It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembles a giant orange and is starting to dip into the blue ocean. Old Ed would come strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Always clutching in his bony hand an overfull bucket of shrimp.
Ed would walk out to the end of the pier, where it seemed he almost had the world to himself. The sun would be a golden bronze at that time. Everybody gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed would stand, alone with his thoughts…and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he would no longer be alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots would come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier. Before long, dozens of seagulls would enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly.
Then Ed would slowly begin tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he did, if you listened closely, you could hear him say repeatedly with a smile, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’
In a few short minutes the bucket would be empty. But Ed wouldn’t leave. He would stand there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place. Invariably, one of the gulls would land on his sea-bleached, weather-beaten hat – an old military hat he’d been wearing for years.
When he finally would turn around and begin to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds would hop along the pier with him until he reached the stairs, and then they, too, would fly away. And old Ed would quietly make his way down to the end of the beach and slowly make his way home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like “a funny old duck,” as my dad used to say. Or, “a guy that’s a sandwich shy of a picnic,” as my kids might say. To onlookers, he was just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant… maybe even a lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of the young or unfamiliar. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida.
That’s too bad. They’d have done well to know him better. His full name was Eddie Rickenbacker. He was an American fighter ace in World War I and Medal of Honor recipient. With 26 aerial victories, he was America’s most successful fighter ace in that war. During his prolific life, he also excelled as a race car driver and automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and as a pioneer in air transportation, particularly as the longtime head of Eastern Air Lines.
During World War II, Rickenbacker was sent on a tour of the Pacific Theater of Operations to review both living conditions and military operations, and also to deliver personally a secret message to General Douglas MacArthur from the President. After visiting several air and sea bases in Hawaii, Rickenbacker was a passenger in the B-17D Flying Fortress numbered 40-3089, which strayed hundreds of miles off course while on its way to a refueling stop on Canton Island in the Central Pacific Ocean. The B-17 was forced to ditch in a remote and little-traveled part of the Central Pacific. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft. Rickenbacker and the crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle.
Each day, they had a simple devotional service and prayed for that miracle. Then would they would try to nap. One particularly scorching afternoon as Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his eyes and nose trying to ignore the heat. As he struggled unsuccessfully to slumber, all he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft. Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal – a very slight meal for eight men – of it. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait… and the cycle continued.
With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea).
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. And he never stopped saying, “Thank you.” That’s why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket overflowing with shrimp and a heart chock-full of gratitude.
This true story of appreciation is a rewritten excerpt from a book titled, “In the Eye of the Storm,” by Max Lucado, a popular minister and inspirational author. Eddie Rickenbacker became a race car driver, an aviation consultant, and airline executive. Rickenbacker was influential in the General Motors acquisition of Eastern Air Transport, which was later renamed Eastern Air Lines. In January, 1934, Rickenbacker became general manager for Eastern Air Lines and later served as president. He died in1973.
God gave you a gift of 84,600 seconds today. Have you used one of them to say thank you?
Have an AWE-full weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacque’