The life story to be remembered. . . .

Mrs Allyson Daly,
Wayne High School
USA

 

Quote:

            “You are the hero of your own story.”       ~Joseph Campbell

             Although stories are important because they teach us about culture, although they teach us what it means to be human, and although they pass down history from generation to generation, this is not why we love them.  We love them because they hook us, and because they hook us and make us feel more alive they are powerful. 

I love stories!  I have always loved them, most especially because I had the most wonderful storyteller in my family.  As a little girl, my dad would tell us stories that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  The hero in his stories was often running through the jungle, getting chased by someone who wanted to hurt him, and as he was running he was hit the face and body by plants and bugs.  My dad would make slapping sounds against his chest to make the story come alive and my brothers and cousins and I would be spellbound.  To be spellbound means that what he was doing seemed like magic to us; we couldn’t look away.  I thought at the time that he was creating these stories from his imagination.

            I did not know it when I was eight, but my dad was a reconnaissance navigator for the F-4, fighter airplane in the Vietnam War.  Reconnaissance missions were those where the guns were taken off the airplane and in their place cameras were put to take pictures of activities on the ground.  While he was trying to take pictures over Laos in his airplane, he was shot down by a North Vietnamese pilot, who was flying a MIG, a Russian made fighter airplane.  As his airplane was breaking apart, exploding and twisting, he and the pilot were separated over a deep valley.  His parachute caught at the top of the jungle, about 130 feet above the ground.  As he was dangling in the tree, his plane was burning beneath him.  His seat had fallen all the way down and breaking branches in a column, creating a chimney effect.  The smoke, birds, and bugs all tried to escape through the path his seat had created and were hitting and choking him as they escaped.  After he got to the ground, he was chased through the jungle and had to hide not to be caught.  As the enemy soldiers fired their rifles into the jungle, the buckshot sprayed out and he could hear it patter on the leaves around him.  That is how close he was to being caught!   He was rescued by a helicopter pilot at the same moment that an enemy soldier found him and watched him jump to safety.  Now I know that the stories he told us when we were little were his way of sharing the scariest experience of his life, in a way that was safe, because until recently, he never talked about what happened to him in Vietnam.

              I am sharing this with you because what has happened to him in the last three years has been the most amazing story that I have ever witnessed.  Thirty-seven years after my father’s rescue, he got a call that the Vietnamese pilot who shot him down wanted to meet him.  At first my dad was not sure that he wanted to do that.   He hadn’t wanted to think about it at all, and now he would have to talk to the person who almost took his life.  The pilot’s name is Hong My and this is what it looked like when they met:

Photo:

In that moment, both Hong My and my dad, John Stiles, felt a flood of relief—relief that they had both survived, relief that they could meet in that moment and forgive each other, and relief that they could build a new friendship.  And they have.  Hong My has said, “We were never enemies; we were just soldiers doing our jobs.”  Together they have told their story to many people of the United States and some people in Vietnam.  Through the power of the story, the fear of that moment has been released and a profound healing, joy, and friendship has entered my father’s life.  The more he tells his story to the public, the more soldiers come up to him and say thank you.  Facing his fear and talking about it helps other people face and cope with their fears.

            Whether our stories are true or the fiction that leads us to the truth, we know that when we face our fears, we open ourselves up to new possibilities.  In these three stories from Eastern Wayne High School students, two of the stories are set in the time of kings and queens, but can you see each student’s real concerns within them?  In Tomeeka’s story, a young man feels that his parents are too strict and he wants to be free, so he breaks their rules.  His parents jump to the wrong conclusion to soon.  In Mary’s story, a simple man cannot think of a story to please his ruler, a queen who will kill him if he does not have a good one.  Doesn’t this sound like a student who is worried about thinking of a good story for a good grade?  (The character of the queen was greatly exaggerated; I do not scare my students into being good writers, but I did laugh at her device.)  The third student, by Chinese student Minyi He, shows a young girl who has moved from one school to another and how she must open herself up to new people and experiences to feel the “warmth from real friendship.”  

We offer a special thank you to Mamta, Julia, and Anna; by creating this volume you have made a space where we are all speakers and listeners, storytellers and members of the audience.  Only epic heroes take on the impossible task (managing ten international teachers, their students, all 12-17 years old, and finishing the end of the year chaos) to bring back a boon, or gift to the community (civilized, educated children).  Take a bow, epic heroes.   Individually, we created our own stories, but together we are also a part of a collective, larger story, one that moves us from viewing people as other than ourselves to participating in shaping our future.   We are writing a new story, one of discovery and mutual respect.  The gift you have given us by connecting us together is a powerful story that gives me hope.