O Stories

            Disabled love The Creightons were very proud of their son, Frank. When he went to college, naturally they missed him; but he wrote and they looked forward to his letters and saw him on weekends. Then Frank was drafted into the army. After he had been in the army about five months, he received his call to go to Vietnam. Of course, the parents’ anxiety was greater than ever before. And ever week they heard from him and were thankful for his well-being. Then one week went by without a letter ,two weeks and finally three. At the end of the third week a telegram came, saying, “We regret to inform you that your son has been missing for three weeks and is presumed to have been killed in action while fighting for his country.” The parents were grieved. They tried to accept the situation and go on living, but it was tragically lonesome. About three weeks later, however, the phone rang. A voice on the other end said,...

       On oars of courage In 1982 Steven Callahan was crossing the Atlantic alone in his sailboat when it struck something and sank. He was out of the shipping lanes and floating in a life raft, alone. His supplies were few. His fishermen found him seventy-six days later (the longest anyone has survived a shipwreck on a life raft alone), he was alive -- much skinnier than he was when he started, but alive. His account of how he survived is fascinating. His ingenuity -- how he managed to catch fish, how he fixed his solar still (evaporates sea water to make fresh) -- is very interesting. But the thing that caught my eye was how he managed to keep himself going when all hope seemed lost, when there seemed no point in continuing the struggle, when he was suffering greatly, when his life raft was punctured and after more than a week struggling with his weak body to fix it, it was still leaking air and wearing him out to keep pumping it up. H...