I called my friend Carolyn--whom I would trust with my life--to see if she thought I should put this next story in a blog and she said, "Yes.  Emphatically yes.  It's funny.  It's relevant."  So here it is.

When Ken took that squadron to Japan in the Skyray, they were charged with defense of the Japanese and S. Korean borders.  Russia had been testing the perimeters of the air space.  And up until the Skyray, we were slow.  The Russian air knew how many minutes it would take before we could intercept them.  It was a game they played called, "See if America can really protect Japan and S. Korea."

The cold war was a reality during that time.   Russia and the U.S. were stockpiling nuclear weapons and the world was on edge.  Americans were building bomb shelters in their back yards.  It was a scary time. 

When Ken's squadron arrived in Japan, the time it took to intercept the Russians was cut dramatically.  The Skyray was a triangle--literally a wing--pretty much attached to a rocket when they lit the afterburner on takeoff.  Their climb rate from ground to intercept was unmatched in the world.  But nobody had seen the plane in action.  The Russians wanted to interface and get our capabilities.  They found out.  First time out, Ken said, "We intercepted them way before they were expecting it."

"What did you do?" I asked him.

"Well, we pulled up along side of them in formation, where we could look them in the eye through their cockpits.  They gave us the finger, we gave them the finger, and everyone went home.  They found out what we already knew.   We were better than them.  Give somebody the finger and you can call off a war.  Beats bullets."

"Did you really do that?"  I asked him. 

"Yep.  That's really what we did.  Day after day.  We gave the Russians the finger."

I didn't cry when they draped Ken's casket with a flag.  He had earned it.  I watched as they folded it--snapping in the creases as I had seen them do so many, many times before for other Marines.  The colonel knelt in front of me and presented it to me from a grateful nation.

I was the one who was grateful.  Grateful that he chose me.  Grateful that he loved me.  Grateful that he had lived an exemplary life.  Grateful that he was held in highest esteem by family, friends and church.  Grateful for the fact that he had given his life to Christ.  Grateful for the total confidence I have that he is with God.  Grateful for the 57 years we had together.  Just plain grateful.  He was extraordinary in every way.  Totally unpretentious.

And now, I just wish he was here.  I wish I had told him how proud I was of him.  But I didn't know him as a hero, just as my husband.  I never saw him fly--even though I spent twelve years of his career with him.  I pretended that he had a normal job.  He would go to work in the morning, and we would all eat dinner together every night.  He very seldom mentioned what he did that day.

Those twelve years were the most influential years of my life.  I went from being a kid to being a Marine Corps wife.   From not knowing how to do anything, (I mean anything) to being a totally competent woman who picked up the pieces of all our lives, and moved us.  Over and over again.  Ken was always somewhere else--doing God knows what for our country.  I was alone a lot.

It is a wonderful thing to be adored.  He adored me.  (I know, that sounds maudlin, but he did.)  Now, nobody does.  Not that I need to be adored, I don't.  But it was nice.  Looking back, I remember him telling me I was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to him.  That he didn't know what would have become of him if I hadn't married him.  I think he imagined that I was something more than I really was.  To be loved by someone is the greatest gift in life.  I have definitely been loved.  What a blessing.

When our children were growing up, playing football, etc.,  I would wait behind the bleachers until after the flag was raised.  I couldn't watch the flag being raised without breaking into tears.  I still can't.  And I am not a crier.  Too many flags on too many caskets.

Ken once took a squadron aboard the carrier--they were getting ready to deploy for a year to Japan.  They all had to be carrier qualified--he had to qualify twenty seven pilots, day and night, before they could leave.  Dozens and dozens of landings.  They were flying an airplane that was notoriously dangerous.  That plane only lasted a year or two before it was retired.  They called it the Skyray.  And the bay off Laguna Beach, they called Skyray Bay because so many of those planes ended up there.

I remember one day, I had gone out to squadron headquarters to take something to Ken, and a pilot walked through the door in his flight suit, dripping wet, with his helmet in his hand.  Seemed to be a common occurrence--ejecting and getting fished out of the bay.  But as long as you could save the pilot, well, the plane was expendable.

