Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

I have always been fascinated by the phrase, truth is stranger than fiction.  I think that is because there is always an unexpected element of surprise and a feeling of . . . did that really happen?  For example, I could never have imagined meeting Sergei Kourdakov.  But I did, and our lives were forever changed. 

In my forthcoming book, A Rose for Sergei, I talk about our time together during the last few months of his life.  While writing, I often stopped and asked myself, did this really happen?  It still seems unbelievable even after all these years.

Below is an excerpt from my draft of A Rose for Sergei. 

 

“At the end of the day I jumped into my Mustang that was parked in my reserved spot in the basement garage.  Another perk of not working at the Pentagon, I didn’t have to hike in a half-mile or so each morning from the North Parking Lot in all sorts of hideous weather.  I looked over at the bucket seat next to me where Sergei had just been seated a day ago and exhaled deeply.  Wow, was all I could think.  I drove on auto pilot as I made my way home from Rosslyn, taking route 110 towards the Pentagon and then veering off, passing the Pentagon on my left and Arlington Cemetery on my right toward Columbia Pike.

 

I always took a quick look at Arlington Cemetery as I passed by, thinking that if one could choose a final resting spot that I would choose the exact same beautiful section I stared at every day on my way home.  Truth really is stranger than fiction.  That exact spot I stared at every day would many years later become the final resting place for my beloved Mother and Father.  It was as if all those years of staring at the exact same location had somehow secretly etched their names into the earth, reserving that section in Arlington Cemetery for them.”

 

* * *

 

My Father will be laid to rest with full Military Honors in Arlington National Cemetery at the exact location I stared at more than 40 years ago.  He will join my Mother who preceded him in death.

 

Colonel Edward W. Kenny, Jr., USAF (Retired)

My Father was a career Air Force Officer and Fighter Pilot who served in WWII, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam.  In WWII he crash landed his plane after sustaining some 64 holes in the airframe from ground fire.  He walked out of the smoldering wreckage with a broken back.  In 1954 he won the Bendix Air Trophy Race, flying the F-84 Thunderstreak and setting a world speed record of 616.2 miles per hour.  My Father suffered heart failure at age 89.  He was and always will be my hero.

 

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

 

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
 And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
 Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
 of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
 You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
 High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
 I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
 My eager craft through footless halls of air....

 Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
 I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
 Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
 And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
 Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.