This past Veteran’s Day got me thinking about veterans I have known and whose service for which I am grateful. One that came to mind was Jack Long. We were members of the same church, and his Christian life also served as a guide to my own.
 Jack’s mother died when he was very young; his father, who was very poor, could no longer care for him and placed him in the Hershey Home near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This is where Jack grew up, and he seemed to have fond memories of his time there. His house father was an Amish man. Since Jack knew I was a math teacher, he told me how his house father once saw him studying algebra and remarked as how in HIS day math was done with numbers and not letters. Jack graduated right about the start of World War II and was soon in the Army.

 Jack was a crew member of a B-24 bomber during WWII. He had a newspaper photo of a formation of B-24s flying through flak (bursting anti-aircraft shells) over the Po River valley in Italy, and the middle plane in the photo is shown as being hit. It was his plane, and he and the rest of the crew were forced to bail out. On the ground he was captured at pitchfork by a farmer, who turned him over to local Communist partisans. The partisans hid him and a fellow crew member on the second floor over a tailor’s shop that was next door to the local German Army headquarters; they stayed there until the town was captured by the Allies many months later. Jack said that they were very fortunate, but they could never look out a window and had to remain absolutely still without talking during the day.

 The fellow crew member that was hidden with Jack was Bob Chappius, and his is also an interesting story. After the war he went on to become a pretty good football player at the University of Michigan. He was a consensus All-American, Most Valuable Player in the Rose Bowl, and the runner-up in the Heisman Trophy voting to Johnny Lujack of Notre Dame. In the 1990s, Sports Illustrated published a retrospective article on Chappius that included a WWII picture with his fellow crew members; Jack’s smiling face was easy to pick out, even though the picture had been taken about fifty years before.

 Personally, Jack was friendly, warm, self-effacing and kind. He was an usher at church and made all feel welcome. He had a good sense of humor and was not afraid to admit to folly; he was one of those people to which a lot of strange things happened. For example, he told me about the time he carried some treated poles, that he was going to use to build a pier, home on top of his car; the roof of his car caved in, and he drove it that way for a couple of years. Another time he told me about the one and only time he played golf. The story was hilarious, and only a small part of the story involved throwing a golf ball. Many at church didn’t know the details about Jack’s wartime service, but he told me about when he bailed out of the bomber. He said his watch caught and left him hanging out the bottom of the plane. Another crew member thought he was trying to climb back in the plane and stepped on his head to force him out. The watch band scratched his wrist and in telling me he said, “Dang if they didn’t go and give me the Purple Heart for that scratch.”

 Jack was about as far from a street preacher you can get, but his love-filled life, together with the obvious role the church played in his life, made him one of the best Christian witnesses I’ve ever known. Jack was a commercial artist at the local Western Electric plant, and I was told several families had come to the church by knowing him at work. He is gone now; not only am I thankful for his military service, but also for being the quiet witness he was. Read John 13:34-35, and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Jim

Today’s reading: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2013:34-35