Who Packed your Parachute?

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb survived thanks to his parachute.

 

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. Your plane was destroyed!"

"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 pumped 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 says, "I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a cabin crew member." Plumb thought of the many hours the crew member had spent at a long wooden table 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 didn't know.

 

~ Small things matter a lot, we many a times forget to recognize this. The greatest thing in life is not how big the fame is but how many lives are touched by~

Learning from Own Obituary

Learning from Own Obituary

 

About a hundred years ago, a man looked at the morning newspaper and to his surprise and horror, read his name in the obituary column. The newspapers had reported the death of the wrong person by mistake. His first response was shock. Am I here or there? When he regained his composure, his second thought was to find out what people had said about him.

The obituary read, "Dynamite King Dies." And also "He was the merchant of death." This man was the inventor of dynamite and when he read the words "merchant of death," he was speechless. He was troubled and grieved in his heart. He asked himself a question, "Is this how I am going to be remembered?"

He got in touch with his feelings and decided that this was not the way he wanted to be remembered. From that day on, he started working toward peace. He travelled from place to place promoting the causes for peace.

His name was Alfred Nobel and he is remembered today by the great Nobel Prize. Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honouring men and women from all corners of the globe for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace. The foundations for the prize were laid in 1895 when Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize.

 

~ It is the quality of life we live that matters the most to us but what matters to others is the impact we create ; sometimes we don’t even realize about it ~