Jesus and Veterans

 In the late 1970s there was a popular TV show (I think it was on PBS) called “Connections.” It explored the gestalt of current events and inventions. A mind boggling, detail heavy, exploration of how we got to where we are.

This program came to mind while I was eating my breakfast this morning, staring out at the rain-soaked trees dropping their leaves on the green grass of the far west suburbs of Chicago. How in the world did I get to this exact spot on this exact day?

The short answer is “the sovereignty of God.” But a couple of the connections can be listed as Jesus and US veterans.

God’s provision for my life and eternity can be directly attributed to Jesus’ death and resurrection. The many connections He had to plan for me to get to the Cross of Jesus included the second major connection … US veterans.

When I was 10 years old, my father was a pastor in a very small church in Montana. There were weeks we apparently lived on the good graces of congregants who canned for the winter. Dad was at the edge of the age he would be allowed to still enter the Air Force, so that’s what he did. At the age of 35, he used his career field to enter the Air Force as a chaplain. 

I am extremely grateful that the Air Force provided for our family for the remaining years I was at home, and many years after. We were able to see parts of the country...and the world...we may have never seen. From Montana to Minnesota. From Minnesota to Washington. From Washington to Yokota Japan. From Japan to Kansas City. At that point I graduated from high school and went to college, but Dad was stationed at Greenland, Germany, Sacramento, Klamath Falls, and Las Vegas before he retired.

It was in Sacramento that I rejoined the family after graduating from college. And that’s where another veteran entered my life.

After he graduated from high school, Mark had hoped to go to communication school for radio. Alas, his draft number came up … remember those? He decided to preempt the Army’s long arm and enlisted in the Air Force instead. After a stint in Sacramento and Iceland, he resettled near the Air Force base in Sacramento.

Dad … chaplain at McClellan. Mark … singing in the chapel choir as a recently separated sergeant. (and by “separated” I mean from the Air Force!) Mom introduces us, and the rest, as they say, is history.

But the connections that God orchestrated are indeed mind boggling. Had there been any missteps along the way, I would not have been sitting here enjoying my breakfast, sipping my coffee, staring at a view and man I’ve come to love.

On this Veterans Day 2021, I thank God for Jesus and veterans! 

20 Years Later

From the first televised images to the heroic “let’s roll!” those of us who were of age remember where we were and the shock of the evil that attacked our country 20 years ago today. 

Following are the memories of my brother Danny, who was working near the Pentagon that day. I had never heard his entire story and part of it brought me to tears. Danny is a man of character. I am proud to call him my brother. These are his memories as he wrote them.

Stand By – Meetings Postponed 

On the morning of 9/11/2001 and in Skyline-1 of the Skyline Office Complex, my TMA support teammates and I had seen the pictures and reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center in NY. It was time for us to make our way to Skyline-6 for a meeting with your client in TRICARE Management Activity (TMA) Information Management (IM). We discussed what we had seen about the World Trade Center as we walked through the underground and then as we sat waiting in one of TMA’s Skyline-6 conference rooms. The meeting time came and passed. We waited. We got word that due to ongoing events and uncertainty of what was going on, our meeting would be postponed until another time. Then …

TMA Skyline Offices Shook (Pentagon Hit)

Skyline-6 shook. Our TMA client (a Navy Captain physician) came into the conference room and told us, “The Pentagon has just been hit”. From his office windows, we could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon. Unknown at that time if other Government buildings or offices would be targets. “We’re evacuating. Everyone out of the building.”

Evacuating Skyline Office Complex

We were on an upper floor of Skyline-6 in the TMA Information Management (IM) office space. There were multiple elevators that serviced Skyline-6 which, of course, were all turned off (shut down) during emergency evacuation. Dave Oris (fully wheelchair bound and dependent) was in the elevator lobby and obviously not able to go down stairs … much less many floors of stairs. I told Dave I’d stay with him until we could get someone strong enough to carry him down without his motorized wheelchair. As many people ran past us and into the stairwells, a much younger and stronger young man (I don’t know his name) came by and asked if he could help. “Do you know how to do a fireman’s carry?”  Yes! He lifted Dave up onto his shoulders and I went ahead of them to serve as an icebreaker to clear a path through the many people running, pushing, and elbowing their way down the stairs. That strong, young man carried Dave all the way down those many flights of stairs without stopping, and we got Dave down to the basement parking level entrance that faced Rt7 (Leesburg Pike).  Dave had already called family to pick him up, and the young man and I stayed with Dave until his ride arrived. Whoever that young, strong man was … he was a hero that day. He kept his head about him and used his strength to carry Dave to safety.

