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

[Ann Markle]

This appeared on the burial leaflet of one of my dearly beloved
parishioners in Tennessee, who was a pilot in Vietnam, then a commercial
pilot, then an aid relief pilot who told hair-raising stories of flying
relief aid into "illegal" places, like Africa, where the government didn't
want aid, but the people desperately needed it.  I love Ray Benegar and
miss him sincerely.  Thanks for the memory of a best beloved.

Ann

The Rev. Ann Markle
Buffalo, NY
ann.markle at aya.yale.edu
blog:  www.onewildandpreciouslife.typepad.com

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 2:54 PM, Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3 at ckt.net> 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."
>>
>>