A Memoir, written in 2011 by Ron Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan (their biological and younger son, who – unlike his adopted and older son Michael – unwisely chose rebellion rather than follow his father's righteous ways). In it, Ron dedicated an entire chapter to his thoughts and research about his dad's time in Dixon as a lifeguard, specifically chapter 6, titled "Local Hero." Ron has done an excellent job and in doing so delivered it with a fine writing style I can't hope to duplicate. There's even a wonderful story about a sixty-year-old California Governor Reagan rescuing seven-year-old Alicia Berry at a pool party, while fully clothed in business-casual attire, and without a log to notch. Instead of competing with Ron, I recommend a reading of his book, as I didn't revise my story to incorporate his inside revelations. Prior to Ron's book, information about President Reagan's time as a lifeguard was difficult to acquire, and that served as my underlying incentive to make it the fulcrum of this story. For the reader's convenience, I share a quotation from Ron's book that helps cement my core advocacy:

... my father had come to value order in all things. Someone drowning at his beach, on his watch, would have brought chaos to his moral universe, casting a dark cloud over his beloved Dixon and calling into question his own capabilities. By hurling himself into the river to save the lives of drowning strangers, he was not only proving his worth, he was setting the world aright (underlining added).

I was delivering complimentary copies of Uncommon Character to veterans gathered on the Fourth of July at the local American Legion Hall. As one aged warrior accepted his copy, he smiled at me, pointed excitedly at the cover, and announced: "That's my Commander!" He was referring to the photo of President Reagan in his large, white hat. The old vet then proceeded to tell me a personal story about how their lives had intersected. It's those moments that have made the writing of Reagan's story and this book especially rewarding for me.

Editorialist Cal Thomas wrote the following about President Reagan's propensity for storytelling in 2001:

Reagan's stories were legion. Some of them may actually have been true; but most were told to make a point, like parables. They were illustrations that average people could understand. The stories touched something in our hearts and souls. They were intended to be role models for us. If they could do it – from Founding Fathers to soldiers in battle – we could do it, too. The power to do good and to do well was in us, not government.
Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand

Remove This Disgrace

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake... (Matthew 5:10)

Since the fall from Eden, when a shadow fell over our spirits, mankind has sought to determine the purpose of life. Many have vainly searched for it in wealth, power, sensuality, ritual observance, fame, athletics, politics, and intellectual pursuits. I believe Sabina and Richard Wurmbrand accurately identified, and then wholeheartedly pursued, mankind's highest purpose. Through the example of their lives, we are able to discern the highest purpose of life, as well as to better understand how to pursue it.

In Richard and Sabina's lifetime, first the Nazis and their minions in the Iron Cross subjugated their Romanian homeland; then the Communists followed suit. (See the related story on Eva Kor) Both regimes imprisoned, deprived, and tortured the Wurmbrands, largely on the basis of their Jewish roots. The Wurmbrands managed to evade the German death camps, but most of their family did not. They utilized their blessing of freedom to rescue Jewish children from the ghettos, preach in bomb shelters, and evangelize soldiers – despite constant opposition. Scheduled for execution near the end of World War II, Richard and Sabina were spared by God's sovereign care and intervention.

Their ministry activities were illegal, and severe state penalties accompanied them if uncovered. Sabina expressed their contrary perspective when she stated: "We have a duty to mislead those whose sole aim is to destroy." The Wurmbrands and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were contemporaries who spoke similar messages of encouragement to the church – Dietrich in Germany and the Richard and Sabrina in Romania. Each held firmly to their shared belief that it is the fundamental duty of government, as ordained by God, to uphold laws for the well-being of its citizens; if it does not do so, then it has no claim on the compliance of its citizens and they should resist. Each backed up this belief with active outreaches to those oppressed by corrupt authority. In many countries today, resolving any nuances related to this question of submission to ungodly authority is an imminent concern; soon it will be in America and other Western countries as well. This is partially what is meant by the biblical counsel of working out our salvation with fear and trembling. Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Church does so in Communist China. On the parallel subjects of resistance and obedience, he says,

...the Bible has not given any branch of any government the authority to run the church or to interfere with the faith of Christians. Therefore, the Bible demands that I, through peaceable means, in meek resistance and active forbearance, filled with joy, resist all administrative policies and legal measures that oppress the church and interfere with the faith of Christians. ...This is a spiritual act of disobedience...an inevitable part of the gospel movement.

Writing from his Editor's position with the Wall Street Journal, James Freeman shared the following, somewhat satirical, insight:

Even casual readers of the Bible may notice that Jesus doesn't get along all that well with the political authorities of His time and His relationship with government ends rather badly.

With Germany's military collapse, the Wurmbrands had only a brief reprieve for resolving this issue before the repressions of life under Communism took full root. They used the time to clandestinely witness to many groups comprising a portion of the one million Russian troops stationed in Romania. As former atheists, Richard and Sabina understood the deepest needs of these soldiers who were raised in a culture that denied God's existence. These young men knew only a godless society since birth, and they hungered for the hope and love-filled literature, words of counsel, and Bibles offered by the Wurmbrands. Following Romania's false liberation by Russia, the same ill-treatment the Jews received under the Germans began under the hand of its new oppressor. Richard and Sabrina soon destined to disappear into Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's bottomless Gulag Archipelago, a chain of unidentified, secret prisons spread across the vast USSR wilderness frontier. It was the same gulag that swallowed, and never released, the young Swedish rescuer of Jews, Raoul Wallenberg, at the conclusion of WWII, as well as countless other innocents during the unrelenting purge-filled regimes of Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev.

In the prewar decade, Richard and Sabina led a pleasure-filled good life as hedonistic atheists and wealthy stockbrokers. Their lives changed shortly before Romania lost its independence to the Nazis. The change they experienced came by way of a divine appointment; specifically, it arrived in the form of an aged carpenter. The old man had prayed many years for the opportunity to lead a Jew to the Lord's salvation before he died. But there were no Jews in his rural village; that is, not until Richard, who was convalescing from a serious case of tuberculosis at a nearby sanatorium, felt compelled to go for a walk. He was led that day to a woodshop in just the right village out of twelve thousand others in Romania. Little did that carpenter know what great and terrible events he'd set in motion. It was in his shop that Richard's spirit was renewed and his life direction changed. Later on, Sabina – although at first shocked and reticent – also chose this path, the way of the cross. Thereafter, the Wurmbrands no longer missed past pleasures, as they had freely yielded to another cause before the German Nazis and the Soviet Communists engendered sufficient strength to mandate their perverted precepts to the established churches in their Central and Eastern Europe satellite nations.

The Wurmbrands' new lifestyle with its incumbent years of incarceration, torture, and hard labor was distant from their former leisurely affluent one. Under the Russian domination of Romania, they experienced a rapid transition. Richard and Sabina overtly marked themselves early as so-called enemies of the state while attending a Soviet-sponsored Congress of Cults in 1945. It was held in the capital city of Bucharest, but broadcast live to all satellite nations. A stream of quisling-type presentations by various national religious leaders distorted the eternal gospel message in order to match the Communist party line, hoping to gain favor or acting out of fear. This prompted Sabina to encourage Richard to stand before the four thousand assembled multi-faith clergy to "remove this disgrace from the body of Christ." Knowing the cost, he did so without hesitation and in an uncompromising voice. Richard declared that only God was sovereign, not Stalin or any transitory earthly power. The minister of cults retaliated, saying his right to speak was withdrawn; to which Richard replied he had a right from God, and he continued until his microphone was shut off. Richard's words encouraged many; and he received hearty applause but the words sealed his fate for years as he understood they would. The direction of their lives changed forever from this pivotal point forward.

Having openly challenged the authority usurped by the state, the Wurmbrands would never again be permitted to live freely in any society within the immense USSR evil empire. During their years in prison, they were sustained not by any earthly provisions, but by the promise of John 16:33: "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." More than anything else during this time, they learned to love God better through loving His enemies. They realized their persecutors were the true sufferers, with lives defined by meaningless, empty existence and floating hostility toward a God they claimed didn't exist.

Richard experienced fourteen years of confinement under the Communist dictatorship of Romania, with three of those years in solitary lockdown. This time it was less on the basis of his Jewishness, and more owing to his unyielding commitment to Christianity. Never was a word of encouragement permitted to penetrate his subterranean prison walls; and all news of Sabina and his son, Mihai, was withheld. Perhaps it was for the better that he did not know their difficult fates. Barely managing to stay alive, they too suffered mightily and faced frequent threats of death that ranged from starvation to execution. Under the Communists, Sabina was arrested in the middle of night, told that Richard was dead, and assigned to a series of harsh labor camps where she slaved under relentlessly cruel and perverted taskmasters. Surviving on the barest of rations, she was forced to perform hard physical labor out of doors from before sunrise to after sunset, wearing only the barest of rags in severe cold and acute heat, even when seriously ill and with broken bones still not mended.

The deprivations suffered by the Wurmbrands under Communism are too many for enumeration here, but they're detailed in Sabina's moving book The Pastor's Wife and in Richard's influential first book, Tortured for Christ, (translated into forty languages and one of eighteen books he authored). Eight-year-old Mihai was virtually raising himself at this time, denied life's basic needs as a consequence of his unrepentant criminal parents. Their crime against the unholy dictatorships that were sequentially tyrannizing their homeland was simply an unyielding faith in the humble Man whom the carpenter had introduced to their family. Like the Wurmbrands, this innocent Jewish man suffered similarly from wrongful beatings, false trials, and torture that concluded with His brutal murder in Jerusalem two millennia earlier.

Richard came to be known throughout the gulag by both guards and fellow captives as prisoner number one. To defray pressures caused by his rising reputation, the government continually perpetuated the falsehood that he was dead. Eventually, both Wurmbrands obtained their releases through subterfuges created by a combination of influential former enemies to whom they had witnessed while imprisoned and through the faithful activities of intervening friends. After their releases, they were encouraged to emigrate from Romania to avoid re-incarceration. The Wurmbrands accepted the advice, and the necessary papers were purchased with substantial cash ransoms provided by supporters. A typical passport cost under $2,000, Richard's price was $10,000 (1964 value). The couple first moved to England and then to America. There they could – without restriction – declare to their sleeping brothers and sisters in the West a message about the suffering Christians who'd been abandoned. A third of the world lay ignored or unknown behind an invisible iron curtain – so named by a prescient Winston Churchill, a man who understood early the inherent malignancy in both Nazism and Communism.

Their inaugural outreach was in liberal Berkley, California where Richard stood boldly before a massive rally of pro-Communists on university property. This situation was eerily similar to his experience at the Congress of Cults. The positive difference was afforded by the liberty then still available in America, contrasted with the demagoguery of the 1930–1940s German Third Reich and the 1940–1960s Soviet Union. After hearing lie upon lie, Richard wrested control of the microphone and removed his shirt to display a badly damaged body with eighteen deep wounds just in his torso; this physical witness surpassed that of his words. The wounds were barely healed, thus revealing the truth in his bold statements warning of the dangers of godless Communism, or, as Richard labeled it, militant atheism. As with Thomas upon Jesus' appearance in the Upper Room, the doubters could see and touch the piercings, some of them sufficiently deep to place a finger inside. Upon hearing Richard Wurmbrand on this occasion, one reporter wrote: "He stood in the midst of lions, but they could not devour him." Another wrote: "Here is a new John the Baptist...another voice crying in the wilderness." Eventually, pursuing this course of action led Richard to stand before Congress and testify in the same manner against ongoing Communist repression. What Giovanni Grazzini said of Solzhenitsyn, another victim of the Communist Inquisition, might well be said of Richard: "... among the most powerful voices of the tradition that regards it as the writer's duty to insist on consistency between the work and the man, to believe in what he says, and to bear on his flesh the bruises of his ideas.... He crossed frontiers and ideologies, affirming the dignity of man."

The Wurmbrands traveled unceasingly for the remainder of their lives, throughout their adopted country and the world, proclaiming a plaintive, but powerful message: "We, your brothers and sisters, are being sorely persecuted for our faith. Please do not forget us.... Every church service that does not remember the martyrs and offer them prayer is not fully valid before our God." These are strong, convicting words from a couple who not only had lived the message, but had also become the message. Fluent in fourteen languages, it's estimated the Wurmbrands delivered a million presentations over slightly less than forty years in eighty countries. Testimonies to God's love were thoroughly integrated into their beings. They continued faithfully sharing the truth in the face of massive indifference, ignorance, and opposition, smuggling the Bible into lands where it was forbidden. They displayed through their lives the truth of the Bible from Romans 5:3-5: But we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us (bold font added).

Perhaps their most significant lesson came at the greatest personal cost: Love your enemies, even those who had persecuted them without mercy. They were quick to forgive their torturers and share the love of Jesus with them while undergoing unthinkable mental and physical provocations. Whether they were familiar with the words of their contemporary Viktor Frankl, I can't confirm, but they nevertheless embodied his words: "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Longtime Communist hard-line puppet and dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceauşescu, was deposed in December 1989 shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hearing the news, Richard and Sabina quickly returned for a visit to their homeland after an absence in exile of twenty-five years. They were received as national heroes, and the city officials of Bucharest made them a stunning offer. In the former palace of Ceausescu – the very basement of which Richard was once held in solitary confinement and underwent torture – they were permitted to open a printing shop and bookstore for their ministry. Their son, Mihai, also survived Communism, escaped to freedom in the West, and continues in a ministry similar to that of his parents. Jews like the Wurmbrand family are also known by the term Hebrews, which has been variously translated as "those who crossed over" and "back from the dead." Both translations are befitting of Richard and Sabrina who had, indeed, crossed back into life from their physical burials in the gulag.

The Wurmbrands' faith was messianic, meaning simply those of Jewish birth who recognize Jesus as both Israel's and the world's Messiah. They were early representatives of the Bible's one new man – the blend of Jewish Old Testament believer with Christian New Testament believer. Bible prophecy indicates this movement will grow mighty in the final days before the Second Coming. As messianic believers, they dedicated themselves to supporting all underground, imprisoned, and persecuted believers around the globe for half a century. Before departing us, they left an international organization in place to continue their mission, Voice of the Martyrs, headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The legacies of the Wurmbrands and VOM are inseparable. VOM's organizational mission statement is an extension of this couples' lifework: "Serving persecuted Christians through practical and spiritual assistance and leading other members of the Body of Christ into fellowship with them." (I'm pleased to occasionally be part of VOM as a volunteer.)

Richard and Sabina died a few months apart at the turn of the new millennia, 2000-2001. Richard was variously eulogized as Voice of the Underground Church, Father of the Messianic Church, and Father of the Persecuted or Martyred Church. He has also been referred to periodically as Iron Curtain St. Paul, as there were many similarities in Richard's and Paul's personalities and missions. What greater affirmation could a man receive?

The real heroes of the church – yea, of the world – have always been its martyrs, whose uncompromised stories are a testimony of eternal principles lived on behalf of God and mankind. The number of Christians awakened to the suffering church has grown since the Wurmbrands' time on earth, but perhaps so has the number of hostile areas and peoples. The need has certainly not diminished. Our continuing challenge and opportunity are to be that voice.

The true God, whom the Wurmbrands served, has never left His throne, no matter the amount of depravity perpetrated by unredeemed men and fallen angels. All times and seasons are within His pleasure. The love of God overcomes wickedness, and His Spirit is always with His people to give sufficient peace, hope, and healing. This is the primary point of Richard and Sabina's story. Also, here is the answer to our opening question. Since our fall from grace, the purpose of life is to learn how to love God and how to love others, including our enemies who despitefully persecute us – so that we're prepared for eternal life with Him in heaven where these two pursuits are manifestly displayed. In doing so, we are frequently admonished to fear not and to wait on the Lord. Thank you, Richard and Sabina, for your ample contributions, for VOM, and for the answer to life's greatest question.

...for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:10, the last beatitude)
Gregory Jessner

Can't Help But Worry

The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden... (Genesis 2:9)

One December morning in 2002, after many weeks of covert planning, armed federal officers known as U.S. marshals appeared nearly simultaneously and in large numbers at high-security prisons in Pelican Bay, California; Concord, New Hampshire; Sacramento, California; Florence, Colorado; Folsom, California; Leavenworth, Kansas; Chino, California; and San Quentin, California. Marshals operate as the enforcement arm of the U.S. Justice Department, which is managed by the executive branch of the federal government. They have substantially more than two centuries of law enforcement history, longer-tenured than the Old West and pre-existing any other current national or state enforcement agency. The marshals were created in 1789 by President George Washington.

The goal of this massive raid in 2002 was the rapid and discreet round-up of forty hard-core criminals: twenty-nine inmates, five women on the outside, three released ex-cons, one former prison guard, and two unidentified individuals. Those targeted were all members of an infamous prison gang formerly known as the A.B. for Aryan Brotherhood, more recently renamed The Brand. The gang took its latest identification from a distinctive tattoo, a shamrock, which is often superimposed by other symbols such as a Nazi swastika, the letters KKK, or the numbers 666. The shamrock reflects The Brand's roots as an Irish biker gang. All twenty-nine inmate members were shackled and loaded onto a single Boeing 727 (yes, just like in the Nicolas Cage movie Con Air) whose final destination was a Los Angeles courtroom where they stood trial for ten felonies within a larger charge of criminal conspiracy administered by the federal bureau known as the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). Unlike the movie, these cons did not escape; they were successfully delivered to the intended location.

