As we are making our way to West Point for our son's completion of his Student Leadership program, I'm arriving from the south and my sweet bride is arriving later tonight from Idaho.
When I travel, I don't often make small talk with strangers. It's probably one part being lonely and one part trying to "get there".
Yet today, I saw a man about my age on the train that takes you from one airport concourse to another (how funny that this is about the only use for trains carrying people today...to fly)
And then he asked me about my West Point cap...striking up an immediate conversation. I told him that I was a part of the Class of 78...and he reached over, quick as you could wink, and grabbed my hand.
"Tom Austin, Class of 1975 - I was Company commander, 5th Company New Cadet Barracks - I "helped" your class during your Beast Barracks in 1974 ( A long, terrible Boot Camp from Hades...)"
I was stunned...but it gets better.
Out of 1,000 plebes and their many, many Companies, 5th Company? What... that was MY Plebe Summer Company....NO, No..he was MY Plebe Company Commander. It was like Corrie ten Boom meeting her jailer...John Paul meeting Mehet the gunman...
There he was in living color...and it turns out he was a believer in Jesus Christ, both then and now!! He is in town being considered for a spot with a missionary outreach to help those in the service.
What a wonderful, memory expanding, mind-numbing accidental non-accident.
Who would have thought that on the eve of my own son, possibly considering his college years to be at West Point, that I would meet this man from my past?
I think that's why early colonial Fathers often called God by the name of Providence...
Den
Really???? What are the chances except for Providence intervening??? Great story! What a chance to reconnect!!! Life continues on and it is so fun to watch it unfold...
Posted by: Janet and Tom | June 14, 2009 at 06:56 PM