Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot.   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 6
years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal!

One day, while Plumb was in a restaurant, a man at
another table came up and said, "Hey aren't you 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 said, "I guess it worked !"
Plumb replied, "It sure did. If it hadn't  I wouldn't be here today."

All night, Plumb kept thinking about that man.
"I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white
hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many
times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are
you?' or anything because,  I was a fighter pilot and he was
just a sailor." Plumb  thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at
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.
..Who's packing your parachute? Everyone
has someone who provides part of what they need to make it through the day. Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is
really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you,
congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them,
give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. We will all be better off and perhaps even set more positive trends in motion by, recognizing the people who pack our parachutes.