These gang members were directly responsible for as many as a hundred murders committed, not on the streets, but inside prison walls. Correctional officials estimate that while only one-tenth of one percent of inmates belong to The Brand, it is responsible for twenty-five percent of all in-system murders. They were also indirectly responsible for additional crimes and murders committed by others who were implementing their orders on the outside. The twenty-nine men were the most dangerous in our prison system – men feared by fellow inmates and by their guards; men feared on the inside and the outside; men with nicknames like The Beast who stabbed another inmate seventy-one times because he was accidentally shoved during a basketball game, or The Baron who beheaded an inmate thought to have disrespected him. The extreme security prisons known as supermaxes were conceptualized as a means to control The Brand – albeit unsuccessfully.

Authorities describe The Brand as a Mafia-like criminal organization whose membership consists of convicted felons, mostly murderers. The gang was born in a single prison and is now present in all of them. It controls most of the drugs, prostitution, alcohol, extortion, protection, hits, alcohol distribution, and gambling that occurs therein. Membership is gained by performing random, unprovoked murder of inmates and guards. Thereafter the initiate is tattooed with a unique shamrock while reciting their secret blood oath.

Most of the gang members are lifers, beyond parole with nothing left to lose. The Brand has operated almost invisibly and with impunity for decades. Rarely did anyone challenge their motto of Blood In, Blood Out. No member will ever publicly admit to membership or even admit to the gang's existence, and every member is required to perjure himself about the gang when questioned about it. They kill for hire, they kill for free, they kill for fun, they kill to maintain control, and they kill for revenge. They kill inside prison walls and outside on the street. And they kill as openly as possible in order to intimidate and gain power. They kill.

Prison officials were desperate because they were unable to control the gang. The best they could do was relocate members to different prisons, but that just spread the infection all the further and faster. Even placing the members in isolation cells did not help. The criminal justice system needed a critical break. That break came in the form of Gregory Jessner, a courageous, young assistant United States attorney in Los Angeles. Gregory was born at about the same location and time as was The Brand, near San Quentin State Prison in the mid-1960s. Unlike his bulky, mustachioed, shaven-headed gang nemeses, however, Gregory was slight, clean-faced, and boyishly handsome with trim, neatly parted hair.

It was Jessner's investigative probing that led to the 2002 raid and to the subsequent trials. It began in 1992, a decade earlier. It concluded with thirteen boxes of documentation and years of preparation just to bring the first Brand member to trial. Jessner's real goal was to take down the entire gang, well beyond bringing justice to a core group of murderers. (A goal similar to Stetson Kennedy's against the Klan – please refer to the associated story.) These men were already serving life sentences for murder. His chosen strategy was to use a combination of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as the RICO statutes, and the federal death penalty, the application of which was recently expanded during the Clinton administration. The former was passed for use against the Mafia; the latter, to provide an extreme penalty when required in federal crimes involving certain types of murder, terrorism, or drugs. These enabled him to legally attack the entire hierarchy of the criminal organization rather than a limited number of targeted members. To be successful, he needed the sentences to be death penalties. He wanted these in order to send a strong message back into the prisons, thereby discouraging any new individuals or gangs from replacing vacancies created if and when he took down The Brand's leadership. He wanted that message to be: "You cannot kill with impunity. You will answer for it."

When the press asked Jessner during the trials to describe the gang, he replied, "This is a homicidal organization. That's what they do. They kill people." Asked if he feared for his life, Jessner said, "You can't help but worry. But I also believe that just because you rob a convenience store or cheat on your taxes, you shouldn't receive a death sentence." By that comment, he meant that anyone entering prison for any reason or length of stay was vulnerable prey for The Brand and they could be randomly killed by those violent men for sport, revenge, or promotion within their ranks.

The good news is that all twenty-nine inmate gang members were found guilty on all charges with many qualifying for life imprisonment and with others qualifying for capital punishment. The bad news is that the lenient California juries – practicing their destructive religion of moral relativism – could not find the internal strength and conviction to deliver any death sentences. Consequently, all the convicted murderers were returned to prison where they continued managing their illegal gang activities, as well as performing the random killings that empowered them to ignore laws and human decency.

The Brand is really no different today than Hitler's Brownshirts and S.S. Death Troopers of yesterday. Their techniques of power-grabbing and their subsequent serial abuses are similar. Many of their trappings are even identical: nearly the same tattoos, symbols, names, secrets, words, unfounded hatred, racist views, and senseless killings. Their required reading includes Hitler's perverse Mein Kampf. The Aryan name may have been dropped; but not the random, unprovoked, consistent violence that membership demands.

There are some positive takeaways in this story. For certain, Gregory Jessner is a heroic man of principle who risked his life altruistically. His work is believed to be the largest successful federal capital prosecution in United States history. The most negative takeaway was demonstrably rendered by the juries. They let their sentimentality overcome a true, clear, and righteous sense of justice and failed to facilitate the wellbeing of society as was expected. They could not, or would not, find the inner strength and uncommon wisdom to do their whole duty for society. They failed the prison system, they failed Gregory Jessner, they failed the courts, they failed petty criminals, they failed the justice system, and – regrettably – they failed us all. Finally, they failed God, who unambiguously instituted the death penalty for our benefit and left its rational and necessary application to us. Organized crime and the countless, violent deaths of innocent people continue and multiply as a result of the jury not making the sober choice in favor of capital punishment.

People try to assign moral equivalency to capital punishment by saying, for example, that if you oppose abortion, then you must oppose the death penalty or, otherwise, you're not consistently prolife and thus are hypocritical. Don't accept that false theorem and negative label, and do not back away from these two issues. They are not the same. The distinctions are clear, simple, and significant. One is the death of defenseless babies without guilt, without recognition of their civil rights, without trial, and without the force of God's Law. The other is the death of the guilty and elimination of ongoing threats with the full force of God's and man's law. Even then, capital judgment never transpires until the perpetrator has been indulged with every imaginable legal right and delay tactic. The situation is black and white, not the gray the world would try to repaint it. Being pro-abortion and anti-capital punishment is the real hypocritical position because that combination of beliefs contrarily applies the death penalty to babies, and grants life to murderers (who have taken innocent life from others and who may continue to do so whether in prison or out).

As of this third edition, The Brand continues unabated as do ongoing efforts to control and/or eradicate it, and I remain in search of additional positive takeaways. Toward that end, I wrote to several people working with the criminal justice and correctional systems who also have experience distributing Uncommon Character. I hoped to gain insight related to the applicability and acceptance of the story with current and former inmates and gang members. Personal interest in these issues remains high due to my concurrent outreaches with a law firm, re-entry and recovery ministries, and prison-based instruction in finance and parenting. If necessary, I'm willing to modify or delete the story. A sound idea was suggested by Ray and Joyce Hall of Prison Book Project, a nationwide ministry to the incarcerated. They compared my story's dark ending to that of another true story's seemingly dark ending, written over two thousand years ago on Calvary Hill. Great despair and misunderstanding were associated with Jesus' death, which we now know was not the end but a grand beginning.

Mr. Jessner no longer has a legal position associated with prison gang activity but because that story is larger than him, it has not concluded. Gregory left his seventeen-year career in prosecution after receiving the disappointing final verdicts which meant The Brand had been given society's backhanded concession to continue its perverse lifestyle. He opened a law practice in the heart of urban Los Angeles, Phillips Jessner LLP. Did he continue to pursue criminal law? No, he selected family law as his new specialty. He cannot be faulted for either his career change or for the unresolved saga of the Brand prison gang.

...and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9)

* * * *

Author's Notes: The seed for this story is attributed to David Grann of the New Yorker Magazine for his article "The Brand," February 8, 2004.

In some ways, researching The Brand disturbed me more than the parallel studies for my stories herein on nazism, Islamic-fascism, communism, Jewish genocide, and KKK racist-terrorism. All in all, doing so increased my admiration for the brave, young attorney who elected to mire himself in the depths of its filth for a decade of his life. One area that exceptionally bothered me was realizing that his efforts could have and should have had a much more positive resolution. The blame is society's, not Mr. Jessner's. The cons did not forcefully escape as in the movie; in real life, they were released back into society as the result of faulty moral equivalency, and thus permitted to mindlessly continue propagating their viciousness on the innocent. It's upsetting that there are elements in America who take advantage of the goodness, freedoms, and privileges we collectively enjoy. We openly extend these privileges and trust to all comers without attendant conditions even when we know that the misguided elements of society may eventually abuse and misuse them to our collective and, sometimes, individual hurt. The related offenses may come from terrorists, multi-generation welfare lifers, church bombers, illegal immigrants, school shooters, crooked politicians, race-baiters, child abusers, or – as in the story – incarcerated violent criminals.

More upsetting still is the knowledge that there's another larger element in America that appears to perversely take pride in assisting the few abusers at great cost to the multitude. In psychology, what feel-good humanists do on behalf of the undeserving is known as enabling; it is one of America's failed, but politically correct, methodologies. It's a distortion of the fundamental common law practices that our country's founders established with God and with each other. At the core, it is a permissive attitude toward sinful lifestyles that masquerades as an excessive appreciation for, and application of, liberty and charity. Left unchecked, it will continue to weaken our nation from the inside.

2 Chronicles 36:15-16 cautions: And the Lord God of their fathers [i.e. ancestors or founders] sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy (emphasis added). In circumstances like those in this story, Mr. Jessner was the type of messenger as indicated above; and his tough-love delivery was a wholesome, practical, superior, and proven approach. It's successful when applied in society ranging from rebellious teens to homicidal criminals, and collectively the potential positive yield for all community stakeholders is inestimable.
Haym Salomon

Saving the Fourth of July

And as I have purposed... (Isaiah 24:14)

Is there a Fourth of July in Great Britain? I often began a school day by presenting the class with a brainteaser to get their attention and move them into thinking mode. One of them involved establishing a timeline for America's war of independence against the British Empire. I follow through by asking the question with which I opened this story. The most frequent response is something akin to "No, we won the war and celebrate the victory on the fourth of July; but they lost, so they have nothing to celebrate. It's an American holiday." My wrap-up is that the correct answer is, "Yes, they do because England uses the same calendar as we do and therefore they have a third and a fifth of July with a fourth always coming between."

There was a time when a positive outcome of the Revolutionary War was far from certain for the original thirteen North American colonies (which became eighteen of the fifty states). Throughout the eight years of conflict, it looked like the Fourth of July would become a British holiday celebrating the victorious retention of their subservient overseas colonial empire. Many patriots contributed their best to bring about the reality of a sovereign and free outcome as the United States of America. Possibly more great men and women of high ideals were in motion at that time than before or since in the history of the world. The story at hand focuses on just one of these men, a man largely overlooked by history, yet one who helped save our Fourth of July as a day to annually celebrate independence and national birth. This was a new nation with a beginning and a purpose like none other except for our recent ally, God's chosen country, Israel (known for an interim period, after it's renaming by ancient Rome, as Palestine).

As an aid to fully appreciating the first portion of the story, it would be helpful to locate a one-dollar bill in United States currency and to keep it handy as the story unfolds. That Federal Reserve Note is our smallest printed denomination, but it represents a substantial amount of history, incorporates a timely message for today, and contains a hidden testimony to a hero within its intricate design.

In 1776, the First Continental Congress requested that Benjamin Franklin, an experienced printer, head a small group of men tasked with designing an official governmental seal. Due in part to the disruptions related to the war, the project took four years to finish and another two to gain approval; thus, it was completed about the time of the war's end in 1782.

On the back of the dollar bill are two circles. Each circle represents one side of the double-sided Great Seal of the United States as designed under Franklin; together, the circles comprise the whole seal. On the left circle – the back of the Great Seal – there's a pyramid. The front is lighted, but the western side on the pyramid's left is dark. This illustrates that the country was just beginning and the vast West was unknown, awaiting future exploration. The pyramid was left uncapped to signify that the work of building the new nation was unfinished. Inside the capstone, floating above the pyramid is an all-seeing eye representing a watchful and all-abiding God. It was Franklin's belief that man couldn't finish the job of building a new nation without God's help, so he placed the eye at the top of the seal. Stated in Latin above the pyramid is ANNUIT COEPTIS, which translates "God is favoring our work." In Latin below the pyramid is NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, which means "Something new has begun." At the pyramid's base is the Roman numeral equivalent for 1776 (MDCCLXXVI).

In the center of the bill, displayed between the two halves of the Great Seal and helping link them, is the familiar statement "IN GOD WE TRUST." On the right circle, which is the front of the Great Seal, there's a design that has come to be known as the presidential seal whenever it is used alone. It continues to be used in an identical format in many formal governmental locations and circumstances.

One reason the bald eagle was selected as our nation's symbol is that it is said to wear no crown of tufted feathers on its head. This was a reminder that we had broken away from the king of England, the crowned head of a worldwide empire. The flag shield in front of the eagle is unsupported, signifying that this new country could now stand on its own. In the eagle's beak is the familiar Latin phrase E PLURIBUS UNUM meaning "Out of many, one." The eagle holds an olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other. The image is intended to promote the message that the new country wants peace, but it will never be afraid to fight to preserve and protect that peace. The eagle prefers to face the olive branch on its left; but in times of war, his gaze will turn toward the arrows on its right. The arrows, of course, symbolize war.

Please note the prominent use of the number thirteen and its numerous appearances. There are symbols arranged in nine groupings, all of which contain a quantity of thirteen elements. The number thirteen corresponds to the number of colonies whose representatives signed the Declaration of Independence, participated in the war, and signed the Constitution along with its Bill of Rights. The quantity thirteen appears consistently on the dollar bill in all of the following images: the stars located above the eagle, the arrows in the eagle's talon, the stripes in the shield, the letters in the phrase Annuit Coeptis, the rows in the pyramid, the letters in the phrase E Pluribus Unum, the fruit encircling the unique star cluster and, finally, both the leaves and the berries in the olive branch in the eagle's talon. Several of these groupings of thirteen may be coincidental, but most are certainly deliberate placements.

Returning to the thirteen stars located above the eagle, we'll focus on the mystery behind their exact arrangement. When more closely examined, the placement of the stars creates a design known as the Star of David (aka Shield of David, Magen Da'vid, or Jewish Star). The star was specially ordered by George Washington to honor and remember a hero of the Revolutionary War. This unique design leads to the second portion of the story which focuses not on national symbols, but on a person.

The man whom Washington wanted to acknowledge was Haym Salomon (sometimes spelled Hyim Solomon). He was a Jew of successful means living in New York and Philadelphia during the war years. He had the ability to create substantial wealth somewhat comparable in methods to a modern Warren Buffett, and he invested it as political capital comparable to the Koch Brothers or H. L. Hunt of my generation. When Washington asked Haym what he'd like as a reward for his services on behalf of the new nation, Haym said he wanted nothing for himself. Haym expressed that, as an alternative, he would appreciate something commemorative on behalf of his people, the Jews. The two patriots settled on placing the Star of David on the Great Seal. After suffering millennia of strife, Jews began finding peace and acceptance in the newly established United States. The Jewish people had no homeland at this time, having been cast out of ancient Israel in a forced dispersal to wander harassed around the globe for two thousand years before the restoration of Israel in 1948.

In the pantheon of America's heroes and Founding Fathers, Haym Salomon (1740–1785) has legendary status. His life was a brief and tumultuous forty-five years, but his lasting impact on America is substantial. The shame is that most modern Americans aren't familiar with him, when we should know his story as well as that of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hancock, Hamilton, and the rest of our country's forbearers.

Haym was not always forgotten. He was last remembered in a formal way in the 1970s when the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp series titled Contributors to the Cause – the cause being America's movement for independence. One of the stamps hailed a man as the financial hero of America's founding; the man was Haym Salomon. This stamp, like the others in the series, was uniquely printed on both the front and the back sides. The glue side of the stamp actually contained the following words printed in pale green ink: "Businessman and broker Haym Salomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse." Those words are a succinct summary of his life and contributions. The front of the stamp read even more simply: "Financial Hero."

Haym was an immigrant to our country, arriving only a few years before the war. He was born in Lissa, Poland (the home country of Irena Sendler) in 1740 to a Sephardic (Mediterranean) Jewish family. His ancestors moved there generations earlier to escape the bloody Inquisitions in Spain and Portugal. Haym spent his first thirty-two years moving around Western Europe, where he developed fluencies in several languages and gained a wide range of international financial experience. He also came to hold a strong belief that America would be a temporary safe haven for the Jews. Such a haven was sorely needed after centuries of persecution and forced migration. As the son of a Jewish rabbi, he also believed in the Torah (the Bible's Old Testament), which promised that one day in the future Jerusalem would rise from the dust, the Jews would return to their ancient homeland, and Israel and Jerusalem would once again respectively be the international home and capital city of the Jewish people, who would no longer have to wander and suffer Gentile discrimination and denial. Salomon determined to do all that he could to finance the Revolution so that America could survive until the time when those promises would become reality. His dream – that of every Jew – became reality in 1948 as the Jewish national homeland was reestablished in Israel with Jerusalem as its capital.

