If I knew it would be the last time. By Andrea Chambers

If I knew it would be the last time
I would be there to share your day,
I'm sure you'll have so many more
so I can let this one slip away.

There will always be another day
but maybe I am wrong?
For who knows what tomorrow brings,
I have to be so strong.

We had to live everyday,
not knowing if you'd leave
And praying to our God above,
That he too would believe,

That you were right where you belonged,
with a large, loving family.
But that all changed so quickly,
it seems unreal to me.

If I knew it would be the last time,
that I would hold you oh so tight,
I would have let the cleaning go,
and held you with all my might.

So if you're waiting for tomorrow,
why not do it today?
For if tomorrow never comes,
your chance has slipped away.

-Andrea Chambers

A Diversity Minute: An inspiring story.....

An inspiring story.....  Author unknown

This is a true story, sent to me recently by a colleague at work and expresses more eloquently than I can how I feel about prejudice and ignorant attitudes towards people who are different.

As we know, we see discrimination in some form or another almost everyday and often times it  leaves a sour taste in our mouths. The  following story shows us the side of diversity that we are all  working for. It is a pleasant twist to see that there are companies  and individuals who face discrimination head on, if only one small step at a time.

Enjoy reading the positive side of diversity. We must  applaud  British Airways for their action in this situation.

On a British Airways flight from Johannesburg, a  middle-aged, well-off white South African Lady has found herself sitting next to a black man.  She calls the cabin crew attendant over to about her seating.
 

 "What seems to be the problem Madam?" asks the attendant. 

"Can't you see?" she says. "You've sat me next to a kaffir. I can't  possibly sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat!"
 

"Please calm down Madam", the stewardess replies. "The flight is very full today, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go and check to see if we have any seats available in club or first class."

The woman cocks a snooty look at the outraged black man beside her (not to  mention many of the surrounding passengers). A few minutes later the stewardess returns with the good news, which she delivers to the lady, who cannot help but look at the people around her with a smug and self satisfied grin.

"Madam, unfortunately, as I suspected, economy is full.  I've  spoken to the cabin services director, and club is also full.  However, we do have one seat in first class."

Before the lady has a chance to answer, the stewardess  continues .........

"It is most extraordinary to make this kind of upgrade,  however, and I have had to get special permission from the captain. But, given the circumstances, the captain felt that it is outrageous that  someone be forced to sit next to such an obnoxious person."

With that, she turns to the black man sitting next to the woman,  and says...

"So if you'd like to get your things, Sir, I have your seat ready for you."

At which point, apparently the surrounding passengers stood and gave a standing ovation while the black guy walked up to the front of the plane.

"People will forget what you said,
People will forget what you did,
But people will never forget how you made them feel."
Maya Angelou

A Foster Parent’s Poem

There I sat, alone and afraid,
You got a call and came right to my aid.
You bundled me up with blankets and love.
And, when I needed it most, you gave me a hug.
I learned that the world as not all that scary and cold.
That sometimes there is someone to have and to hold.
You taught me what love is, you helped me to mend.
You loved me and healed me and became my first friend.
And just when I thought you’d done all you do,
There cam along not one new lesson, but two.
First you said, “Sweetheart, you’re ready to go.
I’ve done all I can, and you’ve learned all I know”
Then you bundled me up with a blanket and a kiss.
Along came a new family, they even have kids!
They took me to their home, forever to stay.
At first I thought you sent me away.
Then that second lesson became perfectly clear.
No matter how far, you will always be near.
And so, Foster Mom, you know I’ve moved on.
I have a new home, with toys and a lawn.
But I’ll never forget what I learned that first day.
You never really give your fosters away.
You gave me these thoughts to remember you by.
We may never meet again, and now I know why.
You’ll remember I lived with you for a time.
I may not be yours, but you’ll always be mine.

Author Unknown

Reposted from John DeGarmo, Ed.D.

Teaching Children About Diversity

By Christopher J. Metzler, Ph.D.

Christopher Metzler is one of the world's leading authorities on issues of diversity and inclusion.

