Subdeacon Joe Posted January 23, 2024 Share Posted January 23, 2024 Good Story: Scherer Kc · This is Captain Charlie Plumb. Charlie grew up as a farm kid from Kansas with dreams of becoming a pilot. After graduating from the Naval Academy and completing his training, he became a part of the program which is now known as “TOP GUN.” During the course of his career he flew 74 successful combat missions over North Vietnam. Charlie was 5 days away from the end of his tour when he took off on his 75th mission…it didn’t go as planned. He was shot down somewhere over Hanoi and was taken prisoner and tortured. He spent the next 2,103 days of his life (around 6 years) in a cell that measured 8 feet x 8 feet. Charlie survived and continued flying for a few more years before retiring. One day he and his wife were sitting at a restaurant and a man from another table came over and said, “You’re Plumb!” You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!” “How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb. “I packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprised 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.: That night plumb couldn’t sleep he kept thinking about that man. Plumb says, “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat, a bib in the back 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 sailor.” As Charlie likes to ask, “who is packing your parachute?” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackwater 53393 Posted January 23, 2024 Share Posted January 23, 2024 When I was drag racing, I packed the parachute for my own race car. I also packed the parachute for my partners’ cars because they didn’t trust themselves to do it right. I refused to let anyone else pack mine and they refused to allow anyone else but me do it for them! Never had a failure! Thank you, Lord!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bgavin Posted January 24, 2024 Share Posted January 24, 2024 Never let your ex-wife pack your chute... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oak Ridge Regulator Posted January 25, 2024 Share Posted January 25, 2024 I don’t know if it’s still this way but in the early 80s when I was in Benning the parachute pack company for the 82 airborne trainees were in the floor above me so I knew all of them, they told me everyone of them had to put their name in every shoot they packed and any trainee could refuse to jump a chute and the person who packed that chute then had to jump it that day, don’t know if that was a fact but that’s what they told all of us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subdeacon Joe Posted January 25, 2024 Author Share Posted January 25, 2024 All y'all are taking it very literally. The message I got from it is to not ignore "the little people" who have your back or do the unpleasant jobs. Sort of like the story of the the janitor at the USAF Academy. The guy pushing the broom and not mentioning to them that he had earned a salute from every man and woman, no matter the rank, with his Medal of Honor. But until just by happenstance one of the cadets ran across his name in a book they all mostly ignored him. After all, he was "just the janitor." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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