In 1772, Haym immigrated to New York City and quickly established himself as a successful merchant and broker of foreign securities. Striking a close acquaintance with the famous Sons of Liberty, Haym became an active patriot in the emerging cause for independence. When war began only three years after his arrival (1775), Haym was awarded a contract to provide supplies to the American troops in New York. One year into the war (1776), he married Rachel Franks, whose brother Isaac was a colonel on George Washington's staff. The marriage was the beginning of a close relationship with Isaac, and it soon led to a productive relationship with Washington as well. (See the related story on young Colonel Washington.)

In the third year of the war, British occupation forces set fire to New York (1777) and arrested Haym as a spy. He was tortured aboard a naval ship and then imprisoned for more than a year. They released him (1778) because the British wanted to use his language skills to communicate with the German Hessian mercenaries whom they'd hired. Haym had other ideas and covertly encouraged the Hessians to desert instead. He was rearrested (still 1778), but this time his property was confiscated and a British military court condemned him to death by hanging. He escaped with the help of the Sons of Liberty and fled, penniless, to the American capital city, Philadelphia, where his family was able to rejoin him for the first time in two years.

Once in Philadelphia, Haym rebuilt his business and resumed his trade. Just a few years after his arrival in the capital (1781), he had, again, advanced from penniless fugitive to respected financier, philanthropist, and defender of both his peoples – the Americans and the Jews. He risked his fortune, pledged his good name and his credit on behalf of the Revolution, and defended religious liberty for Jews.

In that year, Congress established its first Office of Finance in an effort to try to save the war and the United States from fiscal ruin. Haym began interfacing with the appointed superintendent of finance, William Morris, and soon became the most effective man in America in meeting federal government and military expenses. He was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution, as well as those funds that were later required to save the newly independent nation from collapse.

The Congressional Record of March 25, 1975 reads,

When Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finance, he turned to Salomon for help in raising the money needed to carry on the war and later to save the emerging nation from financial collapse. Salomon advanced direct loans to the government and also gave generously of his personal resources to pay the salaries of government officials and army officers.

Incredibly, Haym was able to maintain a thriving private business; perform many official duties for the United States, France, Holland, and Spain; give interest-free personal loans to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and General von Steuben; and fund both the Continental Army and the Continental Congress.

Later that year (in August of 1781), a unit of the Continental Army trapped British General Cornwallis near the Virginia coastal city of Yorktown, between the York and James rivers. Washington and his main army – along with General Rochambeau of the allied French army – wanted to march from Hudson Heights, New York to Yorktown in an effort to combine all forces and deliver a heavy blow in the hopes of ending the nearly decade-long war. Unfortunately, Washington's war funds were depleted and Congress was broke. He needed at least $20,000 (circa $55 million present value) to finance the campaign. When told there were no funds and no credit available, Washington unhesitatingly issued one simple order: "Get me Haym Salomon." Haym came through by raising the money and by funneling it to the cause.

Washington conducted the Yorktown campaign, which proved to be the final battle of the long war. The Revolutionary War formally ended on September 3, 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, but this did not end the financial problems of the newly established nation. It was Haym Salomon who still managed, time after time, to raise the money needed to bail out the debt-ridden government and thus hold it together.

Haym had to manage these successes despite operating within the context of a society and an age that mistakenly considered all Jews as wicked shylocks and selfish moneygrubbers. He and his Jewish people were regularly socially discriminated against and even physically harassed. He died prematurely young at the age of forty-five in 1785, a mere two years after the war. Haym left behind a wife and four young children with debts larger than his surviving estate. His wealth and property had either been destroyed by the British or given to the American cause.

Private individuals like Jefferson and the federal government owed him a total of eight hundred thousand dollars, about forty-five billion dollars in today's (2019) purchasing power. Haym never asked for repayment of these loans; after his death, however, his son petitioned Congress in an effort to recover some of the money owed the family and mightily needed by it after the war. Various petty government committees refused to recognize the family's claims and never made good on any of the loans, many times "losing" the necessary documentation regularly provided as authentication of the obligations owed Haym's family. To this day, the Salomon family has received no repayment; the debt is fully outstanding and its mention rarely transpires.

Despite personal setbacks, Haym Salomon's name is forever linked to the idealism and success of the American Revolution, as well as to the substantial history of contributions made by the Jewish people to the cause of freedom worldwide. (There were other Jews aligned with him, including the Rothchilds, Franks, and Sassons.) Few people today know it was Haym Salomon who saved the financial well-being of several Founding Fathers, the Continental Army, and the nation through his extremely generous contributions; fewer still know that he died broken in both health and finance because of those selfless and patriotic acts.

Ever wonder how the United States and Israel became such close allies? There are many good and sound historical reasons, but one of the earliest is Haym Salomon's legacy. It was a precursor to the bond that has held for well over two centuries between the United States and the Jewish people and, more recently between our country and the modern State of Israel. Some wonder whether it is fact or fiction that the Jews are God's chosen people and Israel His chosen land. This story, and so much more history, offers proof that these are both factual.

As Haym Salomon hoped and believed and worked toward, America did immediately become the safe haven for the Jewish people, and, 170 years later, the country of Israel was reborn as well with Jerusalem as its capital. Haym was buried in Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel Cemetery in a grave that is sadly but typically, unmarked. Since we don't know which grave is his, we cannot pay our direct respects or erect an adjacent memorial marker. Nevertheless, as Americans we can remember and honor him for the debt we owe by standing firm in our support and prayer for a strong and secure Israel, as well as an undivided Jerusalem under the rule of Haym Salomon's spiritual descendants, the Israeli people. This is as he endeavored and would surely be pleasing to him.

In downtown Chicago, at the intersection of Wabash and Wacker, stands a statue of three men: Washington, Morris, and Salomon. Its plaque reads: "Haym Salomon – Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot. A banker whose only interest was the interest of his Country." Historians who have studied Haym's life all agree that without his contributions to the cause, there would be no America today and hence, no Independence Day to celebrate. That's how and why a Jewish immigrant from Poland saved our Fourth of July holiday celebration.

...so it shall stand. (Isaiah 14:24)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Occasionally the supporting details of a story are seen as true or false based on the writer's, or the reader's, perspective. The story of Haym Salomon illustrates this potential in that the iconography of the dollar bill has been ostensibly proven to be both wholly Masonic on the one hand, and wholly Judeo-Christian on the other, regarding its origin and intent. The balance is found in understanding that there was an alliance at that time in history between the two; one which is now largely antithetical to our modern, bifurcated, and fixed viewpoints. George Washington's personality, for example, was also clearly an amalgamation of both Judeo-Christian and Masonic influences and activities.

I encourage the reader to utilize solid fact-checking before relying wholly on a story for any purpose beyond which the story was intended. Haym's story and the others herein are intended primarily as vehicles for demonstrating heroic character. I encourage the reader to find complementary readings and supplemental research beyond my simple story outlines. There is so much more to uncover about the lives and contributions of these interesting individuals.
Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler

Body of Knowledge

Men will seek death and will not find it... (Revelation 9:6)

In the early decades of the twentieth century, America saw a distressing confluence of influenza epidemics, Prohibition and bootlegging, political corruption, technological war horrors, transportation revolutions, industrial monopolies, and Depression economies. Perhaps more than anything else, this was the age of the emergence of chemistry. The world was changing quickly, and the outcome of this emerging mix of transformations was likely most out of control in the nation's largest metropolitan area, New York City.

World War I was labeled the chemical war, as each major national belligerent developed, produced, and utilized a unique selection of deadly air-borne elements or compounds. Germany had mustard and chlorine gases; France, phosgene and tear gases, and America had lewisite gas (a mix of chlorine and arsenic). Germany horrified the world when they released an estimated one-hundred and sixty metric tons of chlorine gas against the Canadians and French at Ypres, Belgium on April 22nd, 1915. After the war, these military poisons were controlled or banned, but poisonous household chemicals were not. The average home and typical business were unrestricted pharmacies with a near-periodic table of lethal chemicals and drugs such as arsenic, thallium, radium, cyanide, and morphine. All were widely manufactured, easy to acquire, and frequently used in mundane personal care and general cleaning, as well as in many ordinary industrial applications. These represented the conventional and legitimate faces of commonplace poisonous chemicals, but there was also a darker criminal side.

These poisons have a special place in the history of criminology because early efforts to detect them – especially arsenic – in the human body became the foundation for the modern science of forensic toxicology. A practical way to understand forensics is to accept it as the point where the legal system, chemistry, biology, pharmaceuticals, and laboratory science all intersect. Since the mid-1990s, there have been numerous television series that highlighted loosely-formulated forensic sciences. These combine an ultra-competent lead crime scene investigator and support team with advanced technical lab processes and computer databases, both real and imagined. The genre is represented by popular and exceptionally long-running series such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (15 seasons, 335 episodes and three spin-offs), Forensic Files (once titled Mystery Detectives and Medical Detectives with 14 seasons and 406 episodes), NCIS (16 seasons, 386 episodes and two spin-offs), Criminal Minds (14 seasons, 314 episodes and two spin-offs) and Bones (12 seasons and 246 episodes). Of these, Forensic Files is distinct in airing non-fiction documentary-style crime recreations, the others are obviously more overzealous in their reach. These programs are viewed by their idiosyncratic audiences with interest sometimes bordering on fanatical, the kind usually associated with the Star Trek and Star Wars film franchises. Not having had a TV in our household for more than four decades, I'm not intimately familiar with the shows; nor am I endorsing or condemning them. My secondary goal is to breathe some truth and background understanding into this trendy subject by revealing the two crusaders whose uncommon dedication established and guided the nascent craft where it previously hadn't existed. They did so in pursuit of several noble causes; prurient entertainment was decidedly never intended as they are on record as actively discouraging promotion and utilization of that nature. In researching and revealing their achievements, I've gained a unique character tale that could easily be woven into the chemistry, biology, and general science classes that I often taught as a substitute. But don't lose sight that this is intended as a character story, not as a science lesson.

The storyline is centered on two professional scientists who collaborated in their medical specialties, resulting in the development of a new discipline. Its credibility was established to the point where it literally withstood examination in a court of law, while often being the key to determining premeditation or accident, guilt or innocence. Their shared purposes were to diminish crime and sickness in New York, which was then the nation's most prominent metropolitan area and the world's largest city. As a by-product of succeeding in their primary missions, these men also contributed previously unavailable and sorely needed working models and reference databases. Their contributions greatly assisted the proliferation of professional criminology practices throughout the United States and beyond. Their legacy is the widespread application of forensic toxicology by professionals for the public good, leading ultimately to acceptance by the legal community; as well as indirectly lending credibility to the founding by Harvey Washington Wiley of a federal regulatory body, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

One scientist was Dr. Charles Norris, who was the first appointment to the post of chief medical examiner for New York City. The newly created position was forced upon the mayor by the governor as a reaction to massively embarrassing scandals associated with the former city coroner. Prior to Dr. Norris, deaths were certified by political appointees who were both thoroughly corrupt and woefully unqualified. Dr. Norris was eminently accomplished, having earned multiple college degrees including those from Yale and Columbia (some sources state Harvard). He was the son of well-to-do parents with deep family pockets generated on both sides by banking fortunes. This is not a trivial fact given that his supervisor was the bitter and corrupt Mayor Hylan, who spitefully withheld the necessary monies to properly fund even the department's most prosaic operations. Thus, a conscientious Dr. Norris selflessly paid for much of the equipment, vehicles, and salaries from his personal finances in order to run the department in the competent manner he intended.

The other scientist was Alexander Gettler, whom Norris knew professionally from having worked with him at the famous Bellevue Hospital of New York City. The two men could not have been more different in physique and family background. Dr. Gettler earned his degrees first from CUNY and later from Columbia. He was small in stature, poor, an immigrant, and Jewish; compared to Norris, who was over six feet tall, wealthy, older, and a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Because of their age difference, Gettler could have been the son Norris never had, and Norris likely treated him as such. After Gettler arrived from Poland, he financed his education by first working on the midnight ferry and later by teaching chemistry – this subject being his life focus and passion. He reported to Dr. Norris and acted as his specialist in chemical applications, which is a valuable and necessary skill within toxicology work. What the two men shared most was dedication to their work and brilliance in performing it. To apply the overused moniker that they acquired, they were indeed destined to become a dynamic duo when they combined efforts and concentrated their attention on the high volume of deaths by poison – about a thousand annually in New York City alone.

Theirs is a very large story which, by necessity, I've encapsulated. If there's continued interest in the subject, you're encouraged to pursue it although I've observed that related information is not easily acquired. Due to its non-fiction nature, it's also a very dark drama which I've labored to lighten. Ironically, in contrast to the popularity of those video series mentioned earlier and to the overlapping explosion of reality crime and police shows, late in their careers Norris and Gettler were asked to star in radio and television shows based on their pioneering endeavors and compelling experiences. They modestly refused to do so, like so many other true heroes. They respected the dignity and sobriety of their profession. Shortly before his retirement in 1959, and considerably after Norris had passed away, Gettler finally did become the unwilling subject of a Harper's magazine profile titled "The Man Who Reads Corpses."

The inherent responsibilities within the positions held by Dr. Norris and Dr. Gettler are evident in a statement by Gettler's son, Joseph, also a capable organic chemist and university professor. Joseph said he'd decided early on not to pursue his father's public service career because of all the lives and deaths that would then be on his conscience, just as they had been so heavily on his father's. He wanted to avoid the cumulative effect of Alexander Norris's years of researching data that often determined the fate of so many others. The team's mission has been described as a deadly game of cat and mouse played with poison murderers. The Industrial Revolution multiplied the tools of the poisoner's trade, but the scientific knowledge to detect them lagged behind the advances; that is until the innovative partnership of Norris and Gettler was established, and it flourished for nearly two decades. Gettler consistently committed the results of their research to written format; many of his groundbreaking books are regularly referenced today.

Poison occupies a prolonged, devious, and inglorious position in Western history. Recall fifteenth-century Italy, when Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia infamously combined arsenic with politics, or when Socrates was forced to drink hemlock from his own hand after being falsely condemned for heresy. The use of poison precedes forensics by millennia, but its all-too-common use led ultimately to the foundation of the modern science of criminal investigation. Poison was the personal murder instrument of choice for centuries because it was difficult to detect. Even if its use was known or suspected, the perpetrator generally remained difficult to connect to the crime, thus remaining virtually impossible to positively identify or to convict with surety. The use of poison has been an exceptionally successful means to accomplish unpunished murder. Its discreet application was so frequently used to eliminate heirs to thrones or fortunes that poison is historically referred to as the inheritance drug. Often a poison can imitate a natural sickness or disease sufficiently well enough to avoid suspicion entirely. For two or more millennia, if one contemplated premeditated murder, a poison was the best choice.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the bathroom and kitchen cabinets of the average household contained a plethora of legitimately obtained poisons. Poisons were easily available because they are basically simple chemicals having a variety of helpful purposes. Regardless of such lethal-sounding names as arsenic, chloroform, strychnine, and cyanide, they all served ordinary practical functions and, in the not-too-distant past, were primary components in paints, pest controls, cleaners, and cosmetics. Most poisons are one of two basic types: either strong alkaloid (straight metallic elements) or complex compound elements. When poisoners practice their trade against humanity, it's basically the science of chemistry meeting that of biology. "The dose makes the poison" is an old saying in toxicology. It means that, with knowledgeable application, there's usually no harm in poison and the intended positive results are likely obtainable; but with too aggressive an application, it becomes lethal.

What makes the use of poison against a person so loathsome is the calculated intent of the criminal and the insidious nature of the crime – a particularly frightful combination. A poison victim who survived would find it challenging to trust anyone, especially those having an intimate relationship or being physically close because they'd have justifiable or convenient access. Having survived a poisoner's plot, how could a victim ever again trust anything set before them to eat or drink? It's often a person emotionally close to the victim who is the poisoner. The person applying poisoned doses is not acting out of passion, grasping for any available weapon in the heat of the moment. It's malice of forethought, with a willingness to repeat the act as many times as necessary, and with the patience to wait through the victim's lingering suffering for the anticipated result – death, often painful death.

When Norris and Gettler assumed their offices, death by poison was still common; not just in their New York City realm, but across the nation and the world. Its use was common as a means of murder, but its use was also common in terms of unintended death as in industrial accidents. In 1922 New York, nearly a thousand citizens died by poison; that's more than the combined total of those dying from hanging, car and elevator accidents, and shooting or stabbing.

For greater clarity and accuracy, these poisoning deaths may be placed into three broad civilian categories. The first category is criminal in nature owing to deliberate murder. However, many poison-induced deaths were not even suspected as murders; when they were, the poisoners were rarely caught and, if caught, were even more rarely convicted. Accurate methods of detecting and identifying poisons in the human body were badly needed. Early twentieth-century America is replete with highly publicized poison-saturated histories, horrors, and mysteries. Some of the more notorious within the New York Metro area at that time were: the Postal Lunch Eatery and Shelburne Restaurant mass poisonings, the unsuccessful Bradicich manslaughter trial, and the sordid Creighton/Applegate family murder convictions (as sourced within Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook).