We are living in an increasingly diverse world, and this is a wonderful gift. Our children attend schools with children who are much different than they are. For example, more children are being raised by single parents, by same sex parents and in blended families. Many children are non-native English speakers and some are children with disabilities (both physical and mental).

The challenge for parents is ensuring that children learn to accept and respect differences, thus making them more productive adults. But, where do we start? Children don't come with instructions, but they do come with open minds. Much of what they learn about respecting differences comes from their parents. That being said, consider the following suggestions:
Start with us. Children listen to what we say as well as watch what we do. So as parents, we must deal with our own diversity deficits, so that we can lead by not just saying but also by doing. For example, one parent tells her children not to judge people by their color. The family lives in a majority white community and the children have had very limited interactions with blacks.

However, her children hear her telling friends that the blacks with whom she works are so lazy that she has to do their job and her job. If we are to teach our children to make decisions that are not based on stereotypes, then we must do the same. In this example, the people may in fact have been lazy. However, it is not their blackness that makes them lazy - they are just lazy. "Do as I say but not as I do" does not help children become more accepting of differences.

Get out of our comfort zone. For all the talk about diversity, Americans still segregate ourselves into fairly homogenous communities. Teaching our children to accept differences may require that we use the power of the internet to learn about differences, that we seek out cultural activities that are out of our community and explore the strength and value in diversity. It is not enough to simply visit cultural events, eat ethnic foods and thus learn about differences from a voyeuristic point of view. Instead, we must make a deliberate effort to get out of the familiar and show our children we mean it. Accepting differences should be how we live our lives.

Listen and respond. When children ask about differences, start by listening to the question they are asking and the language they are using. If in asking questions about differences they are using hurtful or stereotypical language, explore with them why such language is hurtful. Explain in an age-appropriate manner why stereotypes don't tell the whole story and are divisive.

Don't be blind to differences. Parents often tell me that they want their children to be "difference blind." This is both unrealistic and misses the point. Children will notice that Jouain has a different sounding name or that Yasmeen always wears a head scarf to school, or that Rajiv eats foods that look and smell different from what they eat. They will have a natural curiosity about this. As parents, we must help them appreciate and learn about those differences, not pretend that they do not exist. The question is not whether differences exist; it is what message we are sending by teaching children to be "blind" to differences. Unless we as parents are willing to help explain to children what seems strange or different to them, we will never be successful in teaching children to understand and appreciate differences.

Avoid political correctness. Parents who teach children to be politically correct when interacting with differences are making the situation worse. Rather than teach children the correct labels or names for people, let's teach them that differences are only a part of who we are. It is not the total of who we are.

Parents teach children how to brush their teeth, to comb their hair, to be responsible and to be successful. We do so by introducing and reinforcing behavior that helps achieve these goals. We should do the same when it comes to appreciating diversity. It is only then that we can move from tolerance to acceptance.

So, how have you been teaching your child about diversity? Do you think it's working?

DIVERSITY FUN FACTS:

Submitted by: Jodi Duttenhefer, PATH Area Director

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

About 4% of all Americans are vegetarians.

Fortune cookies were actually invented in American in 1918 by Charles Jung.

People in Western China, Tibet and Mongolia put salt in their tea.

Donald Duck comics were banned from libraries in Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.

It’s against the law to stare at the Mayor of Paris.

In Alaska, it is illegal to look at a moose from the window of an airplane or any other flying object.

Dueling in Paraguay is legal as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary formally married her 50 pound pet rock.

During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who wore a beard was required to pay a special tax.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

One in every 4 Americans has appeared on television.

Americans spend $630 million per year on golf balls.

In Tibet, it is considered polite to stick out your tongue at your guests.

There is a city called Rome on every continent in the world.

Every person has a unique tongue print, just like fingerprints.

On average, an adult laughs 15 times a day; a child laughs 400 times.

Do You Know Why We See Snow as White?

A savant's story reveals the complexity of snowflakes and the simplicity of snow.

