Who's Packing Your Parachute?

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 hands.

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 shroud lines 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. 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.

As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachute. I am sending you this as my way of thanking you for your part in packing my parachute !!! And I hope you will send it on to those who have helped pack yours!

This doesn't have the feel of an urban legend.

But what if it did have the feel of an “urban legend”?

I often see cogent observations and quotes set aside or ignored because proof is not available. Should we disregard the message of the words as being without merit when the author cannot be confirmed? Many of the things I read are not diminished for lack of confirmation.

Consider the following quotation; “"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policies followed by a dictatorship”.

This quote is often attributed to Alexander Tytler. I can find no valid reason to believe that Tytler ever said those words. The message of the quote is not diminished for me because history indicates that they are sensible words. To quote Teddy Roosevelt on the “Fall of the Republic”, which can be confirmed, "The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the Republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing."

I have read Davy Crockett’s “Not Yours to Give” speech before the House of Representatives. Edward Sylvester Ellis supposedly published this in “The Life of Colonel David Crockett”. I have not confirmed this but nonetheless listen to the brief speech to congress and the words of Horatio Bunce. The message of the story is not diminished for me because the Constitution substantiates the exact premise of the story and the Constitution can be confirmed.

I understand the actually price of free corn after reading “The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp” by Frank Redmond. I haven’t confirmed that the events in the story actually took place as related by the author but the story remains undiminished for me because I understand the mind of mankind.

I do not subscribe to all “urban legends” but I do take stock of the message. I do not fear the alligators that reside in the New York sewers.

This story has a good message and for me the message will far surpass anything more I may come to learn of its origin.

Thanks for the bump bro. The Army riggers' motto is "I will be sure -- always." I bet I am not the only guy to find that reassuring. They do indeed jump chutes selected at random, except in training, where they must pack and jump several all on their own (with progressively decreasing supervision). I guess this is intended to frontload any attrition in the parachute-rigger training cycle.

I have never lost a friend or teammate or even a guy I knew to nod to, from a technical malfunction of an american military parachute. We do lose guys to procedural problems or human error from time to time. the only human error I have seen in a US military chute was when a fellow left a packing weight (a shot bag) inside the chute.

In 10th Group in 1985 one of the riggers celebrated birth of his child in a really dumb manner -- with the cocaine that his neighbours convinced him was no big deal. He was caught by random urinalysis and thrown out of the Army. He lost his FAA rigger licence too (not that it is a great trade to make a living by, but it was the only one he had). And the rest of the riggers went through every one of our chutes (over a thousand) and every one that had last been signed off by Coke Boy was popped, inspected, and repacked by someone with more self control.

Military free fall parachutists pack their own mains and set their own safety devices. In some circumstances they pack their own reserves as well.

As far as the authenticity of this story is concerned, it happens that I have a friend who is friends with people who will surely know Capt. Plumb. I have asked him to investigate and if I hear from him (and remember -- there's the tough part) I will post it here.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

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