The second category is accidental poisoning and would be considered manslaughter at its worst. Victims frequently became ill or died as the uncalculated by-product of legitimate and practical use of a poison by themselves or by another, often associated with a commercial-industrial application, production, or employment. There was simply a broad lack of understanding of the deadly effects of many commonly used industrial chemicals. What was needed for prevention was detailed lab research and subsequent safety-based regulation. Some employment-related deaths straddled a gray line between accidental ignorance and knowledgeable avoidance. Most commonly, this murky relationship existed when neither the employer nor the employee initially suspected any serious danger. When the risk became highly suspect by one or both parties, it was often calculatedly denied and/or covered-up by employers who persisted in the damaging practice in order to avoid the related responsibilities that would diminish their financial gain.

On frequent occasions, it was the consumer who suffered the ill effects and became the businesses' unwitting victim. By the 1930s, circumstances of this nature were so common that muckrakers Arthur Kallet and F. J. Schlink wrote a book titled 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics. They presented the facts that led to their belief that the consumer population was unsuspecting as they acted as experimental guinea pigs for American product manufacturers. The truth was often far more flagrant because even when the harmful effects to the human guinea pigs were well known, product sales continued unchanged and unabated.

The egregious practices of the U.S. Radium Corporation with its radium girls (details below) and of the Standard Oil refinery with its looney factory (details not included) both fall into this gray area, as do other less egregious business-related cases. Corporate actions and inactions of this deadly nature were legal in the sense that there were no specific laws yet prohibiting or punishing them, but they were never moral. Later in the twentieth century and beyond, when similar practices were pro-actively made illegal, this markedly did not completely prevent or stop their execution as evidenced by the numerous cases of industrial poisoning that continued/continue to arise. Many of these hurt large and/or scattered constituencies beyond the immediate consumer and employee stakeholders, reaching non-involved neighbors living nearby the polluting factories and refineries and/or those dependent on shared environmental resources. Environmental poisonings of this type certainly continue to plague the health of the world's population, and well beyond into nature.

The federal government purposely straddled a gray line between positive intentions and damaging results throughout the age of Prohibition (1920-1933). It ordered various known poisons to be added to commercial alcohols in a series of unsuccessful experiments intended to discourage bootlegging. This became known as the Chemists' War, as illegal bootleggers employed capable chemists on their staffs to maintain their defiance of the law by detecting, identifying, and counteracting the government's additives in order to restore the alcohol to a presumably reasonable state for sale and safer consumption.

We can relate to a more recent example of the same type of industry gray. In the promotion, use, and regulation of tobacco there's been conflicting circumstances. Until the mid-twentieth century, some doctors were still recommending a variety of consumer tobacco products for their presumed health benefits – this despite nicotine's being one of the most lethal compounds on the planet (a potent alkaloid found in the nightshade plant family that includes tobacco and the deadly belladonna plants). (See the related element with the "Parable of the Flat Earth.")

After the discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie, it was wildly promoted for decades as a health additive and a miracle cure. This in itself was not unusual, as other poisons were misunderstood and first introduced as health tonics. Men consumed radium-based drinks for energy just as we presently do Gatorade and coffee; women applied it in facial creams and eyeliners; and children ate it as an ingredient in candy and soda. It was thought to be a new wonder drug – able to restore bones, tissues, and organs. We now know the opposite to be true.

The third category is suicidal death – intentional, self-inflicted, and all too easily performed by means of easy access to numerous poisons of a common household or commercial nature.

There's a fourth category, the scope of which was beyond Norris and Gettler and thus beyond the scope of this story It has two sub-sets: non-civilian, strictly military, applications as in the WWI utilizations and civilian applications as an act of mass genocide against non-participants, cruelly demonstrated beyond any in history by the Nazi regime before and during WWII. In both sub-sets, it must be noted that these uses of poisons were initiated by a national government against large groups of people compared to individual against individual uses. Despite having been internationally banned for a century, exceptions to the use of poison gas against civilians and soldiers still have occurred in more recent times on various occasions by Russia in its former USSR republics and in the Middle East by Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Russia has drawn the world's attention because of its calculated use by its FSB (formerly KGB) to targeted poisonings by Plutonium. The resulting casualties from military/governmental use of poisons were generally beyond the scope of the medical examiner's office; one exception at the time for M.E.s like Norris and Gettler was the exposed soldiers who'd returned to civilian lifestyles while unknowingly and belatedly suffering ill effects from military and mass-grade poisons.

The Norris-Gettler team worked on cases involving all four categories. Before issuing a death certificate, they had to determine to which category it should be attributed. Was the cause of death a poison? If so, which poison? Was it murder, accident, suicide, or military exposure? This was their regular focus and never-ending challenge.

The following two case studies exemplify the nature of the team's general preoccupation as well as present a detailed example of each of the first and second poisoning categories. Case history one focuses on intentional death by poison within a highly personal framework – a man's murder in the first degree. Irishman Mike Malloy was frequently so drunk that many nights he simply passed-out on the bar of his favorite Bronx speakeasy. He was in that sad condition the night the owner, Tony Marino, and three other regular patrons decided to purchase insurance policies on Mike and name themselves as beneficiaries since he had no permanent address, regular employer, or known relatives. In exchange for an unlimited supply of free drinks and bar snacks, Mike easily endorsed the policies. He was old, in poor health, and a physical wreck after a lifetime of heavy drinking. The conspirators, however, determined to speed up his earthly departure. This act would immediately provide the sorely needed Depression-era cash settlements that they intended to share equally.

Their initial action, in a series of attempts, was to greatly increase Mike's intake of risky Prohibition-era booze. The following unsuccessful action was a sequence of more drinks deliberately made with poisonous methyl alcohol as a hopefully lethal substitute for "good" booze. Frustrated by his unexpected ability to endure, they then laced Mike's food with rotten ingredients, metal shavings, and ground glass. But he again survived and even may have prospered because Mike gained weight. Thereafter, they dragged him unconscious into freezing outdoor temperatures and followed-up by dousing him with cold water – again, resulting in a no-go. Next, a cab driver was hired to run him down and leave the body unattended. A week after the accident, however, Mike unexpectedly returned to the club wanting more free drinks and food. He'd been taken to the hospital by a Good Samaritan wherein he was treated for a fractured skull and several broken bones. Mike had no idea how he'd arrived at this sub-par condition, but his unflagging tenacity for life now inspired the nickname Mike the Durable. Frustrated but remaining committed to their plan, the accomplices finally rented a cheap gaslit hotel room, put the once-again-unconscious Mike into bed, and ran a tube from the lighting fixture into his throat until he finally, but surely, died from asphyxiation.

The band of conspiratorial beneficiaries then paid an undertaker to quickly bury him. It was conferred that Mike had slowly died of frequent self-administered alcohol poisoning, with the death certificate fixed to "officially" read the same. The insurance money was subsequently collected and distributed. All was well until a suspicious rumor reached the police, and the unembalmed body was exhumed and tested by Norris and Gettler. After considerable groundbreaking research, it was concluded that Mike had died from an unnaturally high concentration of carbon dioxide. By virtue of the convincing toxicology data, all of Mike's killers were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to die in Sing Sing Prison's electric chair. Had they embalmed the hurriedly buried body, the tests would have proven inconclusive and one more poison murder would have gone unsolved. Mike's death was a clear example of the first category of murder-by-poison.

Case history two focuses on accidental death by poisoning within an impersonal industrial environment. It takes place simultaneously with the first one, but in the industrial city of Orange, New Jersey across the border from New York City. A strange and unidentified illness began to infect otherwise healthy young female factory workers. Their bones shattered, their teeth fell out, their jaws rotted away like lepers, and sores randomly appeared across their bodies. Within a few years of incalculable suffering, they died while still in their twenties. The only thing they had in common was employment at U.S. Radium Corporation. The specialty of U.S.R.C. was a glow-in-the-dark paint, which the workers applied to a number of clocks and other devices. The company determined that the girls had simply worked themselves into a state of exhaustion and developed anemia – supposed proof that the weaker sex was not intended for employment beyond domestic.

Harrison Martland, the local medical examiner, suspected otherwise. It was openly known that the luminescent, neon green paint contained a radium-based mixture. Could this widely used and much-heralded miracle drug be hurting them instead of helping them? Even French scientist Marie Curie, the discoverer of radium, did not fear for her safety throughout her years of closely handling the element while conducting groundbreaking research. Dr. Martland needed to find the cause, so he requested the help of the better-equipped and more-experienced lab team at Bellevue across the state-line. The bodies of the victims were exhumed, and their bones were removed and sent to Norris for exploratory tests. Meanwhile, he conducted further research on those girls still living. He soon found that they exhaled radon gas, and some of them even glowed in the dark. The factory girls had been encouraged to keep the tips of their small paintbrushes sharp in order to maintain a working edge for a close pattern. To do so, they licked the tips or placed them in their mouths, thereby swallowing a significant amount of radium. Some even decorated their nails and faces with the paint for fun and glamour.

The bone research at Bellevue determined that the radium in the paint, as well as the radium in the dust scattered throughout the factory, were acting together on the workers' bodies in a manner reasonably similar to calcium. Both calcium and radium are alkaloid metals easily absorbed by the human body with most going quickly into the bones. Unlike calcium, however, radium is always in a state of breaking down and casting off particles. Once absorbed by their bones, the natural decay process proceeded to break down the skeletal frameworks of the girls working at the plant; they were being eaten alive from the inside out.

Norris's research conclusions were sufficiently strong evidence for a suit against U.S.R.C. Eventually, a case was brought with only five of the many affected girls as plaintiffs. Most were afraid of losing their jobs, others did not have the funds or sophistication to pursue legal action, many had already died and the statute of limitations had expired for others. The suit was greatly prolonged by the corporation, which denied responsibility. The girls finally won as the court heartily agreed with the scientific findings, but settlement awards were consistently meager. The girls' deaths were examples of death-by-poison category two: the accidental and unintended result of dangerous industrial employment with superintending amounts of denial by the responsible party.

As in these two detailed examples, case-by-case Norris and Gettler converted the mundane and distasteful labors of the pathology lab into respected and effective science. In the process, the criminal justice system was revolutionized, innocent people recovered their lives, victims received satisfaction, corporations were held three-way liable (for their products, their consumers, and their employees), the double-edged nature of chemicals came to be better understood, textbooks were written that are still in use today, chemistry advanced from wet to dry applications, public safety gained institutionalized government advocates for product testing and ingredients listing, a generation of Gettler boys replaced political cronies, the use of chemicals became regulated, the new science of forensics was invented with pathology recognized as one of the champions of modern health care, and poison fell from use as a common means of murder, thus returning to its historical point of origin. Homicidal poisoning all but disappeared after Norris and Gettler. The two did not begin with a determination to change the world, but in consistently performing a distinctly nonglamorous job with integrity and competence, they did so. Their century closed on a largely different note than it had opened in regard to both crime and chemistry.

As noted, circumstances associated with category one poisoning did sharply decline, however, it may be soundly argued that – through no negligence or failures associated with Gettler and Norris – occurrences of category two (industrial-related and presumably unintentional) poisoning may not have abated even though the effective techniques for identifying them most certainly were established. The nation continued to witness industrial poisoning of the general publics' air, food, and water by both private and governmental sources. These occurrences were associated with various causes such as atomic reactions, farming, oil exploration and delivery, factory production, and transportation accidents. Two high profile legal cases, both made into Hollywood films, serve well as final illustrations: Karen Silkwood regarding Kerr-McGee's plutonium production and alleged employee radiation poisoning at the Crescent, Oklahoma plant and Erin Brockovich regarding Pacific Gas and Electric's alleged chromium 6 groundwater poisoning around Hinkley, California – sufficient exposure to either chemical results in deadly human cancers.

An appropriate inscription remains partially visible on the autopsy room wall of the now-abandoned Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood on Long Island, a brief drive from Bellevue Hospital. It reads: "Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living." It's the English translation of a Latin quote by Giovanni Morgagni, the eighteenth-century Italian physician known as the father of anatomical pathology. Norris and Gettler labored surrounded by a surreal array of flasks, test tubes, Bunsen burners, organic specimens, beakers of formaldehyde, and distiller arrays. Their postmortem labors in the morgue, autopsy room, and research laboratory of Bellevue Hospital at first exposure seem wholly macabre; but as a body yielded its secrets to them, Morgagni's statement was fulfilled: death facilitated life. Death is swallowed up in victory. O' Death, where is your sting? (1 Corinthians 15:54-55).

The data teased by chemistry from a corpse helped determine guilt or innocence, whether suspicious or natural, the specifics of purpose and cause, and (perhaps most positive) an improved understanding of related prevention and cure. The gains for the legal system are enumerated in qualitative and quantitative terms, but for survivors coping with the outcomes of crime, loss, sickness, and accident, the benefits are informed decision-making for moving on with their lives; often referred to as closure. For them in particular, death becomes the servant of the living.

...and search for it more than for hidden treasures. (Job 3:21)

* * * *

Author's Notes: Three fundamental, non-exclusive sources contributed substantial inspiration, fact-checking, and base information for the preparation of "Body of Knowledge." These were: PBS's documentary film The Poisoner's Handbook and its related website (www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/teachers-resources/poisoners-guide/); Deborah Blum's book The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York and Wikipedia (e.g., en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gettler and en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Charles_Norris). My selections of the two case studies (Mike Malloy and U.S. Radium Corporation) were influenced by Deborah Blum's research of the same circumstances. The reader is encouraged to peruse, as I did, these and other resources for additional information on the subject. I receive the least amount of reader feedback on this story as compared to the others. This has caused some angst as to whether to continue including it in revised editions or to replace it with a different story. It has survived one more potential deletion because, if nothing more, it qualifies as an audacious narrative. I never shared it orally from start-to-finish due to its substantial length and complexity, rather it was told piece-part to satisfy specific classroom objectives – generally science-oriented ones.
Pasquale de Nisco

The Priest Who Adopted a Town

If the foundations are destroyed... (Psalm 11:3)

Two physicians met in 1961 for a casual dinner in a small Pocono Mountains town an hour east of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. One man was a country general practitioner by the name of Benjamin Falcone; the other, Stewart Wolf, a recognized specialist employed at the University of Oklahoma. Neither suspected their casual conversation had the potential to improve the lives of all who heard its eventual outcome. The small town was Roseto, Pennsylvania. It had taken its name from Roseto Valfortore, a medieval village located in a similar environment in the Apennine Mountains outside of Rome, Italy.

Life in Roseto Valfortore, Italy hadn't changed much over two millennia. It was a consistently poor village where the men either worked in the mountains as stonecutters or in the valleys as farmers. Not many families ever came or left; that is, until 1871, when a former resident – after becoming a Jesuit priest – was transferred to America for his first assignment. His letters home encouraged a small group of eleven Rosetans to emigrate, with several of them finding employment in the Poconos' slate quarry pits.

Initially, the Italian authorities considered the act of leaving the country to be unpatriotic, and they discouraged the citizens from pursuing it. Sometime thereafter, however, the unceasingly poor economic conditions of Southern Italy caused them to relent. The enhanced flow of enthusiastic letters home influenced more and more families to purchase the inexpensive ship passage and depart for America in hopes of realizing the promised greater economic opportunity. Within a decade, Roseto Valfortore almost ceased to exist; it had essentially been relocated to the New World. A majority of its population, numbering about twelve hundred, immigrated to Pennsylvania, where they settled together and named their new town Roseto – dropping Valfortore.

Quarry work in the mountains was hard, dangerous, and didn't pay well. It was plentiful, however, because the previous settlers – mostly English and Welsh – disdained this risky, unskilled labor. The Rosetans were not accepted by their neighbors because they performed the low-tier work, didn't speak English, and continued their seemingly backward Old-World customs and practices. The shunning left them with no alternative but to remain close to each other in an essentially closed and isolated ethnic geographic community. Their life remained much like the one they'd recently left in the Italian province of Foggia.

Their new town was soon found to be an unexpected challenge, if not an outright disappointment. Wages were insufficient; Sicilian-style knife-fighting and drunkenness were common; the town rested on ground stripped bare of foliage by rapacious lumber companies; they were forced to shop at company stores that charged exorbitant fees; and perhaps worst of all, in their perspective, they didn't even have a Catholic church with a local priest. The new Roseto was clearly in turmoil; that is until a dynamic young priest by the name of Pasquale de Nisco arrived.

The priest quickly assumed leadership of the community, and their situation began to steadily improve. It did so to a level so unusual that the outcome gripped the attention of Dr. Wolf more than a half-century later. Father Pasquale has been described as educated, cultured, organized, dedicated, and energetic; the first three traits were sorely missing in early Roseto. He was capable of assisting the Rosetans in economic, political, social, family, and spiritual matters. This made him something of a modern Renaissance man. Such a description would seem to be either flattery or fictionalized overstatement, except for the proven, sizable record he soon compiled and its enduring positive legacy. In his book, The Power of Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart Disease, Dr. Wolf states that "Father de Nisco's persistent exhortations, coupled with his personal generosity, encouragement, and practical assistance, shaped the community and its people into a close-knit ... town."

