Thanksgiving Communion
Stories
Object:
Contents
A Story to Live By: "Thanksgiving Communion"
Vision Stories: "Seeing Jesus" by Paul Tulppo / "He Was Holding Them" by Lee Meissner
Good Stories: "The Trial of Gilbert Gunderson" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: Thanksgiving Lore
A Story to Live By
Thanksgiving Communion
Heather Murray Elkins tells about Thanksgiving preparations in her older sister's kitchen which, she says, "is filled with the noisy smell of dinner" and "too many sisters who know one another too well in too few ways. When things heat up we sing songs, our common heirloom from our mother. 'Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go....' "
Heather said her "assigned task" was to feed her grandmother, who was no longer able to feed herself. "Turkey is now beyond Grandma's ability or interest. Long after other tastes have departed, the sense of bitter and sweet remains, so she is having dessert. I spoon-feed her ice cream, attention elsewhere, until she stops the spoon with her hand. She traces the spoon to my fingers, kisses my hand, then happily retraces her way to the spoon. A primal gesture of gratitude for being fed. A simple eucharistic gesture. To kiss the hand that feeds you." (from Worshiping Women: Re-Forming God's People For Praise, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994, pgs. 57-58)
Vision Stories
Seeing Jesus
by Paul Tulppo
Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him....
Revelation 1:7a
Back in 1946, when I was 8 years old, I was returning from a day in the woods on the far west side of Detroit with my friend Jim, who was my age, and his brother Anthony, who was two years older. As we headed toward home, the brothers suggested that we stop at their church so they could show me, a non-Catholic, how they blessed themselves with holy water when they entered the church.
I followed them into their church, we all put our fingers into the holy water, and they crossed themselves. Then we knelt in the very last pew. When we looked up, we saw the Lord Jesus Christ standing on the altar, about 25 feet away. His arms were outstretched and there was a beautiful glow completely surrounding him. The three of us were in complete awe. We jumped to our feet and ran out of the church, and we didn't stop running until we reached home and told our mothers what we had seen.
I remember that vision as though it happened five minutes ago.
Paul Tulppo is a member of Christ United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. He served as a machinist in the U.S. Navy for 31 years. Paul and his wife, Dorothy Jean, enjoy their son, two daughters, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
He Was Holding Them
by Lee Meissner
It was a nice summer day. A mother and her two children, Marilyn and Gerry, were in the family car heading home after doing the weekly shopping. Everything was very routine. They had made the trip a thousand times. Then it happened. A car driven by a teenage boy didn't stop for a stop sign. The car with the mother and the children had the right of way. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The car that went through the stop sign couldn't have stopped. The police later estimated that the car was traveling in excess of ninety miles per hour. The impact was almost unimaginable. The children went through the roof of the car (this was in the days before seatbelts). The mother was near death, with many internal injuries and a broken neck, and in a coma.
A funeral was held for the children. The father didn't know how he would tell his wife that their children had been killed when she regained consciousness, if in fact she ever did.
It was about two weeks later that she came out of the coma. Now it was time to tell her that the children were gone. He husband tried to tell her, but before he could get the words out she said, "I know Marilyn and Gerry are gone, but it's okay. I saw them here in my room. They were sitting on my bed and Jesus was with them. He was holding them. I know they will be all right."
In time the mother recovered from her injuries. Although she did have some neck problems later in life, it was nothing that kept her from doing what she wanted to do. The couple later took in foster children, some short-term and some long-term.
This accident occurred in 1948 or 1949. The couple were my wife Helen's foster parents. She was placed in their care at the age of thirteen and lived with them until she went to college.
Lee Meissner is pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Watertown, Wisconsin. He received his M.Div. and M.A.R. degrees from the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. This story first appeared in the Easter edition of StoryShare.
Good Stories
The Trial of Gilbert Gunderson
by John Sumwalt
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth."
John 18:33, 37b
Gilbert Gunderson has been the editor of the Willow Bluff weekly newspaper for as long as I, and everybody I know, can remember. Gilbert inherited The Free Press from his father, old Jack Gunderson, who, according to local lore, was reputed to have won it in a card game sometime around the beginning of the 20th century. To hear Gilbert tell it, the old man was never sure that he had gotten such a good deal in the long run. The Free Press, in both old Jack's and Gilbert's time, was never very profitable, but it had always been known as an honest, no-nonsense newspaper. "We print the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," old Jack used to say, and Gilbert had carried on the tradition, though sometimes it had cost him readers and advertising revenue.
