{"id":73208,"date":"2018-08-05T13:11:06","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T17:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=73208"},"modified":"2018-08-05T13:12:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T17:12:10","slug":"from-the-morning-sermon-the-stunning-true-story-of-captain-eddie-rickenbacker-mercy-memory-and-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=73208","title":{"rendered":"From the Morning Sermon&#8211;The Stunning True Story of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Mercy, Memory, and Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Captain Eddie Rickenbacker &amp; his Spad Scout <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/TXlNUM15RZ\">pic.twitter.com\/TXlNUM15RZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ron Eisele (@ron_eisele) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ron_eisele\/status\/953694042038198273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 17, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>About sunset, it happened every Friday evening on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast. You could see an old man walking, white-haired, bushy eye-browed, slightly bent.<\/p>\n<p>One gnarled hand would be gripping the handle of a pail, a large bucket filled with shrimp. There on a broken pier, reddened by the setting sun, the weekly ritual would be re-enacted.<\/p>\n<p>At once, the silent twilight sky would become a mass of dancing dots&#8230;growing larger. In the distance, screeching calls would become louder.<\/p>\n<p>They were seagulls, come from nowhere on the same pilgrimage\u201d\u00a6 to meet an old man.<br \/>\nFor half an hour or so, the gentleman would stand on the pier, surrounded by fluttering white, till his pail of shrimp was empty. But the gulls would linger for a while. Perhaps one would perch comfortably on the old man\u2019s hat\u201d\u00a6and a certain day gone by would gently come to his mind.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, all the old man\u2019s days were past. If the gulls still returned to that spot\u201d\u00a6 perhaps on a Friday evening at sunset, it is not for food\u201d\u00a6 but to pay homage to the secret they shared with a gentle stranger.<\/p>\n<p>And that secret is THE REST OF THE STORY.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who remembers October of 1942 remembers the day it was reported that Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was lost at sea.<\/p>\n<p>Captain Eddie\u2019s mission had been to deliver a message of the utmost importance to General Douglas MacArthur.<\/p>\n<p>But there was an unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life. . Somewhere over the South Pacific, the flying fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, and the men ditched their plane in the ocean.<\/p>\n<p>The B-17 stayed afloat just long enough for all aboard to get out. . Then, slowly, the tail of the flying fortress swung up and poised for a split second\u201d\u00a6 and the ship went down leaving eight men and three rafts\u201d\u00a6 and the horizon.<\/p>\n<p>For nearly a month, Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun.<\/p>\n<p>They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. Their largest raft was nine by five\u201d\u00a6 the biggest shark ten feet long.<\/p>\n<p>But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred.<\/p>\n<p>In Captain Eddie\u2019s own words, \u201cCherry,\u201d\u009d that was B-17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, \u201cread the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.\u201d\u009d<br \/>\nNow this is still Captain Rickenbacker talking\u201d\u00a6 Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a seagull. I don\u2019t know how I knew; I just knew.<br \/>\n\u201cEveryone else knew, too. No one said a word. But peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at the gull. The gull meant food\u201d\u00a6 if I could catch it.\u201d\u009d<br \/>\nAnd the rest, as they say, is history.<br \/>\nCaptain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten; its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice.<\/p>\n<p>You know that Captain Eddie made it.<\/p>\n<p>And now you also know&#8230;that he never forgot.<br \/>\nBecause every Friday evening, about sunset&#8230;on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast&#8230;you could see an old man walking&#8230;white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent.<\/p>\n<p>His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls&#8230;to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle&#8230;like manna in the wilderness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8212;<b>Paul Harvey&#8217;s the Rest of the Story<\/b> (Bantam Books, 1997 Mass paperback ed. of the 1977 Doubleday original), pp. 170-172<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Captain Eddie Rickenbacker &amp; his Spad Scout pic.twitter.com\/TXlNUM15RZ &mdash; Ron Eisele (@ron_eisele) January 17, 2018 &nbsp; About sunset, it happened every Friday evening on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast. You could see an old man walking, white-haired,<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=73208\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,438,164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-death-burial-funerals","category-soteriology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73210,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73208\/revisions\/73210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}