I Want to Shake Your Hand!

I’d like to welcome guest blogger and my online author friend, Lynne Basham Tagawa. You know I love these family stories and preserving them, sharing with others. Her father’s story is one of fortitude and not giving up, even with difficult circumstances.

“I Want to Shake Your Hand!”

A Cold War Family Story by Lynne Basham Tagawa

 

My daddy spent thirty years in the Air Force, and before I was born, he went to Japan as a skinny lieutenant. In the 1950s, the Cold War was heating up, and the Communists had invaded the northern part of Korea. The easternmost part of Communist Russia lay just across the Sea of Japan. Daddy watched for MiGs on an old radar scope that wasn’t as sensitive as what we have today. Bombers were large, easily picked up on the screen. But the new fighter jets were small.

One day, he received a call from a pilot who needed to land. Conditions were terrible. There was no visibility. Today, pilots can land a jumbo jet in thick fog with no problem, because of the electronic guidance coming from the airport. That didn’t exist then. My father had a clunky scope and a grease pencil. Flashes appeared now and then on the screen—the fighter trying to find his way back. Daddy used the grease pencil to connect the dots as he talked to the pilot on the radio.

“Turn left five degrees,” he might have said. I wonder if his eyes grew gritty as he stared at the scope, straining to see the next flash. Was this going to work? Should he send him on to another base? There were several airfields in Japan. He must have heard the pilot’s words, possibly garbled a bit, as they both fought to get the plane safely down to earth. “Roger, descending to five hundred.”

My daddy’s fingers must have grown slick with tension as he marked another “guess.” The pilot must have been below one hundred feet by now… fifty… he looked out at the runway—but the fog was heavy and near to the ground.

Where was he?

Then—I can imagine my father’s eyes watering as he spotted the plane racing down the tarmac. Coming to a halt. Someone ran to the plane. The pilot climbed out of the cockpit. My father slumped in his seat. Tired and relieved. But the next thing he knew, the pilot burst inside. “I want to shake your hand. You saved my life.”

What? 

“I was out of fuel. I couldn’t have made another try.”

My daddy told us that story several times as his age advanced. His mind grew dull to recent events, but the past was still there. He also told us family history, and some of that crept into my first historical fiction novel, The Shenandoah Road: A Novel of the Great Awakening.  

The Shenandoah Road is set during an interesting time—a time of great revival in the American colonies. What would it have been like to live then?

 

John Russell’s heart aches from the loss of his wife, but the Shenandoah Valley frontiersman needs to marry again for his daughter’s sake. At first he believes he has found the right young woman, but his faith falters when time reveals she isn’t quite what she seemed. Can he truly love her?

Unlike her disgraced sister, Abigail Williams obeys the Commandments. At least, she thinks herself a Christian until a buckskin-clad newcomer courts her. He treats her kindly but also introduces her to a sermon by the controversial preacher, George Whitefield.
Her self-righteousness is shattered, and she wonders about their relationship. If she confesses her lack of faith, will John continue to love her?

 

Lynne Tagawa is a wife and mother of four, and grandma to six. She enjoys infusing gospel truth into her fiction. The Tagawas live in South Texas.

 

Purchase link: https://amzn.to/2XVm0kA

Facebook: Lynne Basham Tagawa, Author

X: @LynneTagawa