One community leader, in the midst of an enthusiastic introduction at the annual Lincoln Day dinner, had referred to Gilbert as "the conscience of Willow Bluff." Gilbert had quickly demurred, saying, "I'm not anybody's conscience. I just try to provide accurate information so that everyone can decide what is right." The truth was probably somewhere in between these two extremes. Gilbert's blistering editorials were certainly more than "accurate information." He used every bit of his considerable persuasive power to convince his readers of the truth of certain ideas that were contrary to their prejudices.
I was surprised, then, that day not long after Gilbert became ill, when he declared that he had been a failure as a father and a newspaperman. He said, "When it counted the most for my family and this community, I was silent." I knew he was depressed about his lung cancer, and so I didn't ask him to elaborate. At that point, we were optimistic that the cancer could be contained by the radiation and chemotherapy treatments.
There was a smell of cleaning chemicals in the air as I walked down the long hospital corridor toward Gilbert's room. He had sounded urgent on the phone. "Get over here right now!" That was the way he always talked to us when he passed out assignments at the paper. But this was different; it was personal, and I feared the worst.
Gilbert was propped up on a pillow with IVs in each arm and tubes trailing off to monitors on both sides of the bed. He looked pale and painfully thin, but the smile and the hearty hello were vintage Gilbert. All that was missing was the trademark cigarette dangling from his lip. It was the three packs a day of these "detestable cancer sticks," as Gilbert called them, that had brought him to this "deep, dark abyss into which every mortal is fated to plunge." That was another "Gilbertism" that all of us had heard him spout often down at the office.
"Get out your pad and pencil," Gilbert commanded, "I've got a story for you to print before I die. When I'm dead, the paper will be yours and you can print anything you please."
This was Gilbert's way of telling me he was leaving me the paper. It was all I could do to hold back my tears and keep myself from hugging him. Gilbert knew how much The Free Press meant to me. It was his way of telling me he loved me. He had treated me like a son ever since the death of his own son after the war. But Gilbert was not one for hugs, even in these dire circumstances, so I dutifully took out my pad and pencil.
"I dreamed that I died last night," Gilbert began, "and I found myself in a great judgment hall, standing before Christ himself. He was seated on an alabaster throne and dressed in a translucent white robe that was trimmed in a shimmering substance that sparkled like diamonds. There was a gold crown on his head and he held a silver scepter in his right hand. The Book of Life was spread out before him on a low table carved from the wood of a melaleuca alternifolia tree. The sweet fragrance of the melaleuca tree's healing oils filled the hall."
Gilbert loved to use obscure words and phrases that sent the rest of us scrambling for our dictionaries and encyclopedias. And he was a stickler for detail, so I struggled to get down every word.
Gilbert took a slow, painful breath and went on, "Christ pointed to the book of life and said, 'I see here that you are a newspaper editor and your name is Gilbert Gunderson. Is that true?'
" 'Yes, my Lord, I am Gilbert Gunderson.'
" 'Yes, yes, a very good record, indeed,' Christ said as he glanced down the page. 'But there is this one matter of the chemical company.'
"Christ looked up from the book and looked me square in the eye.
" 'It seems you knew about the danger of the chemicals produced there, but you wrote nothing to warn the public in your newspaper. It says here that you had seen a State Department report showing that these chemicals caused cancer in adults and birth defects in children.'
" 'Yes, I knew the chemicals were dangerous. But the town needed the jobs. That chemical company paid the first decent wages that the people of Willow Bluff had seen since World War II, and they provided health and pension benefits. It brought economic stability to Willow Bluff, probably saved the town. I doubt if there would be anything left of Willow Bluff today if it hadn't been for that chemical company, and the Vietnam War. I figured that since the chemicals were being used to defoliate the jungles in the war effort, maybe it wouldn't hurt if no one knew what they were making. I would have been crucified if I had published one bad word about that chemical company. No one would have advertised in my paper and everyone else would have canceled their subscriptions. It would have been the end of The Free Press.'
