June 1989 – Death Row, Holman Prison – Atmore, Alabama: Thursday was execution day on death row. Ray lay awake in his five by seven-foot cell located 30 steps from the death chamber where the electric chair, “Yellow Mama,” sat. He couldn’t sleep, because the prisoner...
April 8, 1968 – Khe Sanh, Vietnam: Captain Max Cleland received an order to set up a radio relay station on a hill east of Khe Sanh. As he exited the helicopter, the 26-year-old Army signal officer saw a grenade at his feet. When he reached down to pick it up, it...
1984 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Night after night Max sat at his desk working on his book. While he wrote, his wife, Denalyn, sat on the sofa doing cross-stitch. Writing a book had been a dream for Max. As a young pastor in Miami for two years, he had gotten plenty of...
November 7, 1939 – New Britain, Connecticut: Korczak Ziolkowski received a letter from Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota Indian Chief in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It began, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes,...
January 21, 1912 – Key West, Florida: At 10:34 a.m. the train from Miami arrived at the new Key West depot. Joined by dignitaries from North and South America, eighty-two-year-old Henry Flagler, with tears in his eyes, sat on the front seat of the first passenger car....
More than 30 years later, Bob Brenly still gets letters from pastors. They want him to know that they used what happened to him in September 1986 as a teaching moment in a sermon. Mike Krukow, a San Francisco Giants pitcher, would agree. After that bizarre major...