By Daniel Tammet from Thinking in Numbers 

Outside it is cold, cold. Ten degrees below give or take. I step out with my coat zipped up to my chin and my feet encased in heavy rubber boots. The glittering street is empty; the wool-gray sky is low. Under my scarf and gloves and thermals I can feel my pulse begin to make a racket. I do not care. I wait.

A week before, the trees’ bare branches stood clean against blue sky. Now the sight of falling snowflakes makes me shiver; it fills the space in my head that is devoted to wonder. How beautiful they are, I think. When will they stop? In an hour? A day? A month?

The neighbors, who’ve lived in Ottawa far longer than I, tell me they have not seen this snowfall’s like in a generation. Shovels in hand, they dig paths from their garage doors out to the road. The older men affect expressions of both nonchalance and annoyance, but soon faint smiles form at the corners of their wind-chapped mouths.

Granted, it is exhausting to trudge to the shops. Every step seems to take an age. Hot under my onion layers of clothing, I carry a shirtful of perspiration back into the house. Wet socks unpeel like plasters from my feet; the warm air smarts my skin. Later, around a table, in the dusk of a candlelit supper, my friends and I exchange recollections of winters past. We talk sleds and toboggans and fierce snowball fights. I recall a childhood memory from London: the first time I heard the sound of falling snow.

“What did it sound like?” the evening’s host asks me.

“It sounded like someone slowly rubbing his hands together.”

Yes, my friends say, laughing. Yes, we can hear what you mean.

One man laughs louder than the others. I do not catch his name; he is not a regular guest. I gather he is some kind of scientist.

“Do you know why we see snow as white?” he asks. “It is all to do with how the sides of the snowflakes reflect light.” All the colors in the spectrum, he explains to us, scatter out from the snow in roughly equal proportions, which we perceive as whiteness.

Now our host’s wife has a question. “Could the colors never come out in a different proportion?”
“Sometimes, if the snow is very deep,” he answers. In which case, the light that comes back to us can appear tinged with blue. “And sometimes a snowflake’s structure will resemble that of a diamond,” he continues. Light entering these flakes becomes so mangled as to dispense a rainbow of multicolored sparkles.

“Is it true that no two snowflakes are alike?” This question comes from the host’s teenage daughter.

It is true. Every snowflake has a basic six-sided structure, he says, but its spiraling descent sculpts each in a unique way: The minutest variations in air temperature or moisture make all the difference.

Still, researchers classify snowflakes by size, shape, and symmetry. For example, some snowflakes are flat and have broad arms, resembling stars, so that meteorologists speak of stellar plates, while those with deep ridges are called sectored plates. Branchy flakes, like those in Christmas decorations, go by the term stellar dendrites—from the Greek word for tree.

Sometimes snowflakes fall as columns of ice, which are called needles. Some, like conjoined twins, show 12 sides instead of the usual six, while others resemble bullets. Other possible shapes include the cup, the sheath, and arrowhead twins.

We listen wordlessly to the scientist’s explanations. Our rapt attention flatters him. His white hands, as he speaks, draw the shape of every snowflake in the air.

That night, the snow reaches into my dreams. My warm bed offers no protection from my childhood memories of the cold. I dream of a distant winter in my parents’ garden: The powdery snow, freshly fallen, was like sugar to my younger brothers and sisters, who hastened outside with shrieks of delight. I hesitated to join them, preferring to watch from the safety of my bedroom window. But later, after they had all wound up their games and headed back in, I ventured out alone and started to pack the snow. Like the Inuit (who call it igluksaq—house-building material), I wanted to build myself a shelter. The crunching snow gradually encircled me, the walls rising higher until at last they covered me completely. My boyish face and hands smeared with snow, I crouched deep inside feeling sad and feeling safe.

In the morning, my friends call up to my room. “We are ready and waiting!” I am the English slowpoke, unaccustomed to this freezing climate, to the lethargy it imposes on the body.
London’s wet slush was quick to blacken, but here the snow is incandescent white. Canadians have no fear of winter. Stockpiling milk and bread is unheard-of. Traffic jams, canceled meetings, and energy blackouts are rare. The faces that greet me downstairs are smiling. They know that the roads will have been salted, that their letters and parcels will arrive on time, that the shops will be open.

