Once again, I turned to Wikipedia to get some inspiration for today's posting by typing 'February 3' into the search box. It really is very cool the results that come back for any given day, and this time one entry caught my eye in particular: the Four Chaplains.
There are many topics and persons in U.S. history (and even around the world) that I am familiar with by name, but do not know the substance of the story behind the name, and the Four Chaplains are an example. How do I know about them? Through my childhood hobby of philately. Through postage stamps, we discover vignettes of people and events that are formative to the countries that issue those stamps. Here's the stamp that I remembered and led me to read about the Four Chaplains today.
But, back to the main topic. The story of the Four Chaplains is one of those timeless tales of human courage and sacrifice, and I feel rewarded knowing the true story behind the postage stamp. And there's also the joy of discovering a thread that ties back into your own life: one of the four had attended Yale Divinity School, which I visited on several occasions as an undergraduate to sing with the Yale Glee Club.
I gave a small donation to The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation.
Before closing on this post, I want to ask you a Deliberately Difficult Question (DDQ): If you were presented with a single ticket to escape doomsday, would you give that ticket away? To whom might you give the ticket?
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