He instituted a comprehensive civic plan of self-design that, in addition to establishing the only local church, included assisting the Rosetans with obtaining citizenship, learning the English language, gaining formal schooling for the children, voting and participating in politics, introducing social clubs, provisioning sports fields, instituting laws, incorporating the township, and beginning a circulating public library. Souls were given attention through the development of four separate Christian mutual-aid societies dedicated to promoting healthy spiritual living and morals – one each for adult working men, wives and mothers, boys, and girls. He was hands-on in demonstrably reducing crime and knife-fighting; his methods sometimes included permanently running troublemakers out of town.

Father de Nisco's physical church went far beyond the construction of a building for worship services. It was an entire plaza with the church at the center of twenty-eight city lots. He personally financed and purchased all of it. Initially included in the original development were a park, school, hospital, water well, and cemetery; later, a post office, convent, and newspaper were added. After completing the plaza, he actively administered to the entire Roseto community by encouraging and teaching the residents to plant trees, flowers, landscaping, and gardens – even purchasing the seeds himself and distributing them to all who did the soil preparation. Along with beautification came the necessary sanitation measures. He supervised the regular removal of garbage and trash and assisted in matters of public health, even employing quarantines and curfews as his tools. Within a few years, land and housing values doubled and continued to rise for years thereafter.

De Nisco's next major project was to begin improving the income of the families. The quarry managers were mistreating the Rosetan men by employing them in only the most dangerous jobs, while paying substandard wages on an infrequent basis and, subsequently, coercing them to shop exclusively at uncompetitive company-owned stores. When personal requests and negotiation with management failed, he alternately established a union, led a strike, and won badly needed concessions for the workers.

He also encouraged the young, unmarried girls to earn wages in the shirt factory in nearby Bangor. With their demonstrated success, he was able to convince a group of wealthy local businessmen to build a shirt factory in Roseto. This reduced travel time and expense for the girls, and they were now paid on a piecework basis. Shares of stock in the new company were open to purchasing by both the employees and all Roseto citizens. The plan was successful and everyone profited by it.

All this was accomplished while not neglecting his personal spiritual habits and his substantial regular corporate duties, such as church worship services, marriages, funerals, sacraments, celebratory festivals, and family counseling. In 1906, de Nisco was offered a promotion by his archbishop, which he turned down, replying that he "would rather die with his boots on in Roseto." Some have described Father Pasquale's role in Roseto as its de facto lifetime mayor, building inspector, social worker, police chief, labor board, and health department. The initial derision by Roseto's neighbors toward the city eventually turned to admiration – in no small part due to the unrelenting care of the priest who essentially adopted the town.

Roseto continued well into the twentieth century in a manner reflecting its unique dual heritage; that is, its birth from an Italian province and its refined nature inherited from the priest's vigilant care. It retained the character of a well-operated, attractive, neo-Italian village secluded in the forested mountainside. Regardless of these admirable strengths, it continued to fly well below the national radar, with few outside visitors and rarely any new residents. Roseto never made the news because it had no serious crime and never suffered a murder. The city was virtually unknown for seventy years and would have remained so, except for a visiting physician.

Dr. Wolf came to Roseto for a conference and concluded his day by dining with one of the local general practitioners, Dr. Falcone. During their meal conversation, the local doctor mentioned that during his seventeen years of practice, he'd never treated a single case of heart disease in Roseto, although he had done so in the surrounding communities. In fact, he thought he'd observed that the Rosetans generally enjoyed a higher level of general health than his non-Roseto patients.

At that time in America, heart disease – especially myocardial infarction (heart attack) – was the number one medical cause of death for people under the age of sixty-five and it killed more people than the total of the next three leading causes of death. Finding a way to reduce its deadly effects ranked as high then, as doing so with cancer does now.

Dr. Wolf prolonged his stay and called in John Bruhn, a sociologist experienced in statistical research, to assist him. They committed to work together to ascertain why Rosetans had fewer heart attacks than people in nearby communities. The answer would benefit all of humanity, as well as bring professional acknowledgment to the team and international recognition to Roseto.

Thus began a fifteen-year study drawing on collected medical histories, physical examinations, and laboratory tests. Large samples of these criteria were compared and contrasted between inhabitants of Roseto and inhabitants of two similar neighboring communities. Next, the medical research was followed by a sociological study of the three communities. There was a real mystery to be solved in determining the secret to the Rosetans' health.

Was it diet? They cooked with lard, and 40 percent of their diet consisted of calories from fat. They loved sausage, pepperoni, salami, eggs, and baked goods. This criterion did not seem cogent, and after due consideration was eliminated by the resulting research conclusions.

Was it exercise? They were obese well beyond the national average and more overweight than other Italian communities. They smoked heavily as well. This criterion was not convincing, and after due consideration was eliminated by the resulting research conclusions.

Was it genetics? Something in their biological makeup, within their DNA? Their relatives in America and in similar Old-World villages were studied. They were suffering heart disease at the average rates. This criterion failed to be persuasive as well, and after due consideration was eliminated as a result of the research conclusions.

Was it geographic location? Two nearby rural Pennsylvania cities were studied: German-settled Nazareth and Welsh/English-settled Bangor. This criterion yielded no insights and was also eliminated as a possible cause.

If their health secret was not diet, exercise, genes, or location, then what was it? The secret was confirmed as something which came to be labeled community. Roseto possessed an exceptionally high degree of it due to the combination of what had transferred from the original Roseto, their on-going forced isolation, and what had been added to it by the dynamic young priest. For Roseto, this was defined as a common spiritual heritage and practices centered on church, God, and worship. This spiritual core was further supplemented by twenty-two supporting civic organizations in a town with a population of slightly over one thousand. Father Pasquale de Nisco had preserved and then enhanced the social structure of the Rosetans, thereby helping to create an even more powerful, protective community. This community effect was certifiably capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. The study of people living in Roseto conclusively determined that their uniquely close family relationships, spiritual practices, and community-wide societal support gave them a healthier general lifestyle overall, while specifically lessening their chance of a fatal heart attack. Their health was generally better than that experienced in villages in Italy, as well as in other predominately Italian towns in America.

For clarity, I'll break out and restate each positive factor individually. They are: cohesive ethnic background, shared societal values and traditions, exceptional bonding developed due to shunning by the ethnically different residents in nearby cities, insulated rural location somewhat distant from modernity, active Christian religious practices, close family ties (clans), a persistent habit of mutual support, and a substantial number of complementary and sustaining civic contributions gifted to them by Father de Nisco. Although not likely a critical or even significant factor, the Rosetans, interestingly, also had a tradition of storytelling. Through all these factors, the Rosetans developed an exceptionally high degree of community. Regardless of circumstances, they could depend on immediate family. They could also depend on other citizens, both directly within their neighborhood and indirectly through mutual-aid organizations such as church and the many social clubs. A sampling of these societies includes the Marconi Social Club, Columbia Fire Company, Holy Name Society, and American Legion.

The good news continues. There were health benefits beyond heart disease, such as reduced incidence of syphilis, brain disorders, depression, psychoses, and senility. The village also enjoyed reduced numbers of divorces, illegitimate pregnancies, and adolescent rebellions; less alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicides; and a total absence of homicide, including abortion. As Dr. Wolf nicely concluded: "Roseto emerged as a buoyant, fun-loving community that was more enterprising, more self-sufficient, more optimistic, and more prosperous than its neighbors."

The Baltimore Sun newspaper articulates a worthwhile analysis to serve as a recap: "The lesson the Roseto experience offers Americans is that the thwarting of their biological need for social cohesion, community, and emotional security is doing them tremendous harm–and that they need, urgently, to find distinctly American ways to share their lives with one another in warm, supporting communities."

A number of well-documented studies involving infants help to substantiate the Roseto postulation and the newspaper's conclusion. Newborn infants who received substantial warm human contact prospered; infants who received little or none were unhealthy, with many withering to the point of expiration. It's long been accepted that human relationships, together with impressions from our environment, powerfully shape a person both behaviorally and cognitively; now we can confidently add medically as well. If we are consistently sustained and nourished emotionally, we can anticipate minimized health risks while enjoying an enhanced overall sense of well-being; it's a double win.

After the 1970s, Roseto again served as proof of the newspaper's statement regarding the thwarting of our biological need for community. When it began acquiring conditions characteristic of most other American cities, Roseto started losing its unique, shared, and cohesive community sustaining factors. With those losses came the gradual erosion of its precious advantages in physical health and societal well-being. Roseto underwent many changes, and change itself is sufficiently stress-inducing to increase vulnerability to disease – think of shingles and hives as modest examples, or heart attack and stroke as more severe examples. Later generations of Rosetans expressed declining interest in traditional social values, the core family, and the community-building institutions; instead, they aspired to the same materialism and lifestyles commonly promoted in the media. Many insiders moved out, while newcomers from the outside moved in. Today, Roseto is both medically and demographically indistinguishable from the rest of America, having lost in only a couple of generations its protective and unique insulations as well as its associated health benefits. (For more information regarding the nature of change, refer to the "Parable of the Four Farmers" and the "Parable of the Flat Earth.")

...what can the righteous do? (Psalm 11:3)

* * * *

Author's Notes: An expression of gratitude and acknowledgment is again extended to Malcolm Gladwell. As an author whose sociological studies I enjoy, he was the first to introduce me to Pasquale de Nisco (as well as to the towns of Roseto) in Outliers, his book on success. Additionally, the concept of framing questions related to the exploration of the Roseto health advantage was first established in Outliers; that is, was their superior health due to diet, exercise, genetics, or location? My subsequent story development utilized multiple research sources, but Mr. Gladwell's writing was the original catalyst.

In February of 2019, a study for the Public Library of Science by Graff, Luke, and Birmingham offered the following conclusion which supported the lessons from Roseto:

The research linking supportive relationships with lower rates of morbidity and mortality is robust. Supportive relationships are associated with better physiological and psychological health including immune and cardiovascular functioning, lower rates of depression, and better life satisfaction. Additionally, lack of supportive relationships is associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk, depression, and poor immune function.

Within the text of the research abstract, it offers the following definition: "Social support can be the actual provision of support in times of need ('received support'; e.g. emotional, tangible, informational), or the perception that support is available if needed ('perceived support')." Dr. Wendy Birmingham's, Utah's BYU psychology professor, on-going studies attempt to measure the health benefits from social connection; one such takeaway is that relationships help people live longer.

Having verified community as an exceptionally beneficial factor for the health of the human condition, the key questions are: Can we recapture family and neighborhoods where they've been replaced by the cult of the individual, eroded by government incursion, or cheaply substituted with digital social media? Can we supplant competition with cooperation and common purpose? Can we re-establish the centrality of the church and the primacy of Judeo-Christianity where they've been denigrated by misguided science, secularism, and new age craftwork? Probably not entirely; however, inasmuch as we can make small restitution in the arenas of family and community, we will pay ourselves dividends of health and happiness. Residential locations that measure high in community have low rates of incarceration; and conversely, those measuring low in community have high rates of incarceration.

If we had more spiritually well-grounded pastoral leaders like Father de Nisco directly laboring quietly in the trenches instead grandstanding politically in the trendy, camera-ready roles of community organizers, "woke" activists, and social justice warriors, they could at least point the demographic groups that they represent in a positive, healing direction. Better still, they could give and offer instead of take and demand by acting as much-needed role models, teachers, and mentors – as opposed to the cabals of puffed-up "Reverends" and the galvanizing mullahs who deliberately create self-serving division instead of committing their lives to truly helping their people. They are the wolves who devour the sheep instead of the needed shepherds who care for their flocks. Their words of shame, hatred, discontent, and blame can never produce harmony. Pastor Pasquale de Nisco has undeniably shown them, and all of us, the more righteous way to comprehensive healing and health for our fellow beings. (See the related dialog on healing solutions in the Afterword.)
Jesus Christ

Who Do You Say That I Am?

Having loved His own who were in the world... (John 13:1)

Part 1 – Jesus as the historical Son of Man

Our Western Gregorian calendar marks the year of this Man's birth. He was conceived contrary to the ordinary laws governing natural life. His birthplace was a barn, He grew up in an obscure rural village, and His parents were plain-living peasants. Their ancestry was fully Jewish – known as God's chosen people but often hated by the nations of the world. They were a typical poor, young couple lacking any formal education and possessing neither wealth nor influence.

Yet His arrival was announced by angels and caused panic in one king's heart and elation in the hearts of three other kings. As a baby, He was prophesied over twice by strangers at the temple during His dedication. As a toddler, He was visited by a team of accomplished foreign scholars who traveled and searched for months in order to locate Him. Approaching his teen years, the wisdom He shared impressed, engaged, and surpassed religious professionals and highly placed lawyers. As a young man, He apprenticed quietly in his father's carpentry shop until age thirty, after which He worked for the next three years as a traveling preacher without a church building for shelter and without a congregation to support Him.

In the final years of His unnaturally short life, He belatedly demonstrated the fullness of His nature by walking on water, commanding violent storms to be at peace, converting water into fine wine, healing the sick, raising the dead, and multiplying a handful of fish and loaves sufficient for the satisfaction of thousands of His hungry companions.

He never held an elected office, and never had a title, yet multitudes wanted to proclaim Him their king and were prepared to forsake all other appointed and inherited rulers in exchange for just this one Man. He never owned a home, never married nor had children, never attended college, and never gained any formal credentials or positions. As an adult, He never lived in a big city or traveled more than a hundred miles from the place where He was born. He had nothing in this world beyond the simple clothes He wore.

He never wrote a book, and yet all the libraries in the world contain books written about Him. He never wrote a song, but hundreds of thousands of songs have been written about Him with more being added daily. He never painted, sculpted, or drew; yet the greatest artists in the history of mankind have consistently sought to honor Him by selecting Him as the subject of their masterpieces. He never founded a college nor earned a degree, but all the schools in the world cannot claim as many students. He never commanded troops, drafted a soldier, planned a troop movement, won a war, or fired a gun; and yet no other leader has ever had more volunteers and followers – most of whom are prepared to die for Him.

He never practiced psychiatry nor studied pharmaceuticals; still, He has healed more broken hearts than all the doctors of the world. He cured countless desperately afflicted multitudes without medicine or instruments – even raising several from the dead. He turned no one away while they were suffering, never acted inconvenienced, and never charged for His services. His only incentive was the benefit another would receive.

He was no film or rock star, and He played no professional sports. He never appeared on television, spoke on the radio, blogged or tweeted; yet His words are broadcast worldwide on a daily basis. He turned the world's concept of greatness and fame upside down while demonstrating true servant leadership. Although He never did any of the things contemporary society considers an indication of greatness or importance, He was a true hero and His life remains worthy of imitation by every generation.

Despite all His good deeds, He was criticized for befriending society's outcasts and for resisting popular influences and powerful personalities. His words and deeds were forcefully opposed by the ruling elites. His family doubted His motives, and at times thought Him mentally unstable. The tide of worldly opinion turned against Him while He was still young. Many were jealous of Him and many others hated Him. Friends deserted Him, one denied Him multiple times, and another bitterly betrayed Him to His enemies. He was arrested by His adversaries and suffered the harassment and lies of false accusations and a mock trial. Although wholly innocent, He was pronounced guilty, whipped, spat on, beaten, pierced, and sentenced to a criminal's public death in a painful, bloody manner. He was nailed to wooden crossbeams, set high between thieves, speared, ridiculed, and cursed. As He was dying, the executioners gambled for His only remaining possession, a simple robe. His last words were those of forgiveness and love for the very men who were persecuting Him.

For His burial, He was to be laid in a borrowed tomb donated through the pity of a stranger. At the moment of His death, the earth shook violently and split open, the skies thundered, the sun darkened, and graves yielded their dead who then walked the streets – all bearing witness to His innocence and to the promise of mightier things to come. Although His enemies had tried, they couldn't destroy Him because even the grave was soon proven unable to hold Him.

Had there been an obituary written at the time of Jesus' sacrificial earthly death, it would have read similar to this:

Jesus Christ, aged 33, died late Thursday afternoon in Jerusalem on Mount Calvary, also known as Golgotha the Place of the Skull. Born in Bethlehem of Judea, He spent his childhood in Egypt and his youth in the northern village of Nazareth. Jesus was sentenced to death by the state for crimes against the Roman Empire and the Jewish religion. He was crucified along with two other criminals by order of Prefect Pontius Pilate with the approval of King Herod Agrippa. Causes of death were extreme exhaustion, severe torture, unrelenting pain, and profuse bleeding. Jesus was a descendant of Abraham and a member of the royal Jewish House of David. He was the firstborn son of the late Joseph Ben Jacob, a respected Galilean carpenter. He is survived by His mother, Mary, three brothers and two sisters, twelve apostles, and numerous disciples. He was self-educated and spent most of His adult life working first as a carpenter and then as a pastor, teacher, community organizer, and social worker. The entombment occurred just prior to the Sabbath in a nearby hillside cavern previously owned by family benefactor Joseph of Arimathea. In lieu of flowers, the family requests honoring the deceased by embracing His instruction and the example of His life. Monetary donations will be forwarded in his name to local charities.

There was, however, no time or need for an obituary, because three days thereafter, He was resurrected and back even stronger teaching, speaking, preaching to His friends and family in full view of hundreds. He departed soon thereafter on His terms and timing. Just prior to leaving, He promised an imminent future return while leaving His immortal Word and providing a great, new Gift intended to comfort us in the interim. Jesus lives yesterday, today, and always.

