Dad - Prologue to The Boys In The Boat / Making Good Memories

Caleb:

I recently read a book that recounted the true story of the boat crew from the University of Washington that went to and won the gold medal for team rowing at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.  The author is talking about his interactions with Joe Rantz, one of the "boys", as he prepared the book for publication.  The book was good; I enjoyed it, however, the forward was excellent, maybe even better than the book...

This book is born on a cold, drizzly, late spring day when I clambered over the split-rail cedar fence that surrounds my pasture and made my way through wet woods to the modest frame house where Joe Rantz lay dying...

His voice was reedy, fragile, and attenuated almost to the breaking point.  From time to time he faded into silence.  Slowly though, with cautious prompting from his daughter, he began to spin out some of the threads of his life story.  Recalling his childhood and his young adulthood during the Great Depression, he spoke haltingly but resolutely about a series of hardships he had endured and obstacles he had overcome, a tale that, as I sat taking notes, at first surprised and then astonished me.

But it wasn't until he began to talk about his rowing career at the University of Washington that he started, from time to time, to cry.  He talked about learning the art of rowing, about shells and oars, about tactics and technique.  He reminisced about long, cold hours on the water under steel-gray skies, about smashing victories and defeats narrowly averted, about traveling to Germany and marching under Hitler's eyes into the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, and about his crewmates.  None of these recollections brought him to tears, though.  It was when he tried to talk about "the boat" that his words began to falter and tears welled up in his bright eyes.

At first I thought he meant the Husky Clipper, the racing shell in which he had rowed his way to glory.  Or did he mean his teammates, the improbable assemblage of young men who had pulled off one of rowing's greatest achievements?  Finally, watching Joe struggle for composure over and over, I realized that "the boat" was something more than just the shell or its crew.  To Joe, it encompassed but transcended both - it was something mysterious and almost beyond definition.  It was a shared experience - a singular thing that had unfolded in a golden sliver of time long gone, when nine good-hearted young men strove together, pulled together as one, gave everything they had for one another, bound forever together by pride and respect and love.  Joe was crying, at least in part, for the loss of that vanished moment but much more, I think, for the sheer beauty of it.

Prologue to The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown

Think about the power of fond memories.  Then consider your own life.  When you look back at your mission will it be a "golden sliver of time" for which you are infinitely proud?  It's worth thinking about.  Based upon your first month in the mission field, I think you're well on your way to such an accomplishment.

I love you and I'm proud of you,

Dad