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Final Thoughts: Cheering on My Dad's Life of Service

Our American Stories / Lee Habeeb
The Truth Network Radio
June 19, 2024 3:01 am

Final Thoughts: Cheering on My Dad's Life of Service

Our American Stories / Lee Habeeb

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June 19, 2024 3:01 am

On this episode of Our American Stories, listener Russel Bitcon presents the eulogy he delivered for his father.

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Visit gcu.edu. And we return to Our American Story. Up next, a eulogy from Roland Bitcom. On Saturday, May 15th, 2021, Roland's father, Russell Bitcom, went to be with his Lord after 87 years of a life well lived. You're about to hear the eulogy Roland delivered for his father, honoring his father, at a church in Jacksonville, Florida.

Here's Roland. I remember coming home from a football game where I had scored a touchdown, and my mom kept saying, you should have seen your father, you should have seen your father, who was jumping up and down and saying, that's my boy, that's my boy. I found that a little odd because my dad was usually more reserved, and he wasn't a proud or boastful man, and he let such things speak for themselves.

But such is the nature of life. We're used to cheering on our children, but rarely do we get a chance to cheer on our parents. So if you don't mind, I'd like to take a few moments here to tell you about my dad, and maybe just maybe I'll just stand up and say a cheer for my dad. My dad, Russell Lee Bitcom, was born on a farm to parents who were sharecroppers.

The Rock Island Railroad line ran right through the farm. This started my dad's lifelong love of trains. My dad would run along beside the train and hop on one of the cars and got rides into town. In the heat of the summer, they would chase cows out of the pond so they'd go swimming. So as you can see, a childhood of safe, clean, healthy living can lead to a long life of 87 years.

That's my dad, that's my dad. He worked hard on the farm and would also work the hayfields of surrounding farms. He said it was very hard work, but it paid several times what the kids were making in town. As my dad graduated high school, he said he was done with farming and wanted to get far away from the farm as he could, so he joined the US Navy. He took a train from Iowa to San Diego for Navy boot camp. Dad got a top score of all the enlisted men on a test the Navy gave to new recruits, which gave him first choice of what he wanted to do. It was 1952, dawn of the jet age.

The airplane was the latest technology and the fastest machine on the planet. My dad wanted to learn how to work on them. Join the Navy Sea of the World, the advertising slogan, right? Well, some of the places my dad worked stationed, San Diego, California, Norman, Oklahoma, Corpus Christi, Texas, Kingsville, Texas, back to San Diego, Hawaii, following Nevada, Memphis, Tennessee, Puerto Rico, Norfolk, Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida. He also did several deployments on aircraft carriers to the North Atlantic off the coast of Finland to the Mediterranean Sea. In Corpus Christi, Texas, he worked on the twin engine trainer. Little did he know that 60 years later, his grandson, my son, were on his wings flying the Navy twin engine trainer, Corpus Christi, Texas, who would take leave from time to time and go back to Iowa to visit family. That's where he met and fell in love with Ruby Moats. He finally married her and it was off to Puerto Rico and that's where myself and my sister were born.

From there, Norfolk, Virginia, then to Cecil Field in Jacksonville. There are so many experiences and cool stories my dad would tell over the years about his time in the Navy and growing up on the farm. And just when we thought we heard them all, it seemed like he'd tell us a new one.

Here are just a few. There had been some crashes of the A-4 Skyhawk. This was the midst of the Cold War and these aircraft were part of the West's deterrent against the Soviet aggression. All the highly educated engineers at McDonnell Douglas and Pratt & Whitney determined the problem with the A-4 was the engine mounting bolts.

They devised a way to fix the program. The process would take 10.5 man hours per plane. When dad heard this, he thought, no way.

They're going to have us working around the clock non-stop. Within minutes, my dad thought through the situation. With my dad's intimate knowledge of detail of the aircraft, typical of my dad, he had the ability to understand every detail about anything. He went to the commanding officer and said, there's a better way to fix this problem. He was told to assemble a team and get to the hangar deck and demonstrate his procedure.

Well, because of that, he received this letter of commendation. In December 1964, this squadron received airframe bulletin 293, which required replacing of the engine and main mounting bolts on all squadron aircraft. Procedures outlined stipulated removal of the tail section and supporting the engine with the engine stand while affecting replacement of the bolts. Program time was 10.5 man hours per aircraft. After careful analysis of the situation, you devised a method whereby the necessity for removing the tail section was eliminated and the overhead crane was used to support the engine while replacing the bolts. Your method reduced the required time to 30 minutes per aircraft.

All VA-72 aircraft were fixed in one night. Your method was soon made known to Commander Naval Air Force's Atlantic, who disseminated it to all other A-4 squadrons. You're hereby commended for your initiative, professional ability, and your performance of duty. That's my dad. That's my dad.

Here's another one of my favorite stories. In 1970, dad was tasked with making sure all the jets from his squadron made it out of Cecil Field because they were getting ready to be deployed on the USS John F. Kennedy, which was stationed just off the coast of Cuba at the time. There was a problem with a few planes and dad had to stay behind to get them up and going. Then dad was flown to Guantanamo Bay, where he was put on a landing craft and taken out to the Kennedy. Once he was on the Kennedy, the skipper announced they were going to radio silence until further notice.