Soon the world discovered that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that sailed, all the governments that were established, all the kings who reigned, and all the presidents who held office have not affected history as powerfully or as positively as this one Man's life. Although more than twenty-one centuries have come and gone since His brief time on earth, He's continuously been the centerpiece of the human race as its greatest source of guidance and divine inspiration. Many times every week across the globe, countless multitudes gather to study His teachings and to show their respect for Him.

Modernity has difficulty understanding Him. Schools are reluctant to teach about Him. Leaders can't succeed if they ignore Him. Historical revisionists have tried but can't erase Him. Scientists remain baffled by Him. Communism, nazism, and atheism failed to silence Him. New Agers, Hindus, and Muslims can't replace Him. The proud can't accept Him. Religion can't sanitize or convolute Him. And none of the commercial commentators on TV or radio are able to explain His continuing prominence and influence.

Time itself recognizes His earthly presence by its division between that which came before and that which came after His birth. Today, His followers celebrate the date of His arrival on earth as both a holy day and a holiday. Without ceasing, His enemies dispute antagonistically against the mere mention of His name and are hostile to any display of the symbols relating to His humble birth and life. They harass public officials and school boards, they wear out the courts with endless mean-spirited petitions, and they disrupt the celebrations enjoyed by a majority of the population. His symbols are not their issue; it's the Man Himself: His heavenly ancestry, incarnate birth, Jewish heritage, pure life, selfless death, church on earth, eternal and unchanging existence, renewing resurrection, claim of being God, universal authority, kingdom of saints, eternal judgment, second messianic coming, and His everlasting presence.

The names of the eminent statesmen and thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome have come and gone. The names of past scientists, philosophers, and theologians have also come and gone. But the name of this humble Jewish man multiplies more and more with every season that passes. His life, works, and words are continually studied in minute detail from every possible perspective: historically, educationally, doctrinally, practically, comparatively, medically, critically, devotionally, prophetically, and analytically, and there is always enough to satisfy everyone while keeping them hungry for more. Even though more than two thousand years lie between our generation and His time on the earth, the Son of Man's name still lives on – JESUS.

Part 2 – Jesus as the Eternal Son of God

The Bible – regardless of translation – offers in excess of two hundred names, titles, and character references for Jesus. These reflect His nature, His position in the triune Godhead, His earthly ministry on our behalf, and His relationship to us. The names given to those who appear throughout the Bible, Old or New Testaments, have specific meanings and reveal life purpose; for example, Adam means "man" and Jacob means "deceiver." This concept holds true for Jesus whose name means "God saves," with Christ added and/or substituted later to mean "anointed One."

...from the word yasha comes the Hebrew word yeshua. Yeshua means salvation. ...And when Yeshua was translated into Greek, it became Iesous. When Iesous was translated into English, it became Jesus. Jesus is Yeshua. Yeshua is Jesus. Yeshua is the real name of the One the world knows as Jesus. ...It literally means God is my salvation. ...Yeshua means God has become our rescue, our help, our freedom, our healing, our victory, and our salvation. God has become Yeshua to become the answer to every need.

~ "Yeshua," The Book of Mysteries, by Jonathan Cahn

If we want to know someone better, we need to first know their name and later their background, lifestyle, goals, and character. When individuals change their names, they are telling the world that there is now something different about them. When God wants to directly change or magnify a person's specific mission, He changes their name, as from Abram to Abraham and from Sarai to Sarah. Today, when Jews leave their countries for their true homeland, Israel, they change their names upon arrival, not just for compatibility with the new geographic location, but to reveal and amplify their recently assumed or reinvigorated hopes, dreams, and goals. The old is shed and going-forward they are cloaked in the new.

To gain a closer relationship with Jesus, we need to know as many of His names, titles, and character inferences as possible. He has chosen to reveal much of His nature to us so that we may come to know Him better. I have found the following examples of His revealed nature in my Bible – there remain many more that may be found.

Jesus is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, and the Alpha and Omega Who always was, is now, and evermore shall be. He is the Great I Am, our Redeemer, Savior, Guide, Wonderful Counselor, Friend, Hope, King, Judge, Lawgiver, and Advocate.

He was bruised by us and for us, yet He brings healing. He was killed by us and for us, yet He brings life and eternity. We enjoy peace, wisdom, and joy simply by being in His presence. In Him we have grace, favor, and mercy.

Jesus is our Light, Lover, Liberty, Logos, Lamb, Lord, and Life. He is Goodness, Kindness, and Gentleness. He is Holy, Righteous, Powerful, Merciful, and Pure. His ways are always right. His Word is eternal and true. His will is perfect and unchanging. His wisdom is beyond measure and far above that of all others.

His eternal names written in the heavens are Adonai, Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Majestic One, Messiah, Dayspring Who Has Visited Us from on High, Immanuel, Dear Desire of Every Nation, Fairest of Ten Thousand, Lily of the Valley, Rose of Sharon, Only Mediator Between God and Man, Ruler of All Nations and All Nature, Propitiation of All Our Sins, and Faithful One.

Jesus provides the blood that cleanses whiter than snow, every blessing we need, answers to our prayers, living water so that we will never again thirst, bread for our spiritual hunger, healing balm of Gilead for our pain, and jewels for our crown of life.

He has revealed Himself to us as a Bridegroom, Brother in Time of Need, Branch to Abide In, Banner Over Us, Bright and Morning Star, Builder of Our Soul, Bridge to Eternal Life, Our Blood Covenant, King of the Jews, and Shepherd and Ruler. He chose to be born a Jew, He's a Jew today, and He will be a Jew for all eternity. He's Israel's Strength and Consolation, the Holy One of the Nation and People of Israel, Zion's Rock, and the Light of Israel.

Jesus is the greatest phenomenon that has ever crossed the horizon of this world. He's God's Son, the sinner's Savior, and the centerpiece of civilization. He's unique, unparalleled, and unprecedented. He is the loftiest idea in literature, the highest personality in philosophy, the unmatched beauty in poetry, and the supreme problem in higher criticism. He's the foundation of all true theology, doctrine, beliefs, and religion.

He strengthens and sustains the weak, and provides victory for those who are tired, tempted, tested, and undergoing trials. He heals the afflicted, discharges debts, delivers the captives, defends widows and orphans, forgives sinners, and ministers to all who ask because that's His divine pleasure and nature.

Jesus has given us the mind of Christ, a new spirit, eyes that truly see and ears that truly hear, a heart of flesh in exchange for one of stone, and an eternal home in glory. He has created us in His image, commissioned us with dominion over all the earth, made us nearly equal to the angels, given us new life filled with resurrection power, equipped us with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, set our feet on solid, high ground, defeated our satanic enemies, and given us the banner of victory over death, hell, sickness, and the grave.

He cannot be minimized, marginalized, or ignored. Jesus is the deciding factor in whether we live or die, prosper or perish. God the Father raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places far above all principalities, powers, might, dominion, and every name that is named – not only in this age but also in that to come. He stands forth upon the highest pinnacle of heavenly glory, proclaimed of God, acknowledged by angels, adored by saints, and feared by devils as the risen Christ, Lord, and Savior. He will come again to judge the nations, establish equity and justice, and rule forever with unerring truth and righteousness. Jesus is the name given to Him by the Father before the beginning of time, the name above all names at which the mention of – whether in heaven or on the earth – every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord of All to the glory of His Father.

Part 3 – Jesus as the Living and Incarnate Word

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, all things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made, in Him was Light and the Light was the Light of men, the Light shines in the darkness and it is the True Light that gives Light to every man who comes into the world – a great Light that shines in the darkness, the Only Begotten Son Who is in the Bosom of the Father and has declared God, His name shall be called Jesus meaning "God Saves" for He saves His people from their sins, He is known as Immanuel meaning God with Us. In Greek, He is the Christ; in English, the Anointed One; and in Hebrew, the Messiah. The Lord our Strength and Song Who has become our Salvation.

The very exactness and person of the Father: Creator and Possessor of the Heavens and the Earth, the One Whose likeness we bear having been made in His image and granted free will, our Shield and our Exceeding Great Reward, God Most High Who walks before us, Everlasting God and Maker of the Eternal Covenant, Angel of the Lord Who has redeemed us from all evil, the Almighty Who Blesses, I Am Who I Am, the very image and exactness of His Father Jehovah Who Heals (Raphe), Whose Banner Over Us is Love and Victory (Nissi), Who Sanctifies (Makadesh), Who Provides (Yireh), and Who Sees/Watches (Roi).

The Lord God merciful, gracious, mighty, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth; Who keeps mercy and forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin; Lord of Hosts Who sits between the Cherubim; a Tabernacle for shade in the daytime from the heat, a Place of Refuge, a Shelter from the Storm, a Hiding Place from the wind, and a Cover from the tempest; as Rivers of Water in a dry place and as a Shadow of a great rock in a weary land; Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace; One Who Sits Upon the Throne from Everlasting to Everlasting; He Who opens and no man shuts, Who shuts and no man opens; a Tried Stone, a Precious Cornerstone, a Sure Foundation, and a Stumbling Stone for the nations.

Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest Who sends out laborers, the Coming One Who demonstrates His power when the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them; Lord of the Sabbath Who gives an invitation to those who labor to come into His rest, to take up His yoke for it is light, to learn from Him because He is gentle and lowly in heart, giving rest for our souls and freedom from our burdens; the Resurrected One and the Temple to be raised in three days superior to any earthly temple, the One greater than Jonah, Elijah, Abraham, and Moses; Who holds the keys to death, hell, and the grave and has taken captivity captive; My Beloved Son and Servant Whom I have chosen and in Whom I am well pleased and have placed My Spirit so He may declare justice to the nations and in His name they will trust.

Jesus commands even the waves and the wind; the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Father in power and coming on the clouds of heaven surrounded by His saints and martyrs; whose death tore the veil of the temple from top to bottom, split rocks, caused the earth to open, the skies to darken, and the grave to give up its dead when they found new life and walked again in the streets of Jerusalem. He is the reason for our peace, joy, and hope; Who walked the Sea of Galilee and called us out of darkness to become fishers of men; Who taught with authority as One knowing the Father on hillsides, in synagogues, on streets, and from boats at sea; Who commissioned us to share the Good News of the Son of Man in Whom all power and authority has been given and to baptize in His name; whom even the demons call Jesus Son of the Most High God; Who comforts us in all our tribulation that we might be able to comfort those who are in trouble; the Son of God Who was preached among us was not yes and no, but in Him was yes to all the promises of God and in Him amen to the glory of God.

He has established, anointed, and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a Seal, Witness, and Guarantee. Who supplies seed to the sower, bread for food, and increases of the fruit of righteousness. Who calls those things which are not as though they were and they come into existence. Who is the Image of the Invisible God, the Firstborn over all creation, and in Him all things exist. Who is the Head of the body of believers and the universal Church, the Firstborn from the dead, and the Beginning of all that is and is to be. He is preeminent and in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead, Christ in us the hope of glory, a Mystery hidden from the ages, the Root of Jesse and Offspring of David, a Bright and Morning Star, the Dayspring Who has visited us from on high, and the Sun of Righteousness Who rises with healing in His wings. Alpha and the Omega, Beginning and the End, First and the Last Who was and is and is to come world without end.

Jesus has reconciled us to Himself and has then shared with us the ministry of reconciliation, He Who knew no sin has become sin for us and has become our Passover and First Fruits, a Prophet dishonored in His country and among His people, Who says: "Be of good cheer, do not be afraid, only believe, go in peace, your sins are forgiven, be healed of all your afflictions for above all I desire that you prosper and be in good health for I am not willing that any should perish but that all shall be saved and enter into eternal life."

His parables reveal Jesus didactically and enigmatically as the Sower of the Seed, Pearl of Great Price, Good Samaritan, Father of the Prodigal, Hidden Treasure, Son of the Vineyard Owner, Servant's Master, Landowner, Caring Shepherd, New Wine, Vinedresser, Gate, Watchman, Bridegroom, and Son of the King at the wedding feast. The four biographical Gospels record eyewitness details of His life and in doing so reveal that Jesus rarely fellowshipped with priests, masters, lawyers, rulers and the wealthy; rather He befriended prostitutes, lepers, beggars, liars, Samaritans and outsiders, sinners, foreigners, women and children, cripples and invalids, outcasts, prodigals, widows and orphans, laborers and servants, thieves, the homeless and dying, the indigent, and tax collectors – ordinary and common people of the earth. But rich or poor, first or last, He loved them all.

Historical, poetic, and prophetic Bible passages illustrate Jesus metaphorically in everyday types and symbols that help us relate to the mystery of His all-encompassing and eternal spiritual nature. Therein, we are presented with Him as a: Sabbath Rest and Rising Sun, Lamb and Lion, Promise and Covenant, Sacrifice and Offering, Manna and Bread, Pearl and Coin, Angel, Truth and Light, Water and Well, Branch and Root, Serpent of Brass and Scapegoat, Vine and New Wine, Rock and Cornerstone, Holy Place and Temple, Light and Life, Altar and Consuming Fire, Scepter, Seed and Fish, Foundation and Covering, Passover Feast, Morning and Day Stars, Blood sprinkled on the doorposts, spoken and written Word, Green Tree, Covert and Shelter. Cover-to-cover throughout His holy Bible, Jesus is personally available in the roles of our: Friend and Brother, Teacher and Counselor, Master and King, Rabbi and Priest, Deliver and Protector, Healer and Physician, Farmer and Shepherd, Advocate and Mediator.

We may overwhelmingly conclude that God did not create man to live independently of a close relationship with Him. All attempts to do so end in tragedy. When nothing's real in your life, when you've reached bottom, when your marriage is sinking, when you can't hold on any longer, when your strength is all used up, when you're lonely and abandoned, when you have no more resources, when you've run out of excuses, when you need a fresh start, when you feel you can't be forgiven nor can even forgive yourself, when you are flat broke, when no one is there to help you, when you're not certain why you are here, when you need a fix or a drink, when your pain or shame seems more than you can bear, when there are only questions without answers, when you don't know what direction to turn, when you feel like a failure, when you want to quit or die, when your health is broken, when you need a lover, when you're ready to run way; then I Am Who I Am is the All-Sufficient One and He is freely offering Himself to you right now, just as you are.

Part 4 – Jesus as revealed in the Old Testament

Jesus said, You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me (John 5:39); and to some of His disciples on the Emmaus road He said, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (Luke 24:25, 27).

In Genesis, Jesus visited the garden of Eden to walk with Adam in the cool of the evening, later engaged with him in the creation of Eve, and still later banished both from the garden; met and talked with Abraham as Melchizedek; appeared twice as the Angel of the Lord to comfort Hagar, the mother of Abraham's son Ishmael; dined with Abraham and foretold Sarah's pregnancy of Isaac; announced the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; appeared on Mount Moriah to prevent the sacrifice of Isaac and to provide a substitutional lamb; introduced Himself to Jacob and advised returning to the land of his birth; and wrestled with Jacob, changing his name to Israel.

In Exodus, Jesus appeared again as the Angel of the Lord when He gave Moses instructions for leading the nation of Israel out of their bondage to Egypt, met Moses at the burning bush, saved Israel and destroyed the firstborn of her enemies on the night of Passover, and descended as a cloud to pass by Moses while showing him His glory.

In Numbers, the Angel of the Lord cautioned Balaam, spoke through his donkey, and then revealed Himself standing in the way with sword in hand.

In Kings, Jesus strengthened Elijah when he was fleeing from Jezebel and He destroyed Sennacherib's invading army.

In Judges, Jesus chastised Israel for not doing as commanded, met with Gideon face to face and commissioned him for service, delivered the Israelites from the nation of Midian, and appeared to Manoah and his wife to announce the coming birth of Samson.

In Samuel, Jesus approached David near Araunah, the Jebusites' threshing floor, so that he could repent to the Lord.

In Daniel, Jesus was the Fourth Man to appear in the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew youths who refused to worship King Nebuchadnezzar.

In Psalms, Isaiah, Hosea, Zechariah, and Ecclesiastes, Jesus makes additional appearances as the Angel of God.

In Jonah, Jesus comforted and counseled the weary prophet in his anger and despair.

In His prophetic ministry, Jesus bridged the Old and the New Testaments by fulfilling all Messianic prophesies that preceded Him and then by contributing many non-Messianic future revelations. Scholars dissent about the number of Messianic prophesies He completed, with their interpreted range extending from a low of 191 to high of 456 – a convincing quantity at any mark within. Scholars also dissent about the nature of Jesus' pre-incarnation appearances in the Old Testament. These are known as theophanies, and those listed immediately above are my judgments.