The Skyray had never been used on a carrier before.  So getting everyone qualified was tricky.  That week, they destroyed four aircraft, broke one pilot's back and killed another one.  It was personal.  A squadron was like a family.  Every time someone was killed, something in Ken died as well.  Me, too.

Flying single seat fighters in the Marine Corps isn't like flying United.  It is dangerous.  Especially on the carrier.  Life insurance for aviators in that line of work was horrendously expensive.  You got special pay--flight pay--for doing it, but it didn't cover the bill for your life insurance.
   
After that horrible week of carrier qualifications, they all went to Japan for a year.  And never had another accident.   

Flags on caskets make me weep.  So many young men.



 

Somehow, the two of them lived.  Ken got hit 7 times and totaled 3 aircraft--but landed them.  I don't know how many times Pete got hit.  The Corsair was notorious for having to fly way too low when loaded up with bombs.  They were so heavy that they couldn't get above the ground fire.  So they took the flights through valleys where there weren't any ground people firing, but the N. Koreans had hung wire from mountain top to mountain top to break the back of the plane if you hit a wire.  Ken hit a wire.  Bent the plane in two but somehow flew it in and got it down.

When they retired the Corsair and went to jets, F-9s, it was better even though you couldn't carry the load that the Corsair had been capable of.  After their tours were over, they both came home.  Ken was an LSO, (the guy who had the paddles on the carrier deck and waved pilots aboard).  He went to the training command teaching cadets how to land on a carrier.  And Pete joined the Blue Angels.  And killed himself.  He made a mistake in the air.

The F9, which they were flying in Korea rotated about the fuselage when you did a roll.  But the plane the Blues were flying rotated around the tip of the wing.  I'm sure Pete thought he was back in Korea, did a roll just above the ground--which would have been fine in an F9--and as aviators say, "Bought the farm."  Not enough clearance to rotate that close to the ground around the wing tip.

I can't tell you how many Marine and Navy pilots died.  A bunch.  Such a waste.

They asked Ken to take Pete's place in the Blue's, but he said "No."  Years later, after we were married I asked him why he turned it down.  "I didn't want to travel with a circus and live out of a suitcase.  I wanted to do something useful.  Flying formation isn't useful."

That sums up Ken's personality.  

In Korea, when you had a hundred combat missions, you had to quit flying combat.  I have no idea what the logic was behind that, but Ken and his friend Pete Olson (They called them "The Gold Dust Twins") both had well over a hundred missions before the system caught up with them.  They just kept flying.  Both were single.  Both were a little nuts.  And of course, invincible.

When the Marine Corps caught up with them, they assigned them both to the mail run.  They were supposed to fly south to the mail drop, pick it all up and head north to distribute the mail.  The story goes that Pete made the first run, came back and said the landing was a piece of cake.  So the next day, Ken took the run and flew South looking for the drop.  He found a concrete strip with  airplanes lined up on the sides, circled and sized it up as impossible to land on--but decided to do it anyway because, "If Pete could do it, I sure as heck wasn't going to let him best me."

The way he described the landing was, "There wasn't enough concrete to roll in, so I stalled the plane over the concrete and plopped in--heart in my throat.  Stuck my head out of the plane and asked for the mail."  A crowd gathered, and  someone informed him, "Postal drop is further south.  This is the repair facility."  So here he was, stuck on a postage stamp of concrete.  And if he didn't get the plane out of there, Pete would never let him forget it.  So he backed the plane up into the hanger to get some extra runway, revved it up and took off--figuring he was going to kill himself.  "Tires clipped the fence, but I got airborne, flew south, got the mail and delivered it.  But it was too good to keep to myself.  I picked Pete up, and we flew back to look it over."

"You're kidding," Pete said.
"Nope, that's where I landed.  Like you said, piece of cake."
"Yeah, I bet.  Question is, how did you get out?" Pete asked him.
"That's a good question." Ken replied.  "I really don't know, because I don't think it can be done."

I never could get Ken to tell me how he won either of his two Distinguished Flying Crosses.  The only time guys like him talk about stuff like that is when they are all telling each other "war stories" and something comes out.  Usually lies.  The stories get bigger and bigger until you don't know what's the truth and what isn't.  

