Grappling For Excellence-Who Is Backing You Up?

"Who Packs Your Parachute

Charles Plumb, a US Naval Academy graduate,
was a jet 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 Plumb and his wife were sitting
in a restaurant, a man at another table came up
and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in
Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk.
You were shot down!"

"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.

"I packed your parachute," the man replied.

Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man
pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"

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

Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about
that man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what
he might have looked like in a navy uniform--adixie cup hat, a bib in the back, and bell bottom
trousers. 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 each time
the fate of someone he didn't know.

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

Plumb also points out that he needed many kinds
of parachutes when his plane was shot down over
enemy territory--he needed his physical parachute,
his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and
his spiritual parachute.

He called upon all these supports before reaching
safety. His experience reminds us to prepare
ourselves to weather whatever storms lie ahead.

I found this story in my archives and had not read it for a long time. I just thought about fostering an atmosphere of excellence where everyone realizes how important the even supposed minute details are to everyone else on the team and take that kind of pride in their work so that everyone succeeds. How is on your team and how important do that take their role. Something to think about

Coach Bodnar
"grappling for excellence"
Best of the West Duals
December 19-20, 2007
Don't Let Your Team Down
give them a great wrestling experience!
coachbodnar@gmail.com