Part 5 – Jesus as Miracle Worker

The Bible records thirty-seven miracles performed by Jesus as witnessed by the four gospel writers. These were loving acts beyond natural means and explanation, and are given as evidence of who He is. Some illustrations are:

  * Delivering the demon-possessed man in Capernaum
  * Healing Peter's mother-in-law
  * Cleansing a Galilean leper
  * Turning water into wine at Cana
  * Commanding the paralytic to rise and walk
  * Making whole the withered hand
  * Healing a nobleman's son in Cana and a centurion's servant
  * Restoring from death the widow's son in Nain
  * Calming the stormy sea
  * Delivering the Gadarene demoniac
  * Healing the paralytic at Bethesda
  * Curing the woman afflicted with hemorrhaging for twelve years
  * Raising Jairus's daughter
  * Returning the sight of two blind men in Capernaum
  * Healing a demon-possessed mute
  * Feeding the five thousand and the four thousand
  * Walking on the waters of Galilee
  * Healing the Syro-Phoenician woman's daughter
  * Restoring the sight of the blind man of Bethsaida
  * Withering the fig tree
  * Healing the man born blind
  * Straightening the woman stooped over
  * Healing a man who had dropsy
  * Cleansing the ten lepers
  * Healing blind Bartimaeus
  * Restoring the servant's ear
  * Raising Lazarus from the dead

The evangelist John wrote: There are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (John 21:25). The greatest of God's miracles performed through Jesus was His resurrection and ascension after defeating death, hell, the grave, and setting the captives free.

Part 6 – Jesus as our Savior and Lord

Who, then, is Jesus? In Bethsaida, Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus' question remains valid today. Many men presently say Jesus was a profound teacher and rabbi, a good example, a prophet, a wise philosopher, a faith healer, an itinerant storyteller, and an exorcist, or perhaps, just a really kind or charismatic guy.

Sometimes helpful and unusually clarion feedback comes from unexpected sources not presumed directly associated with Christian advocacy. I offer two conceived by well-known modern Jewish men of the arts. Leonard Cohen, singer and poet, shared:

I'm very fond of Jesus Christ. He may be the most beautiful guy who walked the face of this earth. Any guy who says "Blessed are the poor and blessed are the meek" has got to be a figure of unparalleled generosity and insight and madness.... A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes and the homeless. His position cannot be comprehended. It is an inhuman generosity. A generosity that would overthrow the world if it was embraced because nothing would weather that compassion. I'm not trying to alter the Jewish view of Jesus Christ. But to me...the figure of the man has touched me.

Author, commentator, and scholar David Brooks shares the following from his life observations (taken from his book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life).

Jesus is the classic scapegoat, the innocent outsider that all the groups could rally around in their bloodlust and dump their hatreds on. The only thing that is different about the Jesus story – and it is a big difference – is that in this story Jesus came to earth precisely to be the scapegoat. He volunteered for this job, forgave those who executed him, and willingly carried the sins of the world on his shoulders. He came precisely to bow down, to suffer, and to redeem the world. He came not to be the awesome conquering Messiah that most of us would want, but to be the lamb, to submit, to love his enemies. He came not to be the victim of sin, but the solution. His strength was self-sacrificial, and his weapon love so that we might live.

Is Jesus fully and wholly what and who He said He is, as presented in the six sections above – Son of Man, Son of God, Living and Incarnate Word, Eternal God of the Old Testament, Miracle Worker, and our Savior and Lord? If one does not accept Him for all He said He is and all that He revealed about Himself to us, then one must reasonably conclude that He is a joker, or crazy, or a liar. If one cannot believe all the wondrous things that Jesus' apostles, evangelists, preachers, teachers, and disciples have spoken and written about Him, then do as Richard Wurmbrand sagely advised: Believe His powerful and worldly enemies. The Pharisees said, "Teacher, we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do you care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men." Judas said, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." Pilate said, "Behold the Man!" "I am innocent of the blood of this just Person," and "Behold your King!" The captain of the Roman guard at Golgotha said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

If one demands to see proof that Jesus is God, as His enemies often did, one must be willing to sincerely ask Him in faith for it, and then be teachable and open to receive and to act on whatever Jesus chooses to reveal directly into one's spirit and/or into one's life. When presented with the truth, we are responsible for what we do with it. Jesus said He was the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). This unambiguous claim cannot simply be ignored; a decision must be made on who He is. The decision is a personal one, a mandatory one, and an eternal one. Having been informed, we are now responsible for what we've heard and we can no longer claim ignorance. Jesus admonished us thus: "It is written, have you not heard? Have you not read?" We're encouraged to choose well from what is set before us. Is He Savior and Lord? Who do you say Jesus is?

...He loved them to the end. (John 13:1)

* * * *

Author's Notes: The Scripture phrasings utilized in Parts 2 through 6 are from the New King James Version (NKJV) of the Bible. I wrote much of this initially for my own use as a prayer aid; belatedly, I enhanced and incorporated it for the reader's use, which I freely invite you to do. The concept of an obituary for Jesus was found unattributed on the Internet; the version presented is mine. The general inspirational seeds for "Who Do You Say That I Am?" were "One Solitary Life," a brief essay credited to Dr. James Allan Francis (Part 1 contains several short paraphrases from that essay) and Dr. (and forty-year Pastor) S. M. Lockeridge's famous 1976 sermon incisively titled "That's My King, Do You Know Him." The best tribute I can provide for the later is to present it in full context immediately below.

My King was born a king.

The Bible says my King is a seven-way king.

He's the King of the Jews, that's a racial king.

He's the King of Israel, that's a national King.

He's the King of Righteousness.

He's the King of the Ages.

He's the King of Heaven.

He's the King of Glory.

He's the King of Kings and He's the Lord of Lords.

That's my King.

Well, I wonder do you know Him?

My King is a sovereign King.

No means of measure can define His limitless love.

No far-seeing telescope can bring into visibility the coastline of His shoreless supply.

No barrier can hinder Him from pouring out His blessings.

He's enduringly strong.

He's entirely sincere.

He's eternally steadfast.

He's immortally graceful.

He's imperially powerful.

He's impartially merciful.

Do you know Him?

He's the greatest phenomenon that ever crossed the horizon of this world.

He's God's Son.

He's a sinner's Savior.

He's the centerpiece of civilization.

He stands in the solitude of Himself.

He's awesome.

He's unique.

He's unparalleled.

He's unprecedented.

He's the loftiest idea in literature.

He's the highest personality in philosophy.

He's the supreme problem in higher criticism.

He's the fundamental doctrine of true theology.

He's the cardinal necessity of spiritual religion.

He's the miracle of the age.

He's the superlative of everything good that you choose to call Him.

He's the only one qualified to be an all-sufficient Savior

I wonder if you know Him today?

He supplies strength for the weak.

He's available for the tempted and the tried.

He sympathizes and He saves.

He strengthens and sustains.

He guards and He guides.

He heals the sick.

He cleanses lepers.

He forgives sinners.

He discharges debtors.

He delivers captives.

He defends the feeble.

He blesses the young.

He serves the unfortunate.

He regards the aged.

He rewards the diligent.

And He beautifies the meek.

I wonder if you know Him?

Well, my King is the King.

He's the key to knowledge.

He's the wellspring to wisdom.

He's the doorway of deliverance.

He's the pathway of peace.

He's the roadway of righteousness.

He's the highway of holiness.

He's the gateway of glory

Do you know Him?

His office is manifold.

His promise is sure.

His light is matchless.

His goodness is limitless.

His mercy is everlasting.

His love never changes.

His Word is enough.

His grace is sufficient.

His reign is righteous.

And His yoke is easy and his burden is light.

I wish I could describe Him to you, but

He's indescribable.

He's incomprehensible.

He's invincible.

He's irresistible.

Well, you can't get Him out of your mind.

You can't get Him off of your hand.

You can't outlive Him,

And you can't live without Him.

The Pharisees couldn't stand Him, but they found out they couldn't stop Him.

Pilate couldn't find any fault in Him.

The witnesses couldn't get their testimonies to agree.

Herod couldn't kill Him.

Death couldn't handle Him,

And the grave couldn't hold Him.

Yeah, that's my King, that's my King.

Dr. Lockeridge's enthusiastic and inspired sermon provided insights that are obvious throughout the fabric of my story, which is a reflection of his magnificent original. I recommend watching any of the various YouTube videos associated with this work. I've noticed that all the available print versions of his sermon vary slightly; perhaps due to having delivered it, presumably, on multiple occasions. My story and Dr. Lockeridge's sermon both ask questions in their titles, which are similar in nature and intent. It's our mutual hope that anyone exposed to them will be able to answer them in the affirmative.
Epilogue

Your Story

Each of us is composing a nonfiction story; although most may never commit it to book form, it's our life story. Others read our stories when they witness how we live. When that occurs, we are all teachers sharing our story, knowingly and willingly or not. I've read that the average life is observed by twelve to eighteen people; but that for Christians, the number is multiplied by a factor of seven to ten. As our story unfolds, it's merged into the larger story, God's story. You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; you are manifestly an epistle of Jesus Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tables of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, on the heart (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).

The promotional description for Scott McClellan's book Tell Me a Story: Finding God (and Ourselves) Through Narrative adds an additional dimension to our calling as storywriter, that of storyteller:

Jesus called His followers witnesses. We are, in fact, witnesses to His unfolding story. This story is not only our calling – it's the next generation's best chance of identifying with the Church and changing the world. As we become storytellers, we learn to see the world in terms of stories being lived and told. We discover deeper insights into God, ourselves, and others.

As worthwhile as such an effort could be, I am not challenging us to commit our stories to writing – that is, composing our autobiographies or memoirs – but in How to Tell a Story, professional writer Donald Miller does recommend something closely approaching that discipline. He justifies writing it as a worthwhile exercise for everyone:

We are all on a journey, of course. We all want things for ourselves and our families and those desires launch us into stories. And stories are filled with risk and fear and joy and pain. In each of our stories, friends and guides have passed through and those friends have taught us things.

Miller continues this line of thought by adding some personal reflection:

The point of any story is always character transformation. I am so grateful to have studied story if for no other reason than it has helped me realize how much I've changed over the years as a human being. Story has given beauty and meaning to my life because it's no longer passing by without me reflecting on it and noting its positive and negative turns and what those turns have done to me to make me a better person. I believe it's true every person should write their memoir if for no other reason than it helps them understand who they are, what's happened to them... A person who understands themselves is easier to connect with, more settled, and, most importantly, can see how their story interconnects with the stories of others.

Writing for the grammarly.com blog, Allison VanNest expresses a similar sentiment to Miller's. Stated more succinctly, she says, "The most valuable thing you have to offer is the story only you can tell." By this, she seems to be expressing two convictions: that each life is a story possessing unique meaning and purpose, and thus it is worthwhile sharing; and that those who are creative storytellers with tales of fiction or nonfiction inside should seek either verbal or written expression of them. Poet Maya Angelou says that "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Writer Jeff Goins believes that "We are most alive when we live in the midst of great stories."

In Love Your Enemies, Arthur C. Brooks writes:

You and I need to tell our own [stories] as well. The telling begins with the short story of your life's mission, the 'why' behind what you do and what you believe, not just your political or other demographic identities. Can you tell me a story that states your life's purpose?...You have to get comfortable telling your story: write it down....

I have four suggestions to help each of our personal stories, written down or not, to be good ones. I may not have the track perfectly aligned, but I know I'm close and I believe what I have to share has lasting expediency. I don't say that with a cavalier attitude, because it took me a lifetime to even get this close. First, invite God in to assume His rightful place. It's done by committing our lives to Him, asking for His help with important decisions, and continually seeking His guidance.

Second, determine what we like to do, what we are good at doing, and what we believe in; that is, assess our talents and passions. God made us with certain unique preferences and equipped us with the specialized skills and the enabling anointing required for our particular calling. There's no reason to feel guilty because we are enjoying the pursuit; and conversely, just because it may be difficult does not mean it's wrong.

Third, keep our eyes open for opportunities along the way. As Vince Lombardi said, "Run to daylight." God will open certain doors and close others. If we stay in touch with Him, we will be able to tell the difference between the two, and when a mistake is made, He'll be quick to help us realign. Henry Blackaby offers the following succinct supporting counsel in his classic, Experiencing God: Simply look to see what God is already doing around you and then join Him. Sometimes we require dreams, prophecies, or visions to jerk our chain and re-center us when we're far off course. When we're walking closely with God on a daily basis, the more spiritually extreme actions aren't required to get our attention. It's probably a good sign if we aren't moving from one spiritual goose-bump experience to another.

Fourth, and last, be prepared to candidly share our life stories to encourage others; this is called testifying, as in being an open and ready witness to what God has done in our lives. One comfortable – as well as meaningful and enduring – way of sharing our life story is to do so in short, but regularly delivered, oral vignettes with our children and grandchildren. This activity is paying forward the fruit reaped as a result of successfully executing the first three suggestions. As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor–this is the gift of God. For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart (Ecclesiastes 5:19-20). Early in my Christian life, I was moved to write my conversion experience in a short-story format, about three typed pages, titled "Relationship, Not Religion." Often thereafter, I found it a useful tool and was pleased that I had done so and that it was readily available when needed. Thus, while writing a full memoir may not be necessary, I do greatly encourage preparing a written testimony.

This four-step approach may not always be easy to execute, but conceptually it's that simple. In his cartoon series Pogo (a favorite of mine during middle school), political satirist Walt Kelly stated the plan humorously: "We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities." By the grace of God, it's easier to write a successful personal story in America today than it has been throughout previous centuries or in any other country. Dinesh D'Souza said that what is uniquely American is our access to equal rights, self-determination, and wealth creation. (Equivalent access to these benefits is not a guarantee or a promise of equivalent outcome; today, too many wrongly insist on being guaranteed both matching outcomes and matching opportunity, thus attempting to bypass character, hard work, and choice as influential factors.) America has many haters internally and externally, but he shares that America is not the problem – America is the answer. I interpret Dinesh as meaning an America characterized by the capital Cs: Christian (Judeo-Christian), Conservative, Constitutional, and Capitalistic. He is not saying America is god-like, but that God has blessed America because it has honored His biblical and covenantal principles. He knows God is the ultimate explanation and that God outlined specific practices for us to follow if we seek to be successful, even exceptional. God made America a refuge for the world, especially for the Jewish people (prior to the creation of the modern state of Israel). Within that refuge, by God's goodness, are great opportunities so that we, in turn, may fund the gospel and charity throughout the world and participate in its propagation. That's the big story. We just need to figure out where our personal page fits into it.

It is more than okay to wholeheartedly pursue the life strategy I suggested; it's what God intends us to do. Don't hold back mistaking it for selfishness. When we do what we were purposed to do and enjoy what we do, we are more creative, satisfied, generous, and productive; and we are all the more effective witnesses to His story. As God demonstrated when He conceived the universe, creativity and productivity are His traits. Satisfaction is also His, as further demonstrated on the seventh day when He said, "It is good," and then rested. God encourages us to rest one designated day each week; adopt this practice and do so without guilt, as it similarly yields productivity and creativity for us during the other six days. The seventh day is our excuse-free opportunity to enjoy the cumulative result of what we have earned and what we have been given.

The first third of my adulthood I got what I've proposed above close to entirely wrong; then in the middle third, I got it about half right; and finally in the last third, I got it spot-on. I can tell the difference; others probably can too. My story was a journey from naïve and unconcerned, to autopilot liberal, to oblivious fence-sitter, to sincere but unfocused seeker, and finally to conservative and committed Christian.

I understand there are times when life preparations or our occupations are not fun. We have to guard against confusing worthwhile with easy. We aren't able to select or to know our story's ending, but we can strive to stay in the race and to finish well no matter the mistakes and regrets along the way. Sometimes we are offered a do-over along the way; often we aren't. What we can control is whether we squander the time and opportunity we're allotted and whether we add to our burden by making bad choices. During the years spent working in my son's law firm, I daily witnessed myriads of personal, family, and community destructions resulting from poor life choices. We are exhorted to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Applying that statement broadly to the entire course of our lives, I think it simply means each is assigned a unique personal mission – one that is only ours. In pursuit of it, we'll have to keep checking with our Creator and Master for the necessary adjustments to our story until we finish well and hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the rest that is prepared for you."

Editor, writer, and publisher Po Bronson wrote in What Should I Do with My Life:

If we are the victim of an injustice, it is up to us to find a meaningful way to channel our anger. If we suffer a terrible crisis, only we can transform this suffering into a launching pad for a new life. These are the turning points from which we get to construct our own story, if we choose to do so. It won't be easy, and it won't be quick. Finding what we should do [that is, writing our own story] is one of life's great dramas.

President Reagan's biological and younger son, Ron – unlike his adopted and older son, Michael – unwisely chose rebellion rather than follow his father's righteous ways. He does, however, provide us with a fine supporting comment:

Virtually everyone creates a mental album of memories and anecdotes that, ultimately, passes for our version of a life story. We are all the protagonists of our own narratives, of course – the indispensable main character; on a good day, the hero.

Each of our stories is vital and worthwhile. Write your life story with chapters where you go for the gold medal, make the right choice, climb the mountain, win the prize, enjoy the big adventure, find the love of your life, finish the race, and become the hero.

Upon examining their progression from ordinary to extraordinary, the people in this book emerge as role models and mentors; and although our life story may not yet compare to theirs, the long-term plan is to embrace the apostle Paul's admonishment: Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14). The end of the journey – the conclusion of our life story – is of more exemplary and eternal consequence than how we started, or about the ups and downs along the way. Strive to finish well!
Afterword

Advocacy for Rapprochement

There's a substantial – and probably still increasing – amount of stridency, distance, extremism, and animosity between right/conservative/Republican ("red") and left/liberal/Democrat ("blue") proponents. The blended center ("purple") is a relatively harmonious location that was previously occupied by a majority force of moderates, but which is ever-more unshared and ignored in post-modern America. To describe the red's fixed position in gentle non-political terms, I borrow authors Alexander Betts' and Paul Collier's phrase "heartless head"; and to describe the blue's, I borrow their phrase "headless heart." Journalist James Traub seems to advocate synthesizing these otherwise incompatible mindsets when he suggests reasoning with our hearts and feeling with our heads. In perhaps his shortest poem "Precaution," Robert Frost (known as the poet of the ordinary man) seemed to be suggesting the safety of living life in the center, "I never dared to be radical when young, for fear it would make me conservative when old."