They had some kind of code--you couldn't ever be the hero in the story.  You had to tell something stupid or funny about the event to be able to share it.  I never heard a Marine brag about what he had done.  Only what went wrong and what happened next.

But I once heard Ken telling the story about how he got one of the DFCs. (I think that the DFC is the highest aviation award.  Getting one is unusual.  You have to be in combat?  Getting two, well, you have to be nuts is what somebody told me.)

Seems like Marines were pinned down in a valley between two cliffs.  There were caves in the sides of the cliffs and gooks (politically incorrect I know--but that's what they called the N. Koreans) were in the caves firing down on the Marines.  They called for an air strike to take the gooks out.  Problem was, to fire into the caves, you had to be perpendicular to the cave.  Impossible--when you have a cliff behind and a cliff ahead.   You can't fly sideways between two cliffs.

Ken described how he did it.  I'm not sure now, but it involved doing some kind of an inverted roll, etc. etc...  He said, "Should have hit the wall.  But didn't.  Which was good."  He went on to say, "Twenty-three year old kid.  More guts than brains.  Didn't have enough sense to know it couldn't be done--until it was all over and someone told me.  Kind of like when me and Pete did the mail run when they took us out of combat..." and then he--or someone else--was off on another story.

I loved listening when they sat around telling lies.  Truth was in there; you just had to find it.

 

I said to Becky, "What if I run out of anything to write about."  She said, "Write about the 'leftover' people.  Everyone knows Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Peter, Paul and James--but even James is on the bubble of being left over.  So write about one of the other ones.  You know, Hosea.  Amos. Haggai.  Obidiah.  One of those.  The minor prophets. Nobody knows those guys."

I can always get an answer from Becky.  She and Scott are the funny ones in the family.  Pat, Jon, Ken and I were the serious ones.  I wouldn't have thought of the minor prophets as leftover people!

Hosea had a pretty sad life.  God wanted to give an example to the people of Israel concerning their unfaithfulness.  So who did he choose.  Right.  Hosea.  Seems unfair.  The only good guy around and God picks him for misery.  Becky said, "Hosea wasn't miserable.  He just loved his wife."  Then she stopped, looked up at me and said, "Well, maybe that's what a man's misery is."  And laughed.

God told Hosea to marry a woman who wasn't faithful to him.  A prostitute.  Here Hosea was, a prophet.  Esteemed.  Held high in the eyes of the people.  But he did what God said and married Gomer the harlot.  I bet the town had a lot to talk about.  Can't you just hear them:  "He seemed like such a good guy.  What went wrong with him?  Did you see her?  What was he thinking....etc."

God made an example out of Hosea to show the people what they were like.  Unfaithful.  Hosea represented God.  His wife represented the people of Israel.  God was good.  The people weren't.  Every time God blessed the people, they forsook him.   Every time God forgave them, they were unfaithful.  Basically, whatever God wanted them to do, they didn't.  Just like Hosea's wife.

I hope God never has a plan to make an example out of me that makes me miserable like He did to Hosea.  But if he does, well, I guess I'll just have to get used to it. 

Today, I was going through all the papers that I kept when teaching Math at NEO A&M.  Why I kept all that stuff I don't know.  Letters from students, etc.  And while reading over every paper and note before I discarded it, I found a note that one of my football (Calculus) students had written me.  He was struggling with exhaustion that fall with grueling practices that left him sleep deprived.

He wrote:  Now I lay me down to sleep,
                  This test is long and very deep.
                  If it should end before I wake,
                  Just give my arm a gentle shake.

At least he wasn't begging for mercy.  He just slept through class every day.  But he always came!!  I guess he thought he could absorb calculus in his sleep.

I answered him:  In life there are some things, it seems,
                           We need to do before we dream.
                           Next time please dream before you test,
                           Or you may fail.  I do not jest.

Teaching was so much fun.  I loved it.  But the students were what made it memorable.  I had between 150 and 200 students every semester depending on overload.  That would have been up to 6000 students.  Some of them I will never forget.  He is the only one I wrote a poem for.