TMA Skyline Parking Garage Chaos 

People react to crises differently (an understatement). After we got out of the Skyline Office Complex buildings and were at rallying points in the parking lot, we were told to make our way home. For some of us, our cars were in underground parking … and mine was under Skyline-1. Like with the people pushing and elbowing down the stairwells; I again saw panic on peoples’ faces and in their eyes as they tried to get out of the underground parking. Some people were making lanes where there were no lanes. Some were so focused on getting out that they cut off other drivers and forced their way ahead. One person I remember seeing didn’t look left or right, didn’t consider other drivers around her, but she kept her eyes focused on the exit opening of the garage … she was going to get out no matter what.

People Walking on 395 

Once out of Skyline parking and over to 395 south; the scene was very much from an end-of-times movie. Highway 395 was almost without cars, and there were some people walking on the shoulders of the highway. I learned later that day that my daughter-in-law, who was working for the Navy in Chrystal City, had driven through the smoke that was blowing across 395 from the Pentagon.

NEVER FORGET 

I Been Workin’ on the Railroad … or … My Argument with the Shin-Hoe

 by Rex Eldon Nelson (from an article that appeared in “The Good Old Days”

In 1907, I worked as a bridge carpenter for the Utah Uinta Railroad. This was a narrow

gauge railroad that ran forty miles up into the Uinta Mountains to the mining town of Dragon. The

railroad hauled gilsinite from Dragon, down the mountain, to a loading platform for the Rio Grande

Railroad. The Rio Grande ran from Denver to Salt Lake City. 

The town of Dragon was home for the railroad workers, as well as the gilsinite miners. When I got word that I had the job in Utah, my wife Nettie and I were staying with her aunt in Grand Junction, Colorado. At the time, Nettie and I had one baby [William Earl Nelson] and another in the oven [Oliver Lescher Nelson]. We were both excited about the job, as I had had no work for a few months and we both disliked having to lean on relatives. The job started as soon as I could arrive, so we packed our things and bundled the baby, and were ready to leave in a few days. [RJE note: based on these clues, they most likely made the move in late 1909.]


We rode on the Rio Grande Railroad to the base of the Uinta Mountains. There we

transferred to the Uinta Railroad's only passenger car for the forty-mile trip up the mountain to

Dragon. That final leg of the trip seemed the longest to Nettie and me, as we were excited to get a

look at our new hometown.


Our home was a tent house. That was the only kind of house that Dragon had. The floor

and about the first four feet of the walls were wood planks. The tops of the walls and the roof were

canvas. Over the whole house was a fly, like an awning, that sheltered us from the worst of the

weather.


We had two rooms: a sleeping room and a living room. We had a big cook stove that

doubled as a heater. The town had a central well and each house a water barrel. Every night after

work, I hauled water from the well to our barrel so that Nettie would have plenty of water the next

day. That house certainly wasn't much, but Nettie had a way of making a house into a home. We

didn't have much then, but we were young and we were happy.


Dragon wasn't a very big place. Including both the railroad and mine workers and their

families, the population couldn't have numbered more than 200. The town, however, boasted a

beer parlor, a general store, and a hotel. The hotel was the biggest building in town; it was a two

story all-wood structure. The hotel had a restaurant and the office for the only doctor for miles

around. If Dragon hadn't had a doctor I wouldn't be telling this story today.


As a bridge carpenter for Uinta, I worked with the crew that constructed the railroad

bridges over gullies, rivers, and marshes. We also built the wooden bulkheads that held the earth

back when the track sliced through a hill.


One morning we, on the bridge crew, traveled about six miles out of Dragon to work on a

bulkhead. We went by hand cart on the railroad tracks. That day my job was to strip bark from the

logs with an adz. You don't see anyone using an adz anymore; power tools do the work instead.

An adz looks like a hoe with a long slender, sharp blade. It is a dangerous tool if handled

incorrectly. In fact, we called the adz, a shin-hoe, which seems a better name to me.


I straddled a log and got to work. I pulled the shin-hoe toward me, skinning off the bark of

the tree. I must have gotten careless, because suddenly the adz sheared off a knot hole and came

toward me out of control. The blade buried itself in the inside of my leg, close to the knee. When I

pulled out the blade, blood spurted from the gash in my leg.


One of the men working close to me saw that I was hurt pretty bad and he hollered for the

others. Someone tried to press the wound closed, but the bleeding wouldn't stop. Someone else

said that they had better get me to the doc . . . fast. They hoisted me up and carried me to the

hand cart. They didn't waste any time getting that cart started. I got dizzy and fainted and don't

remember much about the trip, but I was told later that the hand cart literally flew along those

tracks.


I vaguely remember being carried into the doctor's office, but I passed out before he

stitched me up. I slept in that office all day. When I woke up, the doctor told me that a few more

minutes and I would had lost too much blood to recover. He said that I was lucky the men had

acted so fast. The doc added that it was a good thing, also, that I was so young and stubborn.


It was awhile before I was strong enough to return to my job. I still have that scar where,

over 70 years ago, I had that argument with the shin-hoe . . . .


Nettie and I stayed two years in Dragon, and when the railroad didn't need us anymore, we

moved with our two boys to Oregon.