" 'I see,' Christ said. 'And I see here that thousands of American veterans who fought in that war, and thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, have died as a result of cancers caused by exposure to these chemicals. It says that your own son, Jack, was one of those who died. Is that true?'
"It was at that point I woke up in a cold sweat with my body trembling from head to foot. I didn't get a wink of sleep the rest of the night."
Gilbert looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "I cannot carry this burden of guilt to my grave. I must tell the community of my sin. It was wrong of me to keep silent. Write it all down: the dream, Jack's death, the huge profits the chemical company earned from selling their death potions to the Defense Department, the pressures from the leaders of this community to ignore what the chemical company was doing, my complicity in keeping the secret; write it all and print it on the front page in this week's edition. Go to the library; look up Agent Orange. It's all there."
Gilbert dismissed me with a wave of his hand, and I knew there was no more to be said. I headed to the library and set to work. One of the best resources I found was a book called My Father, My Son by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. and his son, Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt III. The blurb on the dustcover said:
...Elmo volunteered for one of the most dangerous Vietnam missions, commanding swift boats that patrolled rivers and canals. It was along these very rivers that Agent Orange, approved by his father in an effort to save Navy lives, was sprayed. Elmo miraculously survived to marry his college sweetheart, begin a successful law practice in North Carolina, and father two children. Then in 1983, he found he had cancer. He, and his father, believe it was Agent Orange that caused his cancer as well as severe learning disabilities in his son. Elmo tried to beat the odds with painful chemotherapy and bone-marrow transplants....
Elmo succumbed to the cancer not long after the book was published. The Zumwalts discovered in their research, during their vain attempts to save his life, that Agent Orange is a potent herbicide... "as devastating to foliage as DDT is to insects."
The chemical itself is a 50-50 mixture of two herbicides: 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. A third element, dioxin, which is an extremely toxic chemical, was found as a contaminate in Agent Orange, apparently as a product of the production process itself.... Eleven chemical companies were involved in defoliant production, including some major ones such as Monsanto, Dow, Diamond, Shamrock, Hercules, and North American Philips. (pg. 235) ...investigations have revealed that some of the chemical companies knew at the time of the State Department's report that evidence existed indicating 2,4,5-T caused birth defects in animals. And when evidence was later published suggesting there were potentially serious health hazards with this chemical, the companies denied it.... As one Food and Drug Administration researcher reported, dioxin would be as potent a cause of birth defects as thalidomide. (pg. 236)
It was all starting to fit together. I knew now why Gilbert felt so guilty. I read on...
As reports about Agent Orange's potential hazards mounted, and congressional hearings brought additional pressure to bear, this country discontinued spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam in April 1970. (pg. 237)
The Zumwalts quoted a Swedish study by Dr. Lennart Hardell which was published in The British Journal of Cancer:
...it suggests in summary, that exposure to organic solvents, chlorophenols, and/or phenoxy acids (2,4,5-T) constituted a risk factor for the incidence of malignant lymphoma... (pg. 237)
This was the final piece in the puzzle. I knew what had caused the untimely death of Gilbert's son and my best friend, Jack Gunderson. Jack had served in the same area in Vietnam as Lieutenant Zumwalt. He had been discharged in January of 1970 and had died of lymphoma cancer in 1987, the same year the Zumwalts' book was published.
I wrote it all up, and then I paid a visit to our local chemical company. They admitted manufacturing Agent Orange in the late 1960s, but they refused to comment on what they called "any alleged toxic effects."
There was enough for a story without their cooperation. I set it up for the front page, and then I took it over to the hospital to show Gilbert. I was surprised to find that his condition was much worse than when I had seen him earlier in the day. He was flat on his back, his eyes were closed, and there was an oxygen mask over his nose. Gilbert opened his eyes when I took his hand. He motioned for me to remove his mask. The attending nurse, who had been adjusting his IVs, nodded her approval. Gilbert thanked me for coming. I started to tell him what I had discovered at the library, but he put his fingers to his lips and said, "Get out your pad and pencil." I quickly complied.
"I had another dream while you were gone," Gilbert said, "although this time I think it was more like the real thing."
I realized Gilbert was trying to tell me that he had had a near-death experience.