He didn't make it in math.  But since NEO was nearly always #1 in the nation in football back during those years, maybe he made it to the pros.  A bunch of them did.  I could turn on the TV back then--for  pro games--and would always see someone I knew.   I can't help but wonder how those students made it in life.   

Friday I didn't post.  I was getting a new pacemaker.  It's done.  I don't have to fret about it any longer.  I told the surgeon (before they drugged me), "I don't care if you kill me.  Just don't let me throw a clot and have a stroke."  He promised he wouldn't let that happen.  It wouldn't have been such a big deal if they were just going to replace the battery, but they had to replace the whole thing.  Which made me wonder what was going to happen in between taking out pacemaker #1 and putting in pacemaker #2--since  I don't have any beats of my own--what was going to keep me beating in the meantime.  I still don't have the answer to that.  But everything went well.

I don't have to do that again for 7 or 8 years.

On the way back to Edmond, I told Becky, (who drove me to Tulsa) "I don't know why I have missed your dad so much these last few days.  She said, "Mom, he was the gravity in our lives."

I think that is the best word I have ever heard to describe Ken.  Gravity.  He anchored us.  Becky went on to say that he once told her, "Your mom was built for speed.  But you are built for service and long wear."   (Like him.)

Ken never said very much.  But when he did, everyone listened.

Gravity, and speed.  We fit together like a hand in a glove.   I told you last week that I just wish he had been here to tell me everything was going to be alright.  Well, I got an e-mail from my good friend Becky Bacon and she answered that post, "Janie, everything is going to be alright."

Friends.  They lift us up.  Becky Bacon took care of Ken the last weeks of his life.  She's a nurse.  Nurse "extraordinaire."   And friend.  Friend extraordinaire.  God has blessed me with family and friends. Those are what really count.

Then, after the war was over, the government sold all of those "court" houses to the general public.  They must have been built really good because you can still find them all over Northeast Oklahoma.  People bought them and moved them onto their properties.  And that was over 70 years ago.

Ken graduated from high school when I was in the third grade.  1947.  I didn't know him then.  But our parents were good friends, and my dad always loved to watch Ken play football.  (All-state, later playing for the Pensacola Naval team.)  So later, after the Korean War, Ken came back to Pryor and came by our house to visit my dad and mom.  

It was September of my senior year.  I was seventeen.  He was twenty five.  Never in a million years could I have imagined him being interested in me.  Or me being interested in him. (Neither could my parents.)  He was a grown man.    No one in my family thought anything about it.  But I guess Ken liked what he saw, and made up his mind.  Because somehow, he found out when my birthday was--when I would turn eighteen.   And in March, on my birthday, he called my dad and told him that he wanted to marry me and asked my dad if he would object to the age difference.  Ken had decided how he felt in September, and waited until March to let anyone know.  I was shocked.  Who would have guessed.  Not until he had my dad's approval.   I was still clueless at that point.

All because of the war.  And the government building a dam.  And Dupont building an ammunition plant.  And us moving to Pryor so my dad could get a job.  And my parents joining the Baptist church and becoming good friends with Ken's parents.  And all because my dad and Ken had been close back when Ken played football in high school.  Who can know the plans of God.  I know this...we had a marriage made in heaven.  Planned by God himself.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Jeremiah 29:11 

The year I started first grade, here were 18 elementary classrooms in the building and all of them had over 60 children in each one.  Grades one through six.  One year earlier, this building had housed the entire school, grades 1-12.  But the war  had changed everything for the little town of Pryor.  Class size doubled.  Two tiny bathrooms for all of those people and no air conditioning.  Desks were bolted to the floor and chairs added at the back of the room for the overflow of people.

The government had built a dam, and Dupont built an ammunition plant.  Ammo for the war.  Men came from all over the United States to Pryor for the jobs.  With their families.  Their children.  The school system was overwhelmed.  Ken went to school in the city park, where they set up Quonset huts to use as classrooms for different topics.   Churches opened their buildings for classrooms during the week.   Somehow, the small town coped.  The government built a high school and sold it to the city for a dollar.  Sometimes the government does something right.

 People were living in tents, garages, sheds and three and four families to whatever houses were available.  Once again, the government--who had contributed to this situation by building a huge dam and ammunition plant in a town that had no people to fill the jobs that were created--stepped in and began to build houses.  Small, but heavenly to those of us in desperate need of a place to live.