In the schools of Ottawa, children extract snowflakes from white sheets of paper. They fold the crisp sheet to an oblong, and the oblong to a square, and the square to a right-angled triangle. With scissors, they snip the triangle on all sides; every pupil folds and snips the paper in his own way. When they unfold the paper, different snowflakes appear, as many as there are children. But every one has something in common: They are all symmetrical. Shorn of nature’s imperfections, the children’s flakes represent an ideal.

At the University of Wisconsin, mathematician David Griffeath has improved on the children’s game by modeling snowflakes on a computer. In 2008, Griffeath and his colleague Janko Gravner produced an algorithm that mimics the many physical principles that underlie how snowflakes form. The project proved slow and painstaking. It can take up to a day for the algorithm to perform the hundreds of thousands of calculations necessary for a single flake. Parameters were set and reset to make the simulations as lifelike as possible. But the end results were extraordinary. On the mathematicians’ computer screen shimmered a galaxy of three-dimensional snowflakes: elaborate, finely ridged stellar dendrites and 12-branched stars, needles, prisms of every known configuration, and others resembling butterfly wings, which no one had identified before.

My friends take me on a trek through the forest, where flakes fall intermittently and sunlight glistens on hillocks of snow. We tread slowly, rhythmically, across the shifting surfaces, which squirm and squeak under our boots.

Whenever snow falls, people look at things and suddenly see them. Lampposts and doorsteps and tree stumps and telephone lines take on a whole new aspect. We notice what they are and not simply what they represent. Their curves, angles, and repetitions command our attention. Visitors to the forest stop and stare at the geometry of branches, of fences, of trisecting paths. They shake their heads in silent admiration.

A voice somewhere says the river Hull has frozen over. I disguise my excitement as a question. “Shall we go?” I ask my friends. For where there is ice, there are inevitably skaters, and where there are skaters, there is laughter and lightheartedness and stalls selling hot pastries and spiced wine. We go.

The frozen river brims with action: Parkas pirouette, wet dogs give chase, and customers line up in queues. The air smells of cinnamon. Everywhere, the snow is on people’s lips: It serves as the icebreaker for every conversation. Nobody stands still as they are talking; they shift their weight from leg to leg, stamp their feet, wiggle their noses, and exaggerate their blinks.

The flakes fall heavier, whirling in the wind. Human noises evaporate; now nobody moves.
Snow comes to earth and forms snow lampposts, snow trees, snow cars, snowmen. Nothing is indifferent to its touch. New worlds appear and disappear, leaving their prints upon our imagination.
Daniel Tammet was diagnosed with autistic savant syndrome at the age of 24. He has subsequently written bestselling books about mathematics, neuroscience, and living with Asperger’s syndrome.

Washing Clothes

One young man went to apply for a managerial position in a big company. He passed the initial interview, and now would meet the director for the final interview.

The director discovered from his CV that the youth's academic achievements were excellent. He asked, "Did you obtain any scholarships in school?" the youth answered "no".  " Was it your father who paid for your school fees?"

"My father passed away when I was one year old, it was my mother who paid for my school fees.” he replied.  "Where did your mother work?" "My mother worked as clothes cleaner.” The director requested the youth to show his hands. The youth showed a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect.  "Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before?" "Never, my mother always wanted me to study and read more books. Besides, my mother can wash clothes faster than me.

The director said, "I have a request. When you go home today, go and clean your mother's hands, and then see me tomorrow morning.

The youth felt that his chance of landing the job was high. When he went back home, he asked his mother to let him clean her hands. His mother felt strange, happy but with mixed feelings, she showed her hands to her son.

The youth cleaned his mother's hands slowly. His tear fell as he did that. It was the first time he noticed that his mother's hands were so wrinkled, and there were so many bruises in her hands. Some bruises were so painful that his mother winced when he touched it.