"I felt myself slipping away," he said, "floating upwards out of my body and through a long tunnel toward a bright light. My son Jack and my father came to meet me. They embraced me and told me how glad they were to see me. I hugged them and heard myself laughing out loud in utter and complete joy. Then Jesus came and took my hand. I have never felt such peace in my whole life. He said, 'We've been waiting for you, Gilbert. It is time for you to rest. But first you must go back and say good-bye to your friend.' That's when you came in," Gilbert said, smiling up at me.
Then, with uncharacteristic tenderness, Gilbert said, "Now, give us a kiss and let this old man die in peace."
I kissed him and hugged him for a long time. The next day, my story about Gilbert's dreams, his silence about Agent Orange, and the cause of Jack's death appeared on the front page of The Free Press in the column next to his obituary.
(quotations from My Father, My Son by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. and Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt III, Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1987)
Scrap Pile
Thanksgiving Lore
In 1636, amid the darkness of the Thirty Years' War, a German pastor, Martin Rinkart, is said to have buried 5,000 of his parishioners in one year, an average of 15 a day. His parish was ravaged by war, death, and economic disaster. In the heart of that darkness, with the cries of fear outside his window, he sat down and wrote this table grace for his children:
Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices;
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom his world rejoices.
Who from our mother's arms,
Hath led us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today.
**************
A Turkey Song
by Jack Prelutsky
(sung to the tune of "My Bonny Lies over the Ocean")
My turkey shot out of the oven
And rocketed into the air,
It knocked every plate off the table
And partly demolished a chair.
It ricocheted into a corner
And burst with a deafening boom,
Then splattered all over the kitchen,
Completely obscuring the room.
It stuck to the walls and the windows,
It totally coated the floor,
There was turkey attached to the ceiling,
Where there'd never been turkey before.
It blanketed every appliance,
It smeared every saucer and bowl,
There wasn't a way I could stop it,
That turkey was out of control.
I scraped and I scrubbed with displeasure,
And thought with chagrin as I mopped,
That I'd never again stuff a turkey
With popcorn that hadn't been popped!
**************
George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and whereas both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness";
Now therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the single and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our national government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3rd day of October, A.D. 1789.
(signed) G. Washington
StoryShare, November 23, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
A Story to Live By: "Thanksgiving Communion"
Vision Stories: "Seeing Jesus" by Paul Tulppo / "He Was Holding Them" by Lee Meissner
Good Stories: "The Trial of Gilbert Gunderson" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: Thanksgiving Lore
A Story to Live By
Thanksgiving Communion
Heather Murray Elkins tells about Thanksgiving preparations in her older sister's kitchen which, she says, "is filled with the noisy smell of dinner" and "too many sisters who know one another too well in too few ways. When things heat up we sing songs, our common heirloom from our mother. 'Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go....' "
Heather said her "assigned task" was to feed her grandmother, who was no longer able to feed herself. "Turkey is now beyond Grandma's ability or interest. Long after other tastes have departed, the sense of bitter and sweet remains, so she is having dessert. I spoon-feed her ice cream, attention elsewhere, until she stops the spoon with her hand. She traces the spoon to my fingers, kisses my hand, then happily retraces her way to the spoon. A primal gesture of gratitude for being fed. A simple eucharistic gesture. To kiss the hand that feeds you." (from Worshiping Women: Re-Forming God's People For Praise, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994, pgs. 57-58)
Vision Stories
Seeing Jesus
by Paul Tulppo
Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him....
Revelation 1:7a
Back in 1946, when I was 8 years old, I was returning from a day in the woods on the far west side of Detroit with my friend Jim, who was my age, and his brother Anthony, who was two years older. As we headed toward home, the brothers suggested that we stop at their church so they could show me, a non-Catholic, how they blessed themselves with holy water when they entered the church.
I followed them into their church, we all put our fingers into the holy water, and they crossed themselves. Then we knelt in the very last pew. When we looked up, we saw the Lord Jesus Christ standing on the altar, about 25 feet away. His arms were outstretched and there was a beautiful glow completely surrounding him. The three of us were in complete awe. We jumped to our feet and ran out of the church, and we didn't stop running until we reached home and told our mothers what we had seen.
I remember that vision as though it happened five minutes ago.