They built them in groups of seven.  Three facing each other with one at each end.  Court houses.  Hundreds and hundreds of them.  For people to rent.  You could tell them apart by the shutters.  Each had a different carving on them.  Candlesticks were on my house.

After the war was over and the plant closed down, people moved on to other places where they could find jobs.  But we stayed.  My mom and dad loved the church they had joined.  And that decision changed all of our lives because the pastor they loved was E. R. Jacks.  And he had a son named Ken.  And God always does things right.  What a blessing that decision has been in my life.

I am going to get a new pacemaker in a couple of days.  I dread it, however, since I don't have any heartbeats of my own and this pacemaker is failing, I don't have much choice.  It's my third.  I have lived 44 years longer than predicted.  Looks like I am going to make it.

It's just that I am tired of people cutting on me.  I'm tough, but I'm rather weary of doctors poking and prodding.  But I really can't complain.  I haven't had an infection in my arm since they cut on me in August.  So this will be just a few more stitches.  I feel like I am all spare parts at this point.  I am so full of metal that they have to frisk me all over at the airports. 

Hope is a wonderful thing.  I have planted pink dogwoods for years and years.  And they all die.  Tomorrow I am going to plant another one.  Maybe it will live.  I hope it will live.  Hope......

I planted pecan trees every where we moved, but never stayed anywhere long enough to get any nuts.  I hope someone is enjoying my pecans.

I sound melancholy.   I'm not, but I should never write when I am in this kind of mood.

Sorry.  I'm not sad.  Just a little weary.

Maybe I just miss Ken telling me everything is going to be okay.

Last Friday night was exciting.  I was on my way to the car to go eat with Pat when she said, "Come here, Mom.  Look."  And there next to my driveway in a bush, about a foot from the ground, was a swarm of bees the size of two or three footballs.  After a few calls I found someone to come get them  at 10 o'clock that night--after they settled down.  I was amazed that some of the people I called offered to kill them.  Gee, I could have killed them.  Anyone could.  But who would kill a bee!!!  That would be Murder.   Duh.

I could have detached the swarm into a box, but I gave away my (Becky's hand-me-down) bee suit and hat.  She, Becky, had brought me her hive and smoker, bee-stuff, etc. when she moved from Billings, Mt. headed to Houston or Illinois or somewhere.  She put duct tape around the hive, put it in the back of her SUV, and drove from Montana to Oklahoma with a zillion bees buzzing in the back seat.  (I never said any of my kids had good sense.)

I kept the bees for a few years.  They swarmed occasionally.  Once into my apple tree.  One of my friends had an extra hive so I called him.  He held the ladder, placed the box under the swarm while I climbed  up into the tree and knocked the swarm down.   It was an exciting bee rescue.  We need them.  They are vanishing.  Losing them would be tragic.  (Nobody got stung.)

Everything went well after the man picked them up,  until I got up Saturday morning, went out to check the bush, and found a tiny swarm that had been left behind in the dark.  The queen was gone and the orphan bees didn't know what to do.  So they just wadded up into a ball and hummed.  I felt so upset for them.  I called Pat.  Then had Becky come over and  between my two daughter's bee-guru advice, I had to face the truth.  Nature is cruel.  Those bees were going to die.  It's Monday.  They are still there.  I have been praying that God will help them find their way back home.  Maybe their old family will forgive them for leaving with a new Queen.  I hope so.  Even bees deserve a second chance.  It's upsetting to know there isn't anything I can do.

Of all the books in the Bible, if I could keep just one, it would be Romans.  I hadn't read it in a while, but was marking up a Bible that I have been using lately, and was doing it by underlining in pencil the passages that I wanted to "jump out" at me, and coloring in green, passages that I had previously memorized.

I had done Luke, Acts, the two letters Peter wrote, and the three letters John wrote, before I went back to Romans.  The thing that I found, with Romans, is that almost every verse needs to be underlined.  It is the most concise, thought out, accurately written account of what the Jews thought salvation consisted of--compared with what salvation truly is in Jesus Christ.  Paul is a great writer.

