<p>On March 22, 1957, my dad–a recent college grad and civilian engineer working with the Air Force–was scheduled to be on a military flight from CA to Japan.
He was visiting his older brother in CA for a couple days before he left. His brother, a terrible drunk, gambler, womanizer etc., by some miracle managed to talk my dad (uptight, rule-following, always punctual and reliable, nerdy engineer) into hanging out and partying for another day. (Brother was a navy vet and said "It’s the military–there’ll be another flight tomorrow. . .) When dad finally arrived in Tokyo several days late, he got chewed out. His boss said, “What are you doing here? We thought you were DEAD!”
He found out that his original flight went down in the North Pacific. He was on the list of “missing,” but there was some confusion as there was no record of him boarding the plane. (67 people died–plane was never found–it went down in a very deep part of the ocean–btw, I was able to find info on the flight at planecrashinfo.com)</p>
<p>Anyway, if dad wasn’t so lucky to have such a good-timing brother, I wouldn’t be here.</p>
<p>Other than that, I’m not that lucky. Last year I won 2nd Pew for Christmas Midnight Mass in our church raffle. Unfortunately we had a blizzard Christmas Eve and very few people made it to the Mass. (I could’ve had any pew I wanted, even without the winning ticket.)</p>