Paul Tulppo is a member of Christ United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. He served as a machinist in the U.S. Navy for 31 years. Paul and his wife, Dorothy Jean, enjoy their son, two daughters, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
He Was Holding Them
by Lee Meissner
It was a nice summer day. A mother and her two children, Marilyn and Gerry, were in the family car heading home after doing the weekly shopping. Everything was very routine. They had made the trip a thousand times. Then it happened. A car driven by a teenage boy didn't stop for a stop sign. The car with the mother and the children had the right of way. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The car that went through the stop sign couldn't have stopped. The police later estimated that the car was traveling in excess of ninety miles per hour. The impact was almost unimaginable. The children went through the roof of the car (this was in the days before seatbelts). The mother was near death, with many internal injuries and a broken neck, and in a coma.
A funeral was held for the children. The father didn't know how he would tell his wife that their children had been killed when she regained consciousness, if in fact she ever did.
It was about two weeks later that she came out of the coma. Now it was time to tell her that the children were gone. He husband tried to tell her, but before he could get the words out she said, "I know Marilyn and Gerry are gone, but it's okay. I saw them here in my room. They were sitting on my bed and Jesus was with them. He was holding them. I know they will be all right."
In time the mother recovered from her injuries. Although she did have some neck problems later in life, it was nothing that kept her from doing what she wanted to do. The couple later took in foster children, some short-term and some long-term.
This accident occurred in 1948 or 1949. The couple were my wife Helen's foster parents. She was placed in their care at the age of thirteen and lived with them until she went to college.
Lee Meissner is pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Watertown, Wisconsin. He received his M.Div. and M.A.R. degrees from the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. This story first appeared in the Easter edition of StoryShare.
Good Stories
The Trial of Gilbert Gunderson
by John Sumwalt
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth."
John 18:33, 37b
Gilbert Gunderson has been the editor of the Willow Bluff weekly newspaper for as long as I, and everybody I know, can remember. Gilbert inherited The Free Press from his father, old Jack Gunderson, who, according to local lore, was reputed to have won it in a card game sometime around the beginning of the 20th century. To hear Gilbert tell it, the old man was never sure that he had gotten such a good deal in the long run. The Free Press, in both old Jack's and Gilbert's time, was never very profitable, but it had always been known as an honest, no-nonsense newspaper. "We print the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," old Jack used to say, and Gilbert had carried on the tradition, though sometimes it had cost him readers and advertising revenue.
One community leader, in the midst of an enthusiastic introduction at the annual Lincoln Day dinner, had referred to Gilbert as "the conscience of Willow Bluff." Gilbert had quickly demurred, saying, "I'm not anybody's conscience. I just try to provide accurate information so that everyone can decide what is right." The truth was probably somewhere in between these two extremes. Gilbert's blistering editorials were certainly more than "accurate information." He used every bit of his considerable persuasive power to convince his readers of the truth of certain ideas that were contrary to their prejudices.
I was surprised, then, that day not long after Gilbert became ill, when he declared that he had been a failure as a father and a newspaperman. He said, "When it counted the most for my family and this community, I was silent." I knew he was depressed about his lung cancer, and so I didn't ask him to elaborate. At that point, we were optimistic that the cancer could be contained by the radiation and chemotherapy treatments.
There was a smell of cleaning chemicals in the air as I walked down the long hospital corridor toward Gilbert's room. He had sounded urgent on the phone. "Get over here right now!" That was the way he always talked to us when he passed out assignments at the paper. But this was different; it was personal, and I feared the worst.
Gilbert was propped up on a pillow with IVs in each arm and tubes trailing off to monitors on both sides of the bed. He looked pale and painfully thin, but the smile and the hearty hello were vintage Gilbert. All that was missing was the trademark cigarette dangling from his lip. It was the three packs a day of these "detestable cancer sticks," as Gilbert called them, that had brought him to this "deep, dark abyss into which every mortal is fated to plunge." That was another "Gilbertism" that all of us had heard him spout often down at the office.
"Get out your pad and pencil," Gilbert commanded, "I've got a story for you to print before I die. When I'm dead, the paper will be yours and you can print anything you please."
This was Gilbert's way of telling me he was leaving me the paper. It was all I could do to hold back my tears and keep myself from hugging him. Gilbert knew how much The Free Press meant to me. It was his way of telling me he loved me. He had treated me like a son ever since the death of his own son after the war. But Gilbert was not one for hugs, even in these dire circumstances, so I dutifully took out my pad and pencil.
