It happened every Friday night, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant, orange ball starting to dip into the blue ocean.
Ed strolls along the beach to his favorite pier clutching a bucket of shrimp in his bony hand. Ed walks out to the end of the pier where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now. Everybody is gone, except for a few early-evening joggers on the beach.
Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts…and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if one were to listen closely could hear him say, “Thank You. Thank You.”
In a few short minutes, the bucket is empty, but Ed doesn’t leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs. Then they, too, fly away leaving the old man by himself. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
An onlooker may look with critical eye at what seems odd. Perhaps though, an oserver may show love and compassion to a stranger that may seem different. Still others may brush it off with the thought that old folks often do stange things.
If one were sitting there on the pier with their fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like a quirky old man – just an old codger lost in his own weird world feeding the seaglls with a bucket of shrimp.
Most of them would probably write old Ed off, down there in Florida. That’s too bad. They’d do well to know him better.
His full name is Eddie Rickenbacker.
During World War I, Eddie Rickenbacker was a pilot and became America’s first ace pilot.
Hear the rest of his story in next week’s blog, “Courage of a Hero.”