Paul contrasts the Jewish system of reaching God with comparisons that "close the door."  He effectively argues that Christ has always been the sacrifice that God will accept as a payment for our sins.  The Jews felt that they were "chosen," and therefore they were just fine.  They believed that by birth, they were God's children.  But Paul informs them that, "All have sinned and come short of the Glory of God." Romans  3:23  And that "There is none righteous, no not one." Rom. 3:10  Then he tells them that "...we conclude that man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." Rom. 3:28

And Paul is just getting started.  Line after line, Paul informs the Jews that their "law" does not save them.  That they aren't able to keep it anyway.  "...if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved."  Rom. 10:9

And finally, Paul lets them know that everyone is included: Rom. 10:13 "...whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."  Including Gentiles.  No wonder they tried to kill him.

The minute you start thinking you are someone special, God will find a way to assure you that the only thing that makes you special is that He loves you.  Enough to die for you.  That's it.

Last Thursday and Friday, March 31 and April 1, I wrote the story of Ken crawling under the barracks to get the cat.  I should have included a story from forty-six years later.

Ken was eighty four years old, and in the last week of his life.  He knew it; we knew it.  It was a bitter-sweet time.  He had lived a very full life.  We had loved each other for fifty-seven years.  But it was all over.  He couldn't fight any more.  Thank God I got to keep him at home--with Pat's help.

She and I would double-team taking care of him and on the last day of his life, Pat was watching him while I was in surgery.  Had I known the end was so near, I would have never left.  I would have rescheduled.  But we never know.  "Death comes like a thief in the night..."

When I got home, she told me what  the last coherent words were that he spoke.  He said, "Pat, I have a confession to make."

She couldn't help but worry about what he was going to say.  The way it was spoken made it sound like there was something that he wanted to get off his chest.

"I want to tell you something," he said.  And then he said, "I know you always loved cats."

And she answered, "Yes, daddy.  I love cats."  Pat had always had a cat.

"I hate cats."

Those were his last words.  He just wanted her to know how much he loved her to have tolerated all of his years living with a cat in the house.   He was such a great man.

I keep wondering when I am going to run out of things to say.  And then some friend calls and asks me a question, or tells me something funny and off I go again.

Monday was Becky's birthday.  She said, "Mom!!  How do you know that you wore a red dress to the hospital the day I was born!!! I can't even remember what I wore yesterday."

I had written her a happy birthday note describing that day back in 1959--and that I had worn a red dress to the hospital.  "Well," I answered, "I have a picture of that day that your dad took.  We almost didn't make it in time.  The nurse put me in a wheel chair, rolled me into delivery, and it was all over.  They didn't even have time to get a table set up to put you on, so they laid you on my stomach.  And you lifted your head up, looked around the room,  and said, "That was interesting, what's next."  Which is the story of your life."  It was a red letter, red dress day.  "Look at that baby," the nurses called out.  "She is lifting her head."
 
I had five children. That is enough.  Between them, I have ten grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.  I can't remember how old any of them are.  I have to go back to the year they were born and count from there.  I can't even remember all of their birthdays.  I can't imagine how hard it would be if there were more of them.

And with every birth, there is a story.  We come into the world, we live, hopefully we accomplish something good, and then we are gone.  Life is so precious.  But so short.  I have no idea where my life has gone.  I don't remember what went right nearly as well as what went wrong--and looking back is sometimes funny.

I'm not done yet.

I got an Email that my Son Scott wrote today that I thought was pretty neat.  He said, and I quote:

      I get a kick out of ignorant people that say that Jesus didn’t exist.  I ask them if Abe Lincoln existed, then George Washington.  And take them back to Genghis Khan, then on to Muhammad…..
      To a person, they will say that those people existed.  Then I ask them how they know they existed… “It is written down,” they will say.  “It is a piece of Historical FACT.”  Same old thing every time…

      I then ask them why they don’t believe that Jesus existed…. And they will say… “He is just a Bible myth”  “It’s just a story in the Bible to show us how to live…”

      I then tell them this…  “Oh, but he is mentioned in more than the Bible... His crucifixion, and his resurrection, are mentioned in more than the Bible… True, the most extensive and detailed descriptions of the life and death of Jesus are to be found in the New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--with details supported by the other 23 books of the New Testament. However...contemporary Christian, Jewish, and Roman authors provide additional insight concerning the first-century Jewish and Roman legal systems and the details of scourging and crucifixion.  Seneca, Livy, Plutarch, and others refer to crucifixion practices in their works.

