[Magdalen] John Magee was Prayers ANSWERED: missing, beloved dog is found!

[Jay Weigel]

I can never see this poem without thinking of my favorite home health
patient, who had been in the Army Air Corps in WWII and had "flown the
Hump" over the Himalayas. He told me some interesting tales about those
days. When he died his family asked me to be part of the funeral service.
At the burial, his grandson, a naval aviator, read this poem. As he
finished, I happened to look up, and far above us, I saw a jet going across
the sky, leaving its trail behind it. I thought the old pilot would have
liked that.

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 6:34 PM, shutchinsonca <shutchinsonca at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Sorry Sibyl -- doing email from my new phone!! I hope this goes to you and
> the list.
> blessings Susan
>
>
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.-------- Original message
> --------From: Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3 at ckt.net> Date: 2016-02-19  2:39 PM
> (GMT-08:00) To: magdalen at herberthouse.org Subject: Re: [Magdalen] John
> Magee was Prayers ANSWERED: missing, beloved dog is found!
> I don't know why Susan sent to me instead of to List, but I just got
> this in my inbox with the List subject line and reply quote from Susan
> Hutchinson:
>
> Momentary intervention from a quiet one (recently anyway) ... the poem
> High Flight is featured on the modern freestanding altar at Trinity
> College Chapel in Toronto -- as Marion will attest. The altar was
> commissioned as a memorial to members of the college who died in WWII.
>
> blessings
> Susan
> always praying, but less able to intervene in the conversation these
> days ...
>
>
>
>
> On 2/19/16 1:54 PM, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
> > Oh, as an Army Brat of Japan yourself (though he was more of a
> > Missionary Brat, a PK) you might appreciate that he was born in Shanghai
> > in 1922, and got his early education at the American School in Nanking,
> > going to England with his mother in 1931.  It's possible that he was
> > inspired to get into the military as soon as he was old enough from
> > reading/hearing about the 1937-38 Rape of Nanking (a town he'd have
> > remembered)?
> >
> > On 2/19/16 1:07 PM, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
> >> On 2/19/16 10:12 AM, Grace Cangialosi wrote:
> >>> Well, if there was a leap, it was totally unconscious--I don't think I
> >>> ever heard of John McGee. Thanks for the info.
> >>
> >>
> >> He didn't have a large body of published work, just the one poem he
> >> wrote down, which survived him.  It was printed in church publications
> >> by his father, then curate of St John's Episcopal Church in Washington,
> >> DC  He died at the age of 19 in 1941 in England in a crash of his
> >> Spitfire, a pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
> >>
> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.
> >>
> >> High Flight
> >>
> >>   "Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
> >> And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
> >> Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
> >> of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
> >> You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
> >> High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
> >> I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
> >> My eager craft through footless halls of air....
> >>
> >> Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
> >> I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
> >> Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
> >> And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
> >> The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
> >> - Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Sibyl Smirl
> I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
> mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net
>