This was the first time the youth realized that it was this pair of hands that washed the clothes everyday to enable him to pay the school fees. The bruises in the mother's hands were the price that the mother had to pay for his education, his school activities and his future.

After cleaning his mother hands, the youth quietly washed all the remaining clothes for his mother. That night, mother and son talked for a very long time.

Next morning, the youth went to the director's office.  The Director noticed the tears in the youth's eyes, when he asked: "Can you tell me what have you done and learned yesterday in your house?" The youth answered, "I cleaned my mother's hand, and also finished cleaning all the remaining clothes' “I know now what appreciation is. Without my mother, I would not be who I am today. By helping my mother, only now do I realize how difficult and tough it is to get something done on your own. And I have come to appreciate the importance and value of helping one’s family.

The director said, "This is what I am looking for in a manager. I want to recruit a person who can appreciate the help of others, a person who knows the sufferings of others to get things done, and a person who would not put money as his only goal in life.”  “You are hired.”

This young person worked very hard, and received the respect of his subordinates. Every employee worked diligently and worked as a team. The company's performance improved tremendously.

A child, who has been protected and habitually given whatever he wanted, would develop an "entitlement mentality" and would always put himself first. He would be ignorant of his parent's efforts. When he starts work, he assumes that every person must listen to him, and when he becomes a manager, he would never know the sufferings of his employees and would always blame others. For this kind of people, who may be good academically, they may be successful for a while, but eventually they would not feel a sense of achievement. They will grumble and be full of hatred and fight for more. If we are this kind of protective parents, are we really showing love or are we destroying our children instead?

You can let your child live in a big house, eat a good meal, learn piano, watch on a big screen TV. But when you are cutting grass, please let them experience it. After a meal, let them wash their plates and bowls together with their brothers and sisters. It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, but it is because you want to love them in a right way. You want them to understand, no matter how rich their parents are, one day their hair will grow gray, same as the mother of that young person. The most important thing is your child learns how to appreciate the effort and experience the difficulty

I Am Diversity, Please Include Me

By: Charles Bennefield

I Am Diversity, Please Include Me

I‘m present in every place you go

Depending on your lens I’m friend or foe

I’m a force to be reckoned with

Like the winds of change I move. I’m swift.

I’m present when two or more are together

If embraced I can make the good even better.

I’m not limited to age, gender, or race.

I’m invisible at times and yet all over the place.

Don’t exclude me due to a lack of knowledge

Welcome me like the recruit fresh out of college.

Let me take my seat at the table

Even though I may be differently able

My experience, my passion the authentic me

Can help add value for your company.

Learn about me; improve my underrepresentation

And I can provide a competitive edge to your entire nation.

I exclude no one I am strengthened by all

My name is Diversity and yes I stand tall.

Recognize me and keep me in the mix

Together there’s no problem that we can’t fix.

I am your best hope towards true innovation

And to many, I reflect hope and inspiration.

Your lives and companies will continue to change

Thus the need for Diversity and Inclusion will also remain.

Do all that you can to truly embrace me

And experience life’s fullness totally

I’m the thought lurking behind the unfamiliar face

I’m the ingenuity that helps your team win the race.

I’m the solution that came from the odd question that was asked.

I stand out in the crowd when I, Diversity, am allowed to be unmasked.

I’m diversity embrace me and we’ll journey far.

I’m Diversity include me and we will reach the shining star.

Coupled with Inclusion our lights burn longer

Together we are smarter, better and stronger

I am Diversity

Yes, that’s me

 Submitted by Bill Kerzman, PATH PQI Director

A poem composed by Brandy, age 15, for her foster parent

Sometimes I know the words to say
Give thanks for all you've done
But then they fly up and away
As quickly as they come.

How could I possibly thank you enough?
The one who makes me feel whole
The one to whom I should owe my life
The forming of a brand new soul.

The one who's there at nights
The one who helps me when I'm crying
The one who's continuously an expert
At picking up when I was lying.

The one who sees me off to school
And spent the days alone
Yet magically produced a smile
As soon as I came home.