      But specifically, Jesus (and his crucifixion) is mentioned by the Roman historians Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius.

      By non-Roman historians Thallus and Phlegon.
      By the satirist Lucian of Samosata.
      By the Jewish Talmud.
      And by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.
      Ancient Writings overwhelmingly support the Biblical account. It would be wise to accept that Jesus lived, died on the cross, and rose on the third day.  Multiple eyewitness accounts support that.
    
Scott is my research guru.  He is a good Biblical scholar. 

We are studying the book of Acts on Sundays.  Peter and John had healed a lame man--in the name of Jesus.  They were arrested and were thrown in jail for the night.  (The Romans had given legal power to the Jews to police themselves.   They were the same group that had told Pilot to crucify Jesus.  They wanted to stop Peter and John from preaching that Jesus was risen and that He still had the power to heal people.)  The next morning, John and Peter were brought before the high priest, his sons, and all of his relatives--as well as the rulers, elders, and scribes.   A ruling body.

Peter and John were placed in the middle of this group to answer this question, "In whose name was this done?"  That is, "Who did you call on to receive power to do this?"  Acts 4:7  (They could be severely punished for saying that it was Jesus.)   

So Peter, an uneducated fisherman speaks to this group of powerful educated men and tells them that he healed the man in the name of Jesus.  He furthermore tells them that they were the ones who killed Jesus.  The Messiah!!  Peter condemns the ruling powers--the Jewish high priest and all his flunkies.

Peter speaks with authority and when he is finished accusing them, the Jews are uncertain as to what they should do.  But it was not because of Peter's eloquence.

That morning, when Peter and John stood before this ruling body, someone came to stand beside them.  It was the man who had been healed.  A man that had been crippled from birth.  An unimportant person the day before, but today a witness who was willing to risk his life to testify in court.  "And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it."  Even an unimportant man who has been crippled since birth has a place in the plans of God. 

The lame man didn't say a word.  He just stood there--a testimony to the power of Jesus.  Sometimes we just need to stand up and be counted.

"There is an army base in Ft. Benning, Georgia," Ken said.  "Maybe they will have a hostess house where we can crash."  They didn't, but they had one room in the men's barracks with two single twin beds.  It was midnight.  We took it.  Ken and Scott slept head to toe in one bed and I sandwiched in between the two girls in the other one.  There was a twenty stall urinal connecting out one of the doors to our room.  None of us cared.  We were exhausted.

When we left Beaufort, Pat had a cat that she had adopted that day.  Scraggly. Woe-be-gone.  Pitiful. She begged her dad to let it go with us.  "No way," he said.  "No animals.  Especially a cat."  But he relented when she began to cry.  "Okay, you can bring the cat, but you are responsible to take care of it."  She assured him that she would. 

Somewhere between all of us in the two twin beds, the cat found a place to curl up--until six in the morning when it began to meow to get out.  So Pat slipped outside in her underwear, (all of our pajamas were long gone on the moving van) to let the cat out.  And of course, the cat crawled under the barracks and wouldn't come out.  Pat ran back in, woke Becky up and the two of them tried every trick they knew to get the cat out from under the barracks.  No luck.  By the time they gave up and Pat began to cry, we were all awake and Ken put on his Dress Blues and crawled under the barracks, got the cat, and crawled out--as a platoon of soldiers marched by in lock step.

Every one of those men saluted the Marine Lt. Col. who was lying flat on his stomach (in full Marine dress blue uniform), crawling out from under the barracks with a bedraggled cat in his arms--whose family were standing around watching--in their underwear.  Ken stood up, returned the salute, handed the cat to Pat and brushed off as much of the mud on his beautiful blue uniform that he could.  "You hold on that cat," he told her.  "I'm never going to rescue it again.  Ever."

True story.  You can't make this stuff up.