The Air Force Pilot

We’ve been getting some outstanding speakers here at the continuum care complex as part of our Life Enrichment Program. Our latest was a pilot of an F-105 Thunderchief during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant James DeVoss’s plane was shot down during a bombing-run over Laos in 1969 and he was rescued by a group of para-rescue jumpers who found him on his back in a bamboo patch with bamboo shoots impaling him so he couldn’t move and he suffered numerous injuries caused by being ejected from the plane. “His left arm shattered, both hips were dislocated and his knees were separated. In the right knee, every tendon, every piece of cartilage, every ligament was completely torn apart. One nerve; one blood vessel with some skin around it, was all that remained to keep his lower leg alive. Another 8th of an inch, it would have ripped apart, and he would have bled to death." (Quote from a USA Today article.) We had a genuine purple heart recipient and highly decorated pilot in front of us.

For first half hour of his talk he described in great detail the training that Air Force pilots go through, not only on how to fly and how to eject from an aircraft that’s malfunctioning but he also described the training pilots get on how to survive behind enemy lines and how survive being a POW. Up until this point we didn't know about him getting shot out of the sky and my cynical side was thinking, This old guy is here to relive his glory days. But then he switched from talking about training to showing a film of his plane getting shot down and the rescue that followed and it started sinking in---how much this man had suffered through and survived. 

The para-rescue jumpers had done many missions like that one before but for some reason the Air Force decided to make a documentary of one of them and his rescue was the one that got filmed. It was that footage that the lieutenant was able to show us. I’ve never been a gun-ho supporter of the military but watching and listening to this man I gained a real appreciation for the sacrifice, courage and training pilots in the Air Force go through to serve our country.

My Mahjong teacher and her husband both served in the Air Force and sat next to me at the lecture. There were five or six others in the room who’d also been in the Air Force so you can image the quality of the questions that were asked during the Q & A part of the lecture. I asked if he’s flown planes after his years-long recovery and he did---not in the Air Force but he got certificated in some civilian crafts and taught for awhile. Afterward some of us where talking in the lobby and one woman said she wanted to ask if he had any mental therapy to deal with PTSD but she didn’t dare, felt it was too personal, and I remarked that I’ll bet doing talks like this probably helps with that and the chronic pain his wife said he still has to this day. 

But I was probably wrong. After finding him online I discovered that in 2017 he was inducted into the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame and because of the “enshrined results” of that honor (research done) he became a Motivational Speaker. His presentation wasn’t born out of a need to tell his story but rather out of a renewed sense of wonder that he survived at all. Somewhere on his website he says he’s sharing his story to say “thanks for my everything” to the men who saved him.

Given all the crazy stuff going on in our country I don’t feel very proud of the U.S.A. right now so this was the perfect lecture to see the week of the Fourth of July. It gave me a little of that pride back again....if only temporarily. ©

The Airman, the Doctor and the Widow with a Driver’s License

At the gas station this week I saw a guy who was wearing an Air Force uniform, rare in my part of the world. I was guessing he was a recruiter making the rounds of the high schools and if so, they picked a good one. He was tall, dark and handsome---like Tom Cruise in Top Gun---and he carried himself with the kind of swagger that comes from knowing who you are and what you can do. I guess Tom isn’t all that tall but why spoil my illusions with facts? The point is my younger self would have followed Mr. Recruiter anywhere if he’d have given me the slightest encouragement. Surface-to-air missiles shooting at me? No problem as long as you’re there, too. Now, I just wanted to sit Mr. Recruiter down in front of a painting easel and preserve his killer smile on canvas. “Let me get that door for you, ma`am,” he said making me bask in the warmth of his brown eyes. Sometimes it pays to look like a weak old woman. “Thank you, sir,” I replied and I wanted to add, Could I interest you in sitting for a portrait? God, if I didn’t have an imagination, I’d have no life at all!

I saw my orthopedic doctor this week, too, with the hopes that he’d cut me loose from post-surgery restrictions. No such luck. I have to go back in a week to see if the shot he put in my shoulder joint relieves the pain I’m getting in my bicep. If it does significantly, I’ll get a shot of “super gel” that should give me relief for a year or more. At least now I am cleared for picking up things under ten pounds. It’s a start, though I still can’t bench press. I don’t know if that’s a joke my doctor is making or he actually thinks gray-haired old ladies like me are into body building, but he makes a point of telling me that every time I see him. Fortunately, by nightfall the day I got the test shot, my pain level had fallen from a seven to a one which means the super gel junk will be worth the $500 out of pocket cost. Yeah, team! 

My driver’s license this year had to be renewed in person at the Department of Motor Vehicles and I was really sweating the experience. My eyes have been bothering me all winter and I suspect the cataract the doctor, last summer, said wasn’t big enough to get removed will be when I see him next month. It’s been a lot of years since I was required to renew my license in person, rather than by mail, and when the lady at the DMV checked my eyes I couldn’t read the first two letters to save my soul. Oh, shit! I said to myself and when I use the ‘S word’ you know I’m really upset. But then I realized I could see the rest of the letters in the line and I rattled them off, presumably with enough rattled correctly because I passed the test. I must have passed the ‘racial profiling’ test, too, because they didn’t ask me to show proof of citizenship like the renewal form that came in the mail said I had to bring along. 

Lines at the DMV are notorious for being long and the process can eat up an hour or two so I brought along a book. I picked one from my library based on two factors and two alone. It had to be light weight and it had to have big print because I didn’t want to strain my eyes. The book I grabbed was one I evidently had for a college course on theology or philosophy that I took back in the ‘70s. I could almost deny I ever read it but it was filled with passages underlined in yellow with a generous amount of notes in the margins written in my hand writing. One passage went like this: 

“Self-knowledge, so universally praised as the most valuable, remains worse than useless if it is based solely on the study of one’s own inner experiences; it must be balanced by an equally intensive study of Field 3, through which we learn to know ourselves as others know us. This point is too often overlooked.” (E.F. Schumacher)

The chapter goes on to talk about how we are unaware of the “swing of our pendulums.” Our mind’s eye edits out what we think is contradictory in ourselves and we think we are showing ourselves to the world in a clear message. It gives a great example to illustrate the point; if we take 50 photos of ourselves we’ll throw out the bad ones forgetting, of course, that others see all our states of facial expression, not just the ones we deem are the best. Same with our personalities. Others see it all---the good, the bad and everything in between, but we don't don't like to acknowledge that.

Which gets me back to Mr. Recruiter. What did he see when he opened the door for me? He was in uniform which dictated he had to present himself with the decorum of an officer. Was that all that was on his mind? Or did he think he’d get into the gas station faster if he helped me with the door? Did his mind wander to a grandmother he doesn’t visit often enough? E.F. Schumacher may think it makes a difference how he saw me but, to me, if a smile from a stranger can brighten up my day and fire up my imagination, I could care less if he thought I looked and sounded like a gray tree frog during mating season. ©