Something Lindsey “Zeb” Wilcox told me when I was
interviewing him has stuck with me these many years. He was one of the
survivors of the WWII US Navy ship, the USS Indianapolis. If you remember, this
is the ship that was torpedoed at the end of the war and had carried the
components of the first atomic bomb. Of the crew of 1196 men, only 900 sailors
went into the water. 5 days later the survivors were pulled to safety. Many
succumbed to their injuries; out of desperation a good number drank salt water
and went crazy. Zeb was one of the 317 that kept their wits and survived.
“The difference between those who died and me was I didn’t
want to die. I didn’t give up hope. I had things I wanted to accomplish.” Zeb
told me he had the same nightmare every night and would wake up sweating. He
said one time a crazy-eyed sailor tried to choke him, thinking he was a
Japanese soldier. Another suddenly spotted something deep in the ocean and dove
down out of site, never again to resurface.
Fate would have it that Zeb and crossed paths more than once
before I met him as a survivor of this tragedy.
Call it providence or whatever, but I now believe it was divine
intervention.
Zeb was long retired by this time, having spent his time as
an Operator at Solvay. I worked next door at a competitor of theirs making the
same product. He was big in the Lion’s Club and spent a lot of time raising
awareness to the naval tragedy. He stayed busy and I was in his home and later
his nursing home room many times. He was full of life and it wasn’t obvious
that he still endured those horrible memories. He did his best to put it behind
him and move on.
Now I am retired and I am carrying nowhere near the bad
memories of this hero and I feel I owe it to his memory to make a mark in life.
Remember Tom Hank’s character in epic WWII movie, Saving Private Ryan, when he
whispered “James, earn this... earn it.”? No
one, but Zeb and God was there for him, but he made it and he made it good. I
want to be like that. At my swan song, I want people to tell me I am a good
man. I can personally say Zeb was.
What in the heck does all of this have to do with you?
Everything. You and me both. It’s a challenge of sorts. Do we really need people
to rescue us from tragedy to step up our game? I don’t think so. I think it
takes a realization that all of can live cleaner, more rational, less
selfishly, and kinder. Start by parking father out in the vast parking lots and
leave the better spaces to those who aren’t as spry and physically fit as we
are. Baby step it.
Tip not only the person bagging your groceries, but hand the
checker a buck and tell her she just got a dollar an hour raise. It is not the
great big things that make differences in our lives folks; it’s those little
unexpected goodies that come our way that we never forget. I have done this
many times and the look of surprise on their face is always worth the money.
Many times we wrongly believe we are living a life of
hardship, when at out poorest, we live better than most people around the
globe. The traffic on Garth Road
has some people so angry, they could bite the head off their favorite Hillary/Trump
voodoo doll and when you put it in perspective, it is simply no big deal. Why
worry about stupid stuff and on second thought, why have a doll like that in
the first place?
Zeb told me that one night he awoke and he had drifted about
a hundred yards from the larger group. Two 8 foot reef sharks were staring at
him trying to decide if he was dead or not. He immediately began to violently
swim between them and they followed him all the way back to the group before
breaking off. This nightmarish scene was relived every night for over 65 years
before he finally passed away a few years ago. And we think we have it rough? Not
hardly, my friends.
We sink or we swim folks. You do, I do and it’s entirely our
choice which one we make. We can choose to go through life floating and find
out where we end up when we get there, or make corrections toward a destination
of our choice.
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