The one who always makes sacrifices
To always put us first
Who lets me test my broken wings
In spite of how its hurts.

What way is there to thank you?
For your heart, your sweat, your tears
For the ten thousand things you've done
For oh-so many years.

For changing with me as I changed
For accepting all my flaws
For not loving cause you had to
But loving just because.

Thank you for the gifts you give
For everything you do
But thank you most of all
For making my dreams come true!!

The Stranger Who Changed My Life: My Enemy, My Friend

From the moment Serbian missile Commander Zoltan Dani shot down U.S. fighter pilot Dale Zelko's plane, the two were tangled in a complicated relationship of life and death.

By Dale Zelko

As soon as you leave Belgrade, you’re transported back in time. The Serbian capital is a modern metropolis, but in the countryside, donkeys still clop along cobblestones, past farmers taking their produce to market.

I was here visiting a baker, Zoltan Dani, in 2011. The bakery, in the town of Skorenovac, is in a timeworn building next to the house where Zoltan grew up. When I walked in, I found him, covered in flour and wearing a baker’s hat and apron, stretching dough on a large table. He smiled and hustled over to greet me. I saluted him, stopping him in his tracks. He returned my salute, then we hugged. It could not have felt more natural. He was like my brother, this man who had tried to kill me 12 years earlier.

Back then I was an F-117 Stealth Fighter pilot during the first week of the Serbian conflict. The year was 1999. My mission: Bomb the most heavily defended, high-value targets deep in enemy territory. It was a terrifying job. I knew that the people on the other side of the war felt the same. But I couldn’t afford to think about them. I tried to think of my targets as just concrete and steel, with no personal attachment, no human element. That was my survival mechanism.
And it worked. The first night of the war, I had two targets and hit both. I flew on the third night, which was also successful. My target on the fourth night was number one on the strategic target list. The entire route was defended with heat-seeking missiles, radar-guided missiles, antiaircraft guns—a full array of nasty stuff.

Stealth technology is not invisible technology. It just makes it harder for an aircraft to be detected. So on that fourth night, before entering Serbian airspace, I did a stealth check. I turned off lights, brought in antennae, and turned off the radio and transponder—any kind of emitter or transmitter that might give away my position. On that fourth night, I was coming up to the border, just waiting until the last moment to turn the radio off, desperate for that call: We figured it out peacefully. You can return to base. I didn’t get that radio call.

I flew into Serbia, hit my target, and began my return back to the base in Italy. I didn’t see the two SA3 missiles until they punched through the cloud cover.

The missiles were moving at three times the speed of sound, so there wasn’t much time to react. Just before the first missile reached me, I closed my eyes and turned my head, anticipating the impact. I knew there would be a fireball, and I didn’t want to be blinded. I felt the first one go right over me, so close that it rocked the aircraft. Then I opened my eyes and turned my head, and there was the other missile. The impact was violent. A huge flash of light and heat engulfed my plane and blew off the left wing, sending the plane into a roll.

If you’re in an airplane that hits some turbulence and you feel a little light in your feet, you’re momentarily in zero g’s. I was at negative seven g’s. My body was being pulled out of the seat upward toward the canopy. As I strained to reach the ejection handles, one thought crossed my mind: This is really, really, really bad.

From the moment I pulled the ejection handles to being under a fully inflated parachute took 1.5 seconds. I made radio contact with Air Force search-and-rescue teams, then, as I floated down to earth, watched my plane crash in a farm field. I landed a mile from there. The Serbs immediately flooded the area looking for me. At one point, they were within a couple of hundred yards of where I was hiding in an irrigation ditch separating two farm fields. My gear was under the dark-green life raft from my survival equipment. Eight hours later, an American helicopter came and got me. I would later learn that I had been minutes away from being captured.

Through it all, from my fall to the long hours waiting in the field, I thought about the Serbian surface-to-air missile operator who’d shot me down. I imagined so vividly standing next to him, enjoying his company, and saying to him, “Really nice shot.”

