IT WORKED!  -- "Packing Parachutes"
                     Insights Into Excellence, Executive Books
 

        Charles Plumb, a US Navy Academy graduate, was a jet fighter pilot in
Vietnam.  After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air
missile.  Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands.  He was captured and
spent the next six years in a Communist prison.  He survived that ordeal and now
lectures about lessons learned from that experience.

         One day, when he and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, and man at
another table came up and said, "You're Plumb!  You flew jet fighters in Nam
from the carrier, Kitty Hawk.You were shot down!"
 
        "How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.

        "Oh, I was the one who packed your parachute," the man replied.

          Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude.  The man smiled and said, "Yep,
I guess it worked!"

          Plumb assured him, "It sure did work -- if your chute hasn't worked, I
wouldn't be here today."

          Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about the man who has packed
his parachute.  Plumb kept wondering what the man might have looked like in a
Navy uniform.  "I wondered how many times I might have passed him on the
Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even
said good morning, how are you or anything, because you see, I was a fighter
pilot and he was just a sailor."

         Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden
table in the bowels of the ship carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the
silks of each chute, holding in his hands the fate of someone he didn't know.

         Now Plumb asks his audiences, "Who's packing your chute?"  Everyone
has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day.

         Plumb also points out that we all need many kinds of parachutes. We need
mental, emotional and spiritual parachutes as well.  While a prisoner of war, Plumb
called on all of these supports before reaching safety.  His experience reminds us
all to prepare ourselves to weather whatever storms lie ahead -- and to recognize
and appreciate all of those people who pack our parachutes everyday, for they are
the ones who truly deserve the credit for our survival.