"I dreamed that I died last night," Gilbert began, "and I found myself in a great judgment hall, standing before Christ himself. He was seated on an alabaster throne and dressed in a translucent white robe that was trimmed in a shimmering substance that sparkled like diamonds. There was a gold crown on his head and he held a silver scepter in his right hand. The Book of Life was spread out before him on a low table carved from the wood of a melaleuca alternifolia tree. The sweet fragrance of the melaleuca tree's healing oils filled the hall."
Gilbert loved to use obscure words and phrases that sent the rest of us scrambling for our dictionaries and encyclopedias. And he was a stickler for detail, so I struggled to get down every word.
Gilbert took a slow, painful breath and went on, "Christ pointed to the book of life and said, 'I see here that you are a newspaper editor and your name is Gilbert Gunderson. Is that true?'
" 'Yes, my Lord, I am Gilbert Gunderson.'
" 'Yes, yes, a very good record, indeed,' Christ said as he glanced down the page. 'But there is this one matter of the chemical company.'
"Christ looked up from the book and looked me square in the eye.
" 'It seems you knew about the danger of the chemicals produced there, but you wrote nothing to warn the public in your newspaper. It says here that you had seen a State Department report showing that these chemicals caused cancer in adults and birth defects in children.'
" 'Yes, I knew the chemicals were dangerous. But the town needed the jobs. That chemical company paid the first decent wages that the people of Willow Bluff had seen since World War II, and they provided health and pension benefits. It brought economic stability to Willow Bluff, probably saved the town. I doubt if there would be anything left of Willow Bluff today if it hadn't been for that chemical company, and the Vietnam War. I figured that since the chemicals were being used to defoliate the jungles in the war effort, maybe it wouldn't hurt if no one knew what they were making. I would have been crucified if I had published one bad word about that chemical company. No one would have advertised in my paper and everyone else would have canceled their subscriptions. It would have been the end of The Free Press.'
" 'I see,' Christ said. 'And I see here that thousands of American veterans who fought in that war, and thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, have died as a result of cancers caused by exposure to these chemicals. It says that your own son, Jack, was one of those who died. Is that true?'
"It was at that point I woke up in a cold sweat with my body trembling from head to foot. I didn't get a wink of sleep the rest of the night."
Gilbert looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "I cannot carry this burden of guilt to my grave. I must tell the community of my sin. It was wrong of me to keep silent. Write it all down: the dream, Jack's death, the huge profits the chemical company earned from selling their death potions to the Defense Department, the pressures from the leaders of this community to ignore what the chemical company was doing, my complicity in keeping the secret; write it all and print it on the front page in this week's edition. Go to the library; look up Agent Orange. It's all there."
Gilbert dismissed me with a wave of his hand, and I knew there was no more to be said. I headed to the library and set to work. One of the best resources I found was a book called My Father, My Son by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. and his son, Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt III. The blurb on the dustcover said:
...Elmo volunteered for one of the most dangerous Vietnam missions, commanding swift boats that patrolled rivers and canals. It was along these very rivers that Agent Orange, approved by his father in an effort to save Navy lives, was sprayed. Elmo miraculously survived to marry his college sweetheart, begin a successful law practice in North Carolina, and father two children. Then in 1983, he found he had cancer. He, and his father, believe it was Agent Orange that caused his cancer as well as severe learning disabilities in his son. Elmo tried to beat the odds with painful chemotherapy and bone-marrow transplants....
Elmo succumbed to the cancer not long after the book was published. The Zumwalts discovered in their research, during their vain attempts to save his life, that Agent Orange is a potent herbicide... "as devastating to foliage as DDT is to insects."
The chemical itself is a 50-50 mixture of two herbicides: 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. A third element, dioxin, which is an extremely toxic chemical, was found as a contaminate in Agent Orange, apparently as a product of the production process itself.... Eleven chemical companies were involved in defoliant production, including some major ones such as Monsanto, Dow, Diamond, Shamrock, Hercules, and North American Philips. (pg. 235) ...investigations have revealed that some of the chemical companies knew at the time of the State Department's report that evidence existed indicating 2,4,5-T caused birth defects in animals. And when evidence was later published suggesting there were potentially serious health hazards with this chemical, the companies denied it.... As one Food and Drug Administration researcher reported, dioxin would be as potent a cause of birth defects as thalidomide. (pg. 236)
It was all starting to fit together. I knew now why Gilbert felt so guilty. I read on...
