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Odds Favor Listening Over Speaking
I had a one-in-a-million lunch last week.
Twice.
As a columnist and author, from time to time I am asked to give talks to local clubs and service groups. I can’t speak for my audiences, but I always have an enjoyable time because I meet some wonderful people.
Case in point is the Conejo Valley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I had the great fortune to be seated with five members who are as interesting as they are lovely, which is saying something. Each is a role model for remaining curious and engaged in learning for a lifetime.
By the time I went to the lectern after our hour of dining together, I just hoped to be one quarter as interesting and entertaining to the ballroom at large as my table’s Fab Five women had been.
While I heard briefly about their grandchildren, this was just a quick conversational appetizer. The main course included stories they had recently read in Smithsonian Magazine, Discover, National Geographic, Scientific American, various newspapers, and also some documentary viewings.
The conversation flew around the table like the Globetrotters passing the basketball as my hosts Brenda Nakagawa, Dawn Hollis, Nancy Kilbourn, Sandi Selditz and Sharon Martin discussed Neanderthals and Homo sapiens and their interbreeding and migration patterns; how cursive writing affects the brain and enhances learning in children; the recent discovery in a Mexico junkyard of the 1968 Mustang driven by Steve McQueen in the movie “Bullitt”; and, of course, the Revolutionary War.
Even more interesting than their reading material was their life material. I learned about a career in the classroom; competing in dance contests in the 1950s; travel destinations near and far; and the Mayflower’s voyage to America.
In addition to being a Daughter of the American Revolution, Sharon Martin is a daughter of the Mayflower. Specifically, she is a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants. Even more specifically, she is a descendant of passenger John Howland.
Howland, as Sharon shared, fell overboard during the journey. By luck or by fate, or a dose of both, Howland managed to grab hold of a towline and was rescued from the frigid Atlantic waters.
Howland not only survived the voyage, he was one of 51 Pilgrims to survive the harsh first winter of illness and hunger in Plymouth, and ultimately had more descendants than any of his fellow passengers.
Those descendants include U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and both George Bushes; literature’s Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson; and Sharon Martin.
All told, it is estimated Howland’s descendants number 1 million. In other words, having lunch seated next to Sharon was a one-in-a-million experience.
The very next afternoon, I had lunch with The Ventura Retired Men’s Group which meets at the Elks Lodge.
Imagine combining the Greatest Generation with a troop of first-grade Cub Scouts and you get an idea of this fun group that ranges in age from 63 to 93. After the Pledge of Allegiance and invocation, jokes flew.
Among the fascinating people I met was my host and tablemate, Steve Carroll. Steve has traveled to 53 countries, and has an interesting story from each, but one especially stood out.
In China, in a town whose name Steve forgets, an unforgettable encounter took place. In a small park with a large “Peace Bell,” Steve saw an older man proudly wearing a vintage military uniform.
A veteran himself, Steve approached and – through the man’s daughter – introduced himself. Steve said he admired the man’s uniform and asked if he had served.
“Yes, in Vietnam,” came the interpreted reply.
Steve shared that he also was in Vietman and next asked, “What year?”
Came the answer: “1969.”
“Me, too,” Steve said. “Where?”
Again their answers were identical.
Forty years after two opposing soldiers had been at the very same spot, at the very same time, they shared one more thing: a warm embrace.
“I think it’s ironic it happened in a peace park with a peace bell,” Steve said, concluding his one-in-a-million story.
I also think it’s beautiful.
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