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. ©