As reports about Agent Orange's potential hazards mounted, and congressional hearings brought additional pressure to bear, this country discontinued spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam in April 1970. (pg. 237)
The Zumwalts quoted a Swedish study by Dr. Lennart Hardell which was published in The British Journal of Cancer:
...it suggests in summary, that exposure to organic solvents, chlorophenols, and/or phenoxy acids (2,4,5-T) constituted a risk factor for the incidence of malignant lymphoma... (pg. 237)
This was the final piece in the puzzle. I knew what had caused the untimely death of Gilbert's son and my best friend, Jack Gunderson. Jack had served in the same area in Vietnam as Lieutenant Zumwalt. He had been discharged in January of 1970 and had died of lymphoma cancer in 1987, the same year the Zumwalts' book was published.
I wrote it all up, and then I paid a visit to our local chemical company. They admitted manufacturing Agent Orange in the late 1960s, but they refused to comment on what they called "any alleged toxic effects."
There was enough for a story without their cooperation. I set it up for the front page, and then I took it over to the hospital to show Gilbert. I was surprised to find that his condition was much worse than when I had seen him earlier in the day. He was flat on his back, his eyes were closed, and there was an oxygen mask over his nose. Gilbert opened his eyes when I took his hand. He motioned for me to remove his mask. The attending nurse, who had been adjusting his IVs, nodded her approval. Gilbert thanked me for coming. I started to tell him what I had discovered at the library, but he put his fingers to his lips and said, "Get out your pad and pencil." I quickly complied.
"I had another dream while you were gone," Gilbert said, "although this time I think it was more like the real thing."
I realized Gilbert was trying to tell me that he had had a near-death experience.
"I felt myself slipping away," he said, "floating upwards out of my body and through a long tunnel toward a bright light. My son Jack and my father came to meet me. They embraced me and told me how glad they were to see me. I hugged them and heard myself laughing out loud in utter and complete joy. Then Jesus came and took my hand. I have never felt such peace in my whole life. He said, 'We've been waiting for you, Gilbert. It is time for you to rest. But first you must go back and say good-bye to your friend.' That's when you came in," Gilbert said, smiling up at me.
Then, with uncharacteristic tenderness, Gilbert said, "Now, give us a kiss and let this old man die in peace."
I kissed him and hugged him for a long time. The next day, my story about Gilbert's dreams, his silence about Agent Orange, and the cause of Jack's death appeared on the front page of The Free Press in the column next to his obituary.
(quotations from My Father, My Son by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. and Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt III, Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1987)
Scrap Pile
Thanksgiving Lore
In 1636, amid the darkness of the Thirty Years' War, a German pastor, Martin Rinkart, is said to have buried 5,000 of his parishioners in one year, an average of 15 a day. His parish was ravaged by war, death, and economic disaster. In the heart of that darkness, with the cries of fear outside his window, he sat down and wrote this table grace for his children:
Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices;
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom his world rejoices.
Who from our mother's arms,
Hath led us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today.
**************
A Turkey Song
by Jack Prelutsky
(sung to the tune of "My Bonny Lies over the Ocean")
My turkey shot out of the oven
And rocketed into the air,
It knocked every plate off the table
And partly demolished a chair.
It ricocheted into a corner
And burst with a deafening boom,
Then splattered all over the kitchen,
Completely obscuring the room.
It stuck to the walls and the windows,
It totally coated the floor,
There was turkey attached to the ceiling,
Where there'd never been turkey before.
It blanketed every appliance,
It smeared every saucer and bowl,
There wasn't a way I could stop it,
That turkey was out of control.
I scraped and I scrubbed with displeasure,
And thought with chagrin as I mopped,
That I'd never again stuff a turkey
With popcorn that hadn't been popped!
**************
George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and whereas both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness";
Now therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the single and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our national government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3rd day of October, A.D. 1789.
(signed) G. Washington
StoryShare, November 23, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