The center is where we find the pure tone of truth, and it's likely the only credible place for us, as a seriously bifurcated society, to re-engage. It's the magnetic pole that we should endeavor to be drawn toward. A successful movement of the quarreling opposites in a mutually agreed direction toward the truth is called bridging. President Reagan, of course, had a way uniquely his own of framing this concept when he said that we don't choose between right and left, we chose between up and down (others have used this analogy by stating forward and backward); by which is meant ascending (moving toward) a positive shared vision or plummeting (regressing) toward defeatist nihilistic entropy. My position is to refine all of these as we choose between truths and lies. We are always embracing one or the other.

The proliferating exclusions and intolerant oppositions to free speech exacerbate our collective loss of opportunities for civil discourse and reduce our ability to understand the opposing side and to merge the factions around the truth; e.g. blatant deplatforming on campuses, enforced politically correct speech in media, and harassment of the opposition by government agencies, i.e. the IRS denying conservative groups tax-free status and harassing them through fictitious audit demands. These restrictions only enhance unhealthy – and likely aberrant – group-think. Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Baker, cautions:

The right to be wrong is a crucial element of free speech....History has shown us repeatedly that the best way to counter noxious error is to drown it with truths, not to strangle it with censorship.

Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda for one of the most spurious governments in the history, exposed the motivations behind shutting down free speech when he said,

It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

There is no doubt that the Nazi regime and many other despotic governments employed the strategy of silencing alternate voices while offering their citizens only an officially sanctioned one – to the immeasurable detriment of their nation and the world.

The media (especially the news-press) is the fundamental societal organization charged with protecting and promoting our freedoms of speech and press, yet it is the very one destroying them from both inside and outside by propagandizing a one-sided ideology. They have long been "drinking the Kool-Aid" and now they are boldly serving it to everyone. This corruption is caused by and perpetrated by assiduous fascist-like control over written and spoken language, by the substitution of prejudice for truth, by the rejection of fair and rigorous industry standards, and by avoidance of self-examination. The media proclaim they are above criticism by equating any forthcoming challenges with an alleged un-American abridgment of the First Amendment. In fact, however, holding the media accountable is protecting and exercising First Amendment responsibilities. It is a nearly sacred responsibility that they are manifestly failing to do because they refuse to police themselves while they simultaneously demand that the citizenry tolerate their corrupt output. Their work is absent of any balanced coverage and because of that, it will eventually destroy our freedoms if continued unchecked. The media has been insufficiently held accountable for the century of impunities that have been variously in play from Wilson's progressive administration through Obama's. A modest alternative to the dominant mainstream media has arisen as facilitated by FM talk radio and independent Internet websites with some overarching indirect support from one cable channel (Fox News), one newspaper (Wall Street Journal), and a couple of universities and their associated publications (e.g. Hillsdale and Regent).

An enabling mass media (now nearly identical to tabloid quality in its unreliable coverage) mirrors the left's political agenda because both groups benefit from, and therefore favor, deconstructing the Constitution and its Amendments through the use of living or evolving interpretation and application in opposition to maintaining its original and non-discretionary literal meaning and intent. There is a sustaining logic behind the Founders placing freedom of the press and personal expression as the first in a series of amendments that enhance the enduring Constitution for which they paid such a dear price and worked so diligently to gift us.

It's axiomatic that we need to know the truth to live a virtuous life and that a virtuous life is our most worthy goal. Truth is needed to support good character; truth and character are interwoven in the fabrics of our daily being and our ultimate destiny. Truth is not what someone subjectively says it is; truth is an accurate objective understanding of the world devoid of all bias, it's neutral and not subject to political influences from either the right or the left. In order to know what's true, we require uncompromisingly accurate information in place of apriorisms (see the Parable of the Flat Earth). We need this before determining our relative positions, before making important life-choices; i.e. our beliefs, points of view, commitments, and passions. The positions we choose to embrace mold into our character and our character is who we are, and it likely heavily influences our ultimate destiny. Sequentially, the natural and unalterable progression of life for a being with free will is choice, to character, to destiny. When we find ourselves out of alignment with the truth, we must choose (make a clear decision) to change or else we knowingly continue in error, thus unwisely holding onto a known counterfeit in its place. This is, sadly, a human condition we witness daily in our family law practice, and it subverts the family and the community, not just the individual.

I have labored in my assessments herein to accurately describe the beliefs and positions of each side, while simultaneously avoiding both inappropriate stone-throwing at the opposition and disguising my center-right perspective. The degree of associated agreement depends on where the reader falls on the socio-political-spiritual scale. In the reviews of Uncommon Character, I have experienced both the pleasant and the painful extremes of that scale in a personal manner. A stated position may not be one that a reader likes, but that does not mean it is wrong. There are no positions that are not easily subjected to a little confirmation research in order to substantiate for or against their veracity; untethered opinions are without value and are often damaging to overall goodwill.

I'm modestly suggesting, rather than over-reaching for outright general agreement, that we individually recognize our common problem (i.e. the lack of congenial discourse and unbiased information). And that we then try to disentangle from it by avoiding the excesses and the caricatures all-too-frequently promoted by those who are morally-failed dividers or noise-making advocates promoting our-side-only biases or, most certainly, proponents of violent methods. All publicly espoused positions come with both blemishes and beauties that need to be carefully and creatively sorted as illustrated within the wheat from the weeds or the sheep from the goats analogies. Let's invest the individual time to seek the truth as we also adhere to this five centuries-old advice: "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity" (translated from the Latin original of unknown source). No matter how much or how many of our predilections have to be shed to get there, the cost of doing so is incontestably worthwhile for crafting the healthy environment so needed by our individual souls and the larger community spirit. The heart of the problem is that as individuals we want the rest of the people in our world to exactly like us, and they aren't. This is what the book's heroes appear to have grasped and subsequently determined to overcome. Paraphrasing Irena Sendler: To be so committed to the well-being of others that we would jump in the water to save someone from downing even if we can't swim. Jewish Rabbi Menachem Mendel offered interesting expressions of this problem and its resolution:

Intolerance lies at the core of evil. Not the intolerance that results from any threat or danger. But the intolerance of another being who dares to exist. Intolerance without cause. It is so deep within us, because every human being secretly desires the entire universe to himself. Our only way out is to learn compassion without cause. To care for each other simply because the "other" exists.

We occasionally, but far too rarely, see a commendable way of approaching problem resolution and common agreement successfully played-out on behalf of humanity by true international statesmen. Late in the 1980s, it was witnessed on a global scale when President Reagan, representing our American-style capitalism and its attendant civil liberties ("red"), and General Secretary Gorbachev, representing Soviet-style socialism ("blue") with its centralized economy and police state, together forged an outcome best described as a never-before-seen, massive step toward denuclearization, arms reduction, and thusly the true essential human unity objective: world peace (a near-universal hope the color of purple).

Rapprochement, as defined by Dictionary.com, is an establishment or re-establishment of harmonious relations. Historically, Americans faced deep ideological internal national chasms during and after the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and Vietnam War; each respectively occurring slightly post mid-century (1760-70, 1860-70 and 1960-70). My first exposure to the word rapprochement was while studying Civil War history. The signing of treaties and the cessation of fighting after the Civil War did not come close to automatically healing hearts and uniting minds. An intentional post-war national rapprochement between north/south and black/white was called for by inspirational leaders of great moral character like Lincoln, Douglass, and Grant. Achieving it was a meandering, frequently agonizing, course that encompassed a full century from 1865 through 1964.

Arguably, today's extreme bifurcation of the population began with the liberal-conservative split during the Vietnam War years; and while it likely began then and continued as a decade long zeitgeist, the nation has long since healed, and almost forgotten, those particular war associated pains. The military conflict ended in 1975; but two years earlier in 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its divisive Roe v Wade decision and fresh seeds of antagonism were planted which would disrupt the nation in a new and unfamiliar manner. In the decades since the rolling avalanche of abortion's death toll has widened and hardened that socio-political dichotomy. The physical carnage and body-count of the war were watched by the nation nightly on television; by contrast, the carnage and body-count associated with abortion are kept in the dark by the media. One side has expressly staked support for "all-forms-of-abortion-on-demand" at the center of every issue, making it the hill they are – not all that euphemistically – willing to fight, kill, and die on. This hard-core position has fully replaced their former mantra of "safe, legal, and rare." Every candidate for office must pass the abortion litmus test if they hope to gain approval and avoid condemnation by the party's faithful core believers. How we will be able to heal from decades of damage from abortion-influenced politics is presently as perplexing as it once was how to heal from decades of slavery politics. I hope that the costs of resolution and unity are not as exhausting in terms of lives, property, and fortunes the second time as it was the first.

Another cry for rapprochement should be clarion today, and it can only effectively come from those among us, especially those in high public leadership roles, who determine to rise above me-first stinginess and my-side biases with their attendant name-calling, contempt, and pettiness. Lincoln's "better angels of our nature" first inaugural plea is still in season:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

The failure to attain national discourse and harmony leads to continuing escalations, and most any escalation – as we have already seen – leads eventually to hate group and street thug violence of a nature that the far-left Brownshirt-like Antifa exhibits (Hitler began his brutal assent by utilizing brown-shirted street gangs while Mussolini utilized black-shirted ones.) The irony is that while acting just like fascists, they adopt the name anti-fascist in a not-so-successful effort to conceal their true identity. Who among us is not already familiar with Jesus' warning (echoed by Lincoln) that "a house divided will not stand?" If we believe it, our actions should reflect it. It may be as simple as resisting the extremists while supporting the people who are willing to dialog in the center – representatives who will stop pushing the pendulum toward its extreme arcs.

Healing change comes one heart at a time starting with our own (see frown power in the Stetson Kennedy story). This book presents two dozen individuals – from a variety of locations, vocations, and ages – who have successfully modeled selfless commitment and altruistic behavior for inciting our collective and positive follow-up. One story protagonist, Eva Mozes Kor, wisely taught others what she faithfully modeled: "Be the change that you want to see in the world." Another one, Phoebe Ann Mosey, said "Aim high"; don't accept what is OK but press on to what is excellent. Good character knows no political affiliation or religious denomination, and sometimes it is necessary to even eschew these. It rises above roadblocks like political correctness, party membership, media bias, and labels. It is not driven by politics or economics or tribe. It comes from having all relationships in harmony. That is not to say that all is relative, mushy, and grey; i.e. that there is no absolute truth or black and white. There are truths, and that is why we must diligently struggle to ascertain it on every subject and then faithfully embrace it.

Nor is this to say that our American way of life does not have real enemies who must be zealously resisted in lieu of them subverting us. We do have them, many of them. But, we must be able to identify our true life-and-death adversaries from our fellow travelers, with whom we could productively compromise and turn into allies in order to gain the multi-fold strength needed in the critical battles. As the nation necessarily united in 1942 in order to assist in the liberation of most of the globe from domination by aggressive fascist dictatorships, we adopted the Pledge of Allegiance which included the words "one nation" (with "under God" added in 1954 as we remained united to resist follow-up domination by atheistic communism). These four words – while presently under attack – reflect an attractive preservation of what should be more than our inspirational national motto, they should be our permanent national status quo: One nation under God.

I found a psychology-based research study indicating that stories can lead us to common ground and acceptance of our differences, i.e. stories and storytelling can be part of the suggested purple resolution. Princeton University neuroscientist Dr. Uri Hasson presented the findings during TED2016. Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) he found that when two or more individuals share a story, their brain activity synchronizes; that is, they become what he calls "aligned" (also variously referred to a "brain-to-brain coupling" and "mirroring"). The metaphor about everyone being on the same wave-length is a reality when sharing stories. According to the results of experiments by Dr. Paul Zak of Claremont University's Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, when stories are shared our brain chemistry changes and our brains unite because the hormone oxytocin is released. Its release helps us to understand and accept our differences – it may not result in agreement, but it is an expanded openness for the ideas of others. These represent two science-based endorsements for the unifying purple-power of stories – and, again, all the more efficacy if they are positive ones about good character. While enjoying this book, readers have a strategic mechanism for moving closer to the goal of rapprochement.

Not unexpectedly given the premise of my book, I believe in the power for positive change that one person can affect. In the midst of our often violent national debate over the Vietnam War, both opposing factions wanted to claim Johnny Cash as their policy adherent. Cash, a man known to have acquired good character through successive tribulations, accepted both the perils and the applause associated with the whole of the issue. Johnny viewed it as an irreversible mix and therefore he resisted being branded and claimed as either the war hawk's or the peace dove's poster-child, as he continued supporting the troops through his USO visits. When asked which side he was on, he would demur by saying he was a dove with talons, thus painting with purple.

Coloring our environment (i.e. society, community, relationships, or neighborhood) with the red and blue fusion of purple is an outcome of displaying good character; the kind I am advocating throughout this book and the kind the protagonists herein have demonstrated. Solutions are difficult to identify and even more difficult to implement.

What would our heroes recommend, or better yet, what would they do to minimize the strife, to push the pendulum back to the center? I believe it's reasonable to conclude that among the many available character principles, the following specific solutions would be proffered:

  * Forgive even your enemies for Eva Kor,
  * Pour into your community for Pasquale de Nisco and Russell Stendal,
  * Shepherd those needing care for Rick Rescorla and Irena Sendler,
  * Volunteer your time and energies for Rose Valland,
  * Express thanks and exhibit a spirit of gratitude for Charlie Plumb, Johnny Mills and Mrs. Clark,
  * Put others before yourself for Arland Williams and Kimberly Munley,
  * Give of your personal resources for Haym Salomon, Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler,
  * Find yourself a worthy mentor early and later be a mentor for Chris Langan,
  * Commit yourself to a worthy cause and defend it against violent extremists for Stetson Kennedy and Gregory Jessner,
  * Try a different approach, think creatively, study, and work hard for Tommy Thompson,
  * Be a servant leader for Presidents Washington and Reagan,
  * Stand up and aim high for truth and righteousness for Richard Wurmbrand and Phoebe Ann Mosey respectively,
  * And refuse to act or think like a victim for Dave Roever and Joseph Merrick.

In The Road to Character, I found the following extended quote from David Brooks to be a satisfying closing for this discussion:

You can't build rich...lives simply by reading sermons or following abstract rules. Example is the best teacher. Moral improvement occurs most reliably when the heart is warmed, when we come into contact with people we admire and love and we consciously and unconsciously bend our lives to mimic theirs.... And when we think of them, it is not primarily what they accomplished that we remember – great though that may have been – it is who they were. I'm hoping their examples will fire this fearful longing we all have to be better, to follow their course.

I am far from attaining the goal set for acquiring good character, but I recognize its value. I'm pursuing it in part through self-examinations in the quiet of the night, in part by reading about the lives of good role models and then absorbing the related sticky-points, in part through seeking opportunities to teach and to mentor others, and in part by striving to pass the on-coming concomitant trials and temptations and tests of life. The regular sharing of the stories associated with the people in this book resulted in them becoming my heroes; and although my life still does not compare to theirs, the planned route is to make good choices, follow their lead, and finish well.
About the Author

Douglas Feavel retired from a career in technology marketing and management. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and a master's degree in Christian education from Bethany Divinity College and Seminary. Barbara and he have celebrated more than fifty years of marriage. Appleton, Wisconsin is their hometown, but Vincennes, Indiana is their current base. They volunteer at non-profits in teaching, outreach, and ministry roles domestically and abroad when not with their children and grandchildren.

The publisher, Jeremiah Zeiset of Aneko Press, and the author work together to distribute thousands of complimentary print and e-book editions of Uncommon Character to military bases and USOs, correctional institutions, recovery centers, youth villages, assisted living homes, veteran's homes and hospitals, schools and education supporters, women's shelters, youth camps, and foreign missions. Soon after publication, Uncommon Character attained the status of a modern classic in the non-profit marketplace with global readership. Book requests are welcome via the author's e-mail: contact@DougFeavel.com; for additional information, updates, and resources visit the author's websites and blog: www.DougFeavel.com or UncommonCharacter.org. Watch for the anticipated audio edition, abridged e-book, and a sequel.
Uncommon Character

© ٢٠١٦, ٢٠١٨, ٢٠٢٠ by Douglas Feavel

First edition 2016

Second edition 2018

Third edition 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the information in this book was correct at press time. The author and publisher do not assume, and hereby disclaim, any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover Design: Natalia Tcherniavskaia and Jonathan Lewis

First Edit: Barbara Feavel

Clockwise from the center top, the cover photos are: Irena Sendler, Eva Kor, Phoebe Ann Mosey, Richard Wurmbrand, Russell Stendal, Rick Rescorla, Dave Roever, Arland D. Williams Jr., President Ronald Reagan, and Haym Salomon.

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