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BONUS BLOG 4.4.09 4/4/2009 11:41:06 AM
For many years, when we first moved to Georgia, when Alex was small and I was rich, we often vacationed at Carillon Beach, near Panama City, FL on the Gulf of Mexico.
Usually we rented a house called “Gift From the Sea”. We were introduced to Carillon Beach by Patty and Dave Roberts, old friends from Rochester, NY (Patty became the Rev. Patricia Roberts, our personal Episcopal priest, who years later officiated at Alex’s marriage to Phillip Faucette.)
I don’t recall how many times we vacationed at Carillon Beach over the years, but I remember something that happened every sunset we were there. Patty, Dave, Chris and I would have cocktails at sunset and watch the giant orange ball dip into the azure ocean until we saw the “green flash”.
If you don’t know what the “green flash” is, it doesn’t matter: You don’t have the Luck of the Irish, and the whole thing is just one big fairy tale to you. But something occurred there at sunset that was no fairy tale!
Old Ed would come out and stroll along the beach near where we were enjoying our cocktails. We would watch as he carried, in his bony hands, a bucket of shrimp. He would walk to the water’s edge as if he were alone in the world. The glow of the sunset became a golden bronze, against which he was but a silhouette.
Standing there in the twilight, Ed was alone with his thoughts—and his bucket of shrimp. Before long, however, he was no longer alone—high up in the clouds a multitude of white dots came screeching and squawking down toward the lanky fellow on the beach. Suddenly, a host of frantic seagulls surrounded him, their wings flapping frantically as Ed stood there tossing shrimp from the dwindling bucket.
If you listened closely over the racket of the seagulls, you could hear Ed say, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” over and over. In just a moment or two the bucket was empty.
But Ed remained transfixed, lost in thought, remembering the day long ago that a single gull, similar to the hundreds he had just encountered, suddenly, out of nowhere, came down and perched on his badly sunburned head.
Now, finally, he turned around and began walking away from the ocean toward the long stairs back to the cottages, and a few of the birds hopped along at his feet, and then they too flew away. And old Ed quietly made his way up the ramp and headed towards home.
If you were there with us watching the sunset, Ed might seem like “a funny old duck,” as Dave often said. . . . Or as Alex might say, “I think he’s one sandwich shy of a picnic.” Maybe he was just another old beachcomber, a demented old codger lost in his own world, out there every night just to feed the seagulls with a bucket of shrimp.
Well, that’s too bad. To Patty, Dave, Chris and me, he was a real person, and his name was . . . Edward Vernon Rickenbacker.
Who? Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, a famous hero back in World War I, a flying ace who shot down 26 German fighters and won the Medal of Honor (and just about every other military citation available.) In World War II, during one of his missions in the Pacific, he and his crew crash-landed, crawled out of their doomed plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for 28 miserable days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger and thirst. By the fourth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. The newspapers said they were dead.
They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on top his head. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck.
He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew had a feast---a morsel for eight men, but a miracle nonetheless.
They used the innards for bait and the bones for hooks—with it they caught fish, one after the other, and with that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued after 28 days.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. And he never stopped saying,” Thank you! Thank you!”
Who was the guy at Carillon Beach? I don’t know. Eddie Rickenbacker, I guess: World War I and II hero, recipient of the Medal of Honor, confidant of presidents, owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, founder of Eastern Airlines, etc., etc.
But Rickenbacker died in 1974. Yeah—well—so what? You never saw the “green flash” at sunset, did you?
