A Man, A Bird, A Bucket of Gratitude

A True Story.

It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean. Old Ed would come strolling along the beach to his favorite pier in Coconut Grove , Florida.

Clutched in his bony hand would be a bucket of shrimp.

Ed would walk out to the end of the pier, where it seemed he almost had the world to himself.
Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed would be alone with his thoughts…and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he would not be alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots would come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls would envelope him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly.
Ed would stand there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he did, if you listened closely, you could hear him say with a smile, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

In a few short minutes the bucket would be empty. But Ed wouldn’t leave. He would stand there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might have seemed like ‘a funny old duck,’ as my dad used to say. Or, ‘a guy that’s a sandwich shy of a picnic,’ as my kids might say.

To onlookers, he’d be just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.

His full name was Eddie Rickenbacker.

He was a famous hero back in World War I and II, earning the Medal of Honor during WW I.
During WW2, he carried out special assignments for Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War.

In October, 1942, flying in a B-17 over the Pacific, on such a mission to Douglas MacArthur, the plane went down in the Pacific. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger.

By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were.

They needed a miracle.

That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle.

They tried to nap and Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose.

Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck.

He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal of it – a very slight meal for eight men.

Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait……and the cycle continued.

With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea).

Rickenbacker later wrote a book about the experience titled Seven Came Through.

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull.

And he never stopped saying, ‘Thank you.’

That’s why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

- excerpt from "In the Eye of the Storm" by Max Lucado