Parachute Packers
By Tom Quirk

Scituate — This was an email that I received seven years ago that had a very special message for me in the early days of our family’s brain aneurysm recovery journey. It served as a timely wake-up call for me, who like so many others, was mired in the confusion of this traumatic event. I shared this email with my parachute packers, because without them, our situation would be very different.

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam, who after 75 combat missions was downed by a surface-to-air-missile (SAM). He ejected and parachuted into enemy hands and was a POW for over six years. He survived that ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day as he sat in a restaurant, a man came up to him and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!” “How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb. “I packed your parachute,” the man replied. The man shook 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 wondering how that man looked in his uniform and how many times that he might have passed him on deck without a “good morning, how are you?” Plumb was a fighter pilot and an officer, the other simply a sailor who spent hours below at long tables, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute and holding in his hands the fate of someone he didn’t even know. Plumb now asks his audience, “Who is packing your parachute?”

Plumb cites the many kinds of parachutes that he needed when shot down; his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual parachute. We are not prisoners and our situations differ from Plumb’s, but think about our needs on a daily basis. I will be forever grateful to my parachute packers, and they are in my thoughts every day. Take some time out of your life’s daily challenges to recognize and acknowledge the folks who packed your parachute and provided what you needed to make it through the day. How many parachutes have you packed?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For more information you may contact Tom Quirk at (781) 545-2300, extension 628 or via email at tfquirk@aol.com. For more detailed information about brain aneurysms, please visit the Brain Aneurysm Foundation’s web site at www.bafound.org.

The South Shore Brain Aneurysm Support Group meetings are held the second Wednesday of every month, from 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. at St. Mary's Parish Center, 2 Edward Foster Road, Scituate.