They went full throttle from the Caribbean all the way to the Mediterranean. As they approached Spain, they repainted one of their planes a solid color with no markings. The pilot was to fly to the NATO base and row to Spain to receive orders for the carrier group, which was still under radio silence. The pilot was told to return to the Kennedy in the middle of the night.

He was to be at a certain place at a certain time to meet up with Kennedy. The landing lights would be on for one minute. When the time came, they turned on the landing lights.

The plane landed three seconds later. They needed to enter the Mediterranean Sea in secrecy. So before they went to the Straits of Gibraltar, they put all the planes in the hangar deck. They put the forklifts on the flight deck, ran them up as high as they would go, wrapped them in foil as to disguise the aircraft carrier as a freighter to radar signals as they entered the Straits. They ended up off the coast of Syria.

The Jordanian forces and the Palestinian forces were battling and Syria was getting ready to move to intervene on the behalf of the Palestinians. They went to general quarters and loaded bombs and missiles all day. Dad said at the time he didn't know what was going on or where exactly they were at, but the planes were taken off fully loaded and coming back empty. During that time, my dad was tasked with loading one of the A7s with an atomic bomb to be on standby. My dad's responsibility is to make sure that plane was ready to go at a moment's notice.

A group of Marines guarded the plane 24-7. The Marines were under strict orders to let no one near the plane except my dad and those who he approved. That's my dad. That's my dad. He retired from the Navy after 20 years of service in 1971. He eventually was hired by Sears and Roebuck Company as a repairman. He quickly learned how to repair just about everything Sears sold. During this time in 1980, while dad was driving his truck, listening to Pastor Lindsey on the radio, he then pulled his truck over to the side of the road, surrendered his life to Christ. Since that day, my dad has been faithful to Jesus Christ and his church and has also served as a deacon. My dad's always been a voracious reader. When we were going up, there'd be some evenings where we were told there'd be no TV tonight.

Everyone has to pick a book and read it. See, my dad had this incredible gift from God of being able to understand how things worked and how to build things and repair them. He could fix or repair anything, wood, metal, steel, concrete.

It didn't matter. He could just build something with it. When it came time to repairing, it didn't matter if it was gas or electric. He could fix that too. When I bought my first car, my dad told me the very first thing you need to do if you buy a car is go buy a repair manual so you know how to work on it. He said, son, you bought a Ford.

You know what that means? Fix or repair daily. My dad was always a General Motors guy. Don't get me wrong, my dad had a library full of repair manuals, but I never saw him read them. But every once in a while, he'd go to check on something and immediately turn it to the exact page he needed.

I remember a story he told me was in the Navy working on jet engines. A discussion came up on how to repair a particular problem. So I told them exactly what to do, but they didn't believe me. So I went to the service manual. Now, these manuals were several thousand pages long, held together by big metal binders. And he'd go right to page 1,178 and point right to the middle of the page.

Right there it says. It says, you don't have to do that very often before they finally figure out you know what you're talking about. My dad was also involved in my Boy Scout troop. We built model airplanes together and flew some of them.

When I got into model rocketry, my dad got into model rocketry. When I started surfing at the age of 14, my dad took up surf fishing just so he could drive me to the beach. My dad also loved gardening, growing tomato plants, pepper, squash, begonias, and even water lilies in his fish pond where he raised koi and goldfish. My dad was a fun guy to be around. He loved to laugh, even at himself. He loved to tell a good story and he loved a good joke. It's only because of my dad that I have the courage and the ability to accomplish what I have in this life. He always had my back and he would always be able to figure out whatever obstacles we encountered. I owe him greatly for this and even though he came from humble beginnings, he set the stage not only for himself to succeed but also for his children and his grandchildren.

There's so much more to tell about this great man but I hope I've honored him here today. That's my dad. That's my dad. That's my dad. That's my dad. In the end there are two kind of fathers. The father who gets a eulogy written about him like that and the father who doesn't.

And so if you're a father listening, be that father. A special thanks to Roland Bitcoin and a special thanks to all of our contributors here on Our American Stories. You may know Jackson Pollock, the painter famous for his iconic drip paintings. But what do you know about his wife, artist Lee Krasner?

On Death of an Artist, Krasner and Pollock, the story of the artist who reset the market for American abstract art. He's a very famous painter. He has a very famous voice. He's a very famous artist. He's a very famous artist. He's a very famous artist. He's a very famous artist. He's a very famous artist.

He's a very famous artist. From LinkedIn news, I'm Jessi Hempel, host of the Hello Monday podcast. In my 20s, I knew what career success looked like.

In midlife, it's not that simple. Work is changing, we are changing, and there's no guidebook for how to make sense of it. Start your week with the Hello Monday podcast.

Listen to Hello Monday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the story of the one. As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on. That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the HVAC is humming, and his facility shines. With Grainger supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces, plus 24-7 customer support, his venue never misses a beat. Call quickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-06-19 05:08:19 / 2024-06-19 05:14:15 / 6

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