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Who packs your parachute?
Sometimes in the daily
challenges that life gives us, we
miss what is really important.
We may fail to say hello,
please, thank you, congratulate
someone on something
wonderful that has happened
to them, give a compliment,
or just do something
nice for no reason.
Charles Plumb, a US Naval
Academy graduate, was a jet pilot
in Vietnam. After
75 combat missions, his plane was
destroyed by a surface-to-air
missile. Plumb ejected and
parachuted into enemy
hands. He was captured and spent 6
years in a communist
prison. He survived the ordeal and now
lectures on lessons learned
from that experience.
One day, when Plumb and
his wife were sitting in a
restaurant, a man at
another table came up and said,
"You're Plumb! You flew
jet fighters in Vietnam from the
aircraft carrier Kitty
Hawk. You were shot down!"
"How in the world did
you know that?" asked Plumb.
"I packed your parachute,"
the man replied.
Plumb gasped in surprise
and gratitude. The man grabbed
his hand and said, "I
guess it worked!"
Plumb assured him, "It
sure did. If your chute hadn't
worked, I wouldn't be
here today."
Plumb couldn't sleep that
night, thinking about that man.
Plumb kept wondering
what the man might have looked like
in a Navy uniform. He
wondered how many times he might
have seen him and not
even said good morning, how are you
or anything, because
you see, he was a fighter pilot and
the man was just a sailor.
Plumb thought of the many
hours that sailor had spent in the
bowels of the ship,
carefully weaving the shrouds and
folding the silks of
each chute, holding in his hands
each time the fate of
someone he did not know.
Now Plumb asks his audience,
"Who is packing your
parachute?" Everyone
has someone who provides what they
need to make it through
the day.
Plumb also points out
that he needed many kinds of
parachutes when his plane
was shot down. As you go
through your week, month,
and even New Year.....
recognize the people
who have packed your parachute and
enabled you to get where
you are today!
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