Tulsa-Smith:- emotional...: Another JFK legacy surfaces

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Another JFK legacy surfaces

Honor has finally gone to whom honor is due. One Kumana, a native of the Solomon Islands, had saved the lives of late President John F. Kennedy and 10 of his 11-crew patrol boat, which had no radar and had capsized after a Japanese destroyer rammed it in 1943!

The story really reminds one of the leadership qualities embodied in JFK, and why his popularity has never really waned over the decades since his death:

[....Kumana paddled about 60 kilometers to get help for the man who would later become president of the United States and the rest of the crew. Kumana took with him the message Kennedy had carved into a coconut....

This week, U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter flew to the Solomons to shower Kumana with gifts, including an American flag, and the USS Peleliu visited the islands too, Fairfax Media reported.

"I think it's a remarkable circumstance," Winter told Fairfax. "He changed our history ... and I'm very thankful to him for doing it."....

The Japanese vessel crashed into PT-109, causing it to sink. One of the 12 aboard died

But the bow of the American patrol boat didn’t go under, and the remaining 11 men held onto it until they swam to Plum Pudding, about six kilometers away. When they reached land, Kennedy swam to other nearby islands to find help.

The crew survived by eating coconuts for six days, until two natives – Kumana and Biuku Gasa – found them, took Kennedy’s message on the coconut to an Australian named Reg Evans, who orchestrated the rescue......]

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Greenville, Rhode Island bakery owned by the Cavanagh family, which uses the plant to produce church communion bread from just water and bread. That business is known to produce about 850 million sacramental wafers annually and to supply 80% of the Holy Communion bread used in American, Australian, Canadian, and British churches. The only middlemen in the supply chain are nuns living in convents! Now they want to expand to West Africa with their Christian sacramental ware for Pentecostal, Catholic, 'New Wave', and Orthodox church offerings. I make reference to the so-called New Wave churches - my term for those churches that broke away from the orthodoxy of the Protestant fold, just as the latter roke off from the Catholic church by virtue of the exploits of Martin Luther centuries ago. Many new-wave and other church goers in the generally undeveloped West African subregion of Africa pay more to religious organizations in monthly tithes and offerings than they do to their government in personal income and value added taxes. Now, that last fact is quite interesting because it is an admission that a bakery in Rhode Island has seen a huge market in the center of Black Africa for small white perfectly laminated and non-crumbly holy wheat bread, reportedly costing "less than a penny" apiece, for the use of both the bible-reading and the bible-believing religious organizations. However, the picture from the Cavanagh's factory floor speaks volumes, in my own opinion, about the need for the company to watch its business ethics and to treat all customers equally irrespective of location, creed, or other discriminatory demographic information or criteria. So, I just hope and pray that the wafers falling off the conveyor belt and by the way side are not destined for West Africa and that the actual wafers delivered will be wheat bread and water, and not just glutamate-free bread and 'pure' water, if you get my point, even if so requested by some shady, greedy, and unethical businessmen over in West Africa. Posted by Okonkwo O. Awa on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

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