Who Packed Your Parachute?

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may
fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has
happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason.

Charles Plumb, a US Naval Academy graduate, was a jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat
missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and
parachuted into enemy lands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese
prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

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.
You were shot down!" "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 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."

Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on 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.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?"

Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb
also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down
over enemy territory - he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional
parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety. His
experience reminds us all to prepare ourselves to weather whatever storms lie ahead. As you
go through this week, this month, this year... recognize people who pack your parachute!

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