Jim Lovell, R.I.P.

We lost a truly remarkable man on Thursday. Jim Lovell, Navy Captain, Naval Aviator, Gemini and Apollo astronaut, and all-around terrific guy died at the age of 97. I won’t go on about his many accomplishments since you can read all about them on any of the many online obituaries posted to the Internet. I’d rather just say a few words about how I got to know this man who is one of our nation’s true heroes.

Flying Recovery Helo for Apollo 13

I met Jim Lovell on the morning of April 17, 1970, when our crewmen hoisted him and two other astronauts aboard our Navy SH-3D helicopter not long after their Apollo 13 command module splashed down several hundred miles south of American Samoa in the South Pacific. At the time I was the helicopter’s co-pilot and Chuck Smiley, my Commanding Officer, was the pilot. Chuck, who died in 2016, was another of the great ones who had such an impact on my life.

Apollo13 Astronauts: Lovell, Swigert, Haise (L to R)

The Apollo 13 crew -- Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise -- had survived a near catastrophic roundtrip to the moon, a mission that forced NASA and this three-man crew to apply all of their knowledge and skills in ways never imagined. If you can't recall the problems that plagued the mission (or if were not alive back then), you can always watch the movie -- Apollo 13 -- or simply click here to read NASA's detailed description of the mission. 

Apollo 13 Splashdown (I took the photo from our helo)

Anyway, when we hoisted the astronauts aboard our helicopter I had never seen three happier men. We brought them aboard one-at-a-time and then flew them to the ship, the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2), just a few hundred yards away. While their flight to the moon and back had been filled with life-threatening problems, the recovery went smoothly and trouble-free. The photo below depicts our crew (I'm second from left, all of 25 years old).

Crew of "66" -- Apollo 13 Recovery

Later that evening we had the opportunity to meet briefly with the astronauts, something we hadn't been able to do on Apollo 11 and 12, the previous moon landing missions. On those missions the astronauts were immediately isolated in a special housing, along with a NASA doctor. I suppose there was a concern for possible contamination from space-bugs.  

The next day we flew the astronauts to Pago Pago in American Samoa in three separate helicopters. Jim Lovell flew in our aircraft and I asked him if he'd like to take my co-pilot seat and join the Skipper in the cockpit. I'd just take the jump seat right behind them. He loved the idea, and I still recall the first thing he said as he sat down and looked at the instrument panel and the controls: "Wow, these helicopters are sure getting a lot more complicated." This from a man who'd just brought a spacecraft to and from the moon under the worst conditions imaginable.

Jim Lovell & Chuck Smiley Flying to Samoa

We had a great time on the flight and talked a little about their lunar mission. But Captain Lovell was more interested in learning about the work our squadron did when we weren't picking up astronauts. The flight went well, and we were greeted by a huge crowd of happy Samoans at the Pago Pago airport. Also waiting there was a USAF C-141 transport to fly the astronauts back home to the USA. 

Over the past 50+ years, I've probably conducted 200 or more presentations on the Apollo 13 recovery for all kind of groups, large and small. And in recent years, thanks to computers and PowerPoint I have the perfect means to include many of the photographs taken during the recovery. I've always been an avid photographer, and in those days, I was fortunate to own a wonderful Leica camera which I usually carried with me when I flew...hence the photos of the Apollo 13 recovery.

After the Apollo 13 recovery, our squadron got out of the Apollo business and headed west to Vietnam (there was a war going on) aboard the USS Ticonderoga. I had an opportunity to meet Jim Lovell on several subsequent occasions, all involved with spreading the word about the great things that had been done during those Apollo days. He was always pleasant and kind and interested in what had taken place in my very odd life. 

Few know that Jim Lovell was literally a rocket scientist, the perfect educational background for an astronaut. He was also a fellow alumnus of the U. S. Naval Academy, although he graduated quite a few years before my class of 1967. 

Jim lived to the age of 97, no doubt longer than I will live. He lived a long and very productive life, a life devoted to bringing knowledge to the world. But most importantly it was a good life. As a nation, we will miss him. 

May the Lord bless him and keep him always in His heavenly embrace.

Homily: Saturday, First Week of Lent

Readings: Dt 26:16-19; Ps 119; Mt 5:43-48

As a Navy pilot during the war in Vietnam, I flew search and rescue helicopters. We were stationed aboard ships in the Tonkin Gulf and most of our rescue work involved picking up fighter and attack pilots who had been shot down. Although we were armed with a .30 caliber machine gun mounted in the cabin door, and we all carried small arms, these light weapons really provided very little protection. Anyway, our goal was to avoid detection. We just wanted to get in, pick up any survivors, and get out as quickly as possible. On the few occasions that one of our helicopter crews actually fired their weapons, I don’t think they ever hit anybody. I suppose they made us feel safer though.

The enemy, of course, were the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong communists. As my POW friends will attest, they were not nice people. And as my many Marine friends discovered when they liberated the ancient city of Hue, the communists had tortured and murdered over 7,000 men, women, and children during their month-long occupation. Yes, they were an easy enemy to hate.

But hating them troubled me because I had read the Sermon on the Mount and knew what Jesus had commanded of us. And so one day I paid a visit to the Catholic chaplain and asked him how we could reconcile the command to love our enemies with this conflict in which we were engaged. I’ll always remember that conversation.