Twelve years later, I got the opportunity to tell him in person. I’d retired from active duty in 2006 and worked for the Air Force as a civilian in New Hampshire, where I’d moved with my family. It was there that I got an e-mail from a Serbian documentary filmmaker, Zeljko Mirkovic, asking if I’d like to return to Serbia and meet Zoltan Dani, the man who’d shot me down. He wanted to make a film about the reunion.

I was eager to meet Zoltan. I’d become consumed by the idea of meeting him, not as an adversary but as a friend. I needed to explore the possibilities of reconciliation. So I said yes to Zeljko. I had, however, one big concern: The first time I was in Serbia, I was dropping bombs. How would I be received now?

After the war, Zoltan retired from the Serbian army and learned to bake the thin sheets of phyllo dough used for flaky pastries. Making phyllo is hard. When Zoltan works, it’s an art. He stretches the dough, then casts it into the air, deftly snaring it, and splaying it out on the table in one motion. He then stretches it again until it’s paper-thin.

At his bakery, he gave me an apron and a hat and put me to work. I was pretty good at kneading and stretching the dough, but my downfall came in tossing the dough into the air: Each time I tried, it ripped. I went through a lot of dough that day.

But Zoltan didn’t care. He made me feel comfortable. At one point, I noticed he had flour on his face. Without giving it a second thought, I reached over and wiped it off.

When my lesson was over and I’d cleaned up, I told Zoltan I wanted to see the field where I’d hidden. Followed by Zeljko’s film crew, we drove to it. Amazingly, I found the irrigation ditch where I’d spent those eight grueling hours. I even met the farmers who were working the field. Any fears I had about being treated like an enemy combatant were quickly eased. Turns out I was a local hero. The downing of my Stealth Fighter had been the biggest thing to happen in that area.
Back at Zoltan’s home, where my host insisted I take over his son’s room, I presented gifts to the Dani family. I’d brought baseballs and baseball gloves for the kids and a model of an F-117 for Zoltan. He had blown up a real one—I figured he needed a model of it. My wife, Lauren, had made a quilt for Zoltan’s wife, Iren, as a symbol of peace. The last gift was from one of my four children, Kegan, then nine, who was learning the violin. I had recorded him playing a Serbian tune called “Svilen Konac,” or “Silk Thread.” It was beautiful.

Zoltan and I began to get to know each other. I discovered he was a gentle, tenderhearted soul, a man of faith who, like me, held his family near and dear. And, of course, we discussed “that” day.
Zoltan was 43 and I was 40 on the night he shot me down. He said that anytime his crew emitted their tracking radar longer than 20 seconds, they would shut down and move because that would be long enough for the enemy—us—to figure out their location. And if they did it twice, they wouldn’t try again; it was too dangerous. But that night, Zoltan had a feeling. He went for a third try, and it paid off. They accomplished what no one had ever done before—they shot down a Stealth Fighter.
After a few days, we parted ways, vowing to keep in touch. And, indeed, the next year, 2012, Zoltan and his family came to New Hampshire for a week. Zeljko came, as well, and filmed the visit. But we barely noticed the cameras. We were friends spending time with each other. Iren presented us with a crocheted lace tablecloth, an heirloom that had been in their family for 50 years. And Zoltan gave me a handcrafted model of an SA3 missile.

“You know what this is, right?” he said, grinning.

I laughed. “Yeah, and I remember what it feels like too.”

I returned to Serbia in 2012 for the premiere of Zeljko’s movie, The Second Meeting. During questions after the screening, one woman said to me, “When you were shot down, I celebrated. I cheered with my friends. But we were upset that you were not killed. We thought you deserved to die.” You can imagine the hush in the audience. And then she said, “But now that we have gotten to know you, I’m so glad that you are here.” I was weeping.

There’s so much misunderstanding in the world resulting in unnecessary sorrow. Having the Danis—a positive, joyful family—in my life has altered my perspective. It may sound trite, but if only there were a way for all the religious, cultural, and ethnic groups of the world to meet and get to know one another in a meaningful way—the way Zoltan and I have—how could we ever go to war again?