It was a long conversation. I won’t go into our lengthy discussion on the just war doctrine. That’s a subject for another time. But I will tell you what he had to say about enemies and hatred and love and forgiveness.

He began by saying that if our enemies are those we hate, we have ceased being Christians. As disciples of Jesus Christ we are to hate no one. But if our enemies are those who hate us, then we will always have enemies.

After all, Jesus had many enemies, simply because He loved everyone, especially those despised by the world, and He spoke the truth even when it upset people, and did the Father’s will. Yes, Jesus had enemies, but He hated no one.

Our enemies decide how they will treat us. We decide only to love them or to hate them. Love and hate, you see, are not emotions. They’re decisions. Jesus calls us to make the decision to love regardless of the evil others do. And He calls to exclude no one from our love.

These are hard words for us, aren’t they? Hard indeed… until we come face to face with the Cross, and we hear His words, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” [Lk 23:34]. It’s there, on the Cross, that we encounter Divine Mercy: God’s perfect  love, a love that demands forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the only thing we can do to those we are called to love. If we refuse to forgive, we are refusing to love.

Do you remember the movie, “Dead Man Walking”? Well, one person you won’t see in the movie is Debbie Morris, the one victim who miraculously survived kidnapping, rape and torture -- a horrific ordeal at the hands of Robert Willie. He was executed based largely on her testimony. But after a long healing process, she said, “Justice didn’t do a thing to heal me. Forgiveness did.”

Yes, it’s easy to hate and scream for justice, for man’s justice, but it never brings healing. It never brings the closure the world promises. Only forgiveness can do that. Only forgiveness can heal.

The world will never run out of objects for our hatred, especially today when enemies abound. If we hope to become the people Moses spoke of in our first reading, “a people sacred to the LORD” [Dt 26:19], we must live up to God’s expectations for us, we who were created in His image and likeness.

And so He calls each of us to view this life as a pilgrimage of love, one in which we seek out others, finding Jesus Christ in each person we meet, and letting them recognize Jesus in us.

Let God be the one who will judge His creations.

We need only love.

Homily - Saturday, 3rd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Sm 12:1-7a, 10-17; Ps 51; Mk 4:35-41

Link to Video of Homily: Click Here
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Have you ever been afraid for your life? Given the age of most of us here today, I suspect we’ve all had one or two life-threatening experiences. For some it may have been the diagnosis of a serious illness. For others it may have been a dangerous situation that you survived, one of those sudden near misses. During my many years as a Navy pilot I certainly had my share of the latter, and I have vivid memories of them all. I’ll share one with you this morning.

I was flying a helicopter on a very dark night in the northern Pacific, up near the Aleutian Islands. We had left Adak, an island in the Aleutians that attracted no tourists, and were returning to the ship. The seas were especially rough, with high winds and a water temperature near freezing.

We were about 15 miles from the ship when we heard a loud bang from the main transmission – that’s the huge gearbox that connects the two jet engines to the rotor system. We then started getting other, serious indications of a rapidly worsening problem. Believe me, if the main transmission freezes, the main rotor system will do the same, and that’s never a good thing. And if we ended up in the water, our chances of survival in that dark, stormy, ice-cold environment were very slim.

So we followed all the proper emergency procedures and made our way to the ship, hoping we could land before everything failed. I asked my copilot and two crewmen to pray, and the three of them – a Mormon, a Southern Baptist, and an agnostic – agreed that this was good idea.

Surprisingly, as they prayed and I tried to keep us in the air, I found myself thinking of today’s Gospel passage from Mark. It’s strange how such thoughts just pop into your mind when you least expect them..

You see, like the apostles the first thing we experienced was fear, fear in a storm over which we had no control. Wondering whether Jesus were awake or asleep, I uttered my first prayer: “Wake up, Jesus. It’s scary out here, and you’ve got some quieting words to say.”

But then, remarkably, as I prayed this most imperfect of prayers, I was overcome by a sense of complete peace – and peace always brings change. What had been a frantic plea, uttered in fear, was transformed into a prayer of praise and thanksgiving; for somehow I knew that all would be well.

As you can see by my presence here today, we made it back safely. But right after we landed on that aircraft carrier’s deck, as I began to shut down the engines, the main transmission froze. The subsequent engineering investigation couldn’t explain why it hadn’t failed instantly, why it kept working for those miraculous 10 or 15 minutes we needed to return to the ship.

After landing, the four of us – even the agnostic – joined hands and offered a brief prayer of thanksgiving. For we four had learned something that dark night. We had learned that the absence of faith is not doubt, but fear.

"Be not afraid,” Jesus tells us again and again. Recall how he rebuked the apostles in today’s passage from Mark:  “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” [Mk 4:40] With this He confirms the connection between fear and lack of faith.

But once we began to pray, once we turned to God in faith, weak as it was, our fears began to melt away. Each member of my crew later told me that God had simply pulled all the fear from their hearts. It was a time when God revealed Himself and His saving power to each one of us.

Brothers and sisters, the antidote to fear is faith, a gift freely given, but one that you and I must freely accept. Let God fill your hearts with His love; accept His gift of faith so there’s no room for any fear. Let Him calm your soul as He calms the wind and the sea. Just remember, Jesus won’t calm your soul without your consent, without your faith in His power to do so.

In the Gospel the disciples marvel at Jesus as one “whom even wind and sea obey”. But even more marvelous is a disciple who, in the midst of life's crises, turns to God in faith and obedience.