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At Least Once In Everyone’s Life, Something Really Extraordinary Happens
Sometimes, something really out of the ordinary happens in some people’s lives. Sometimes, extraordinary things happen several times in a person’s lifetime.
I have to think my father thought World War 1 was a most extraordinary event (EE) to happen in his lifetime. A world war! He was 18 when he was shipped overseas as a soldier in New Zealand’s Expidentiary Force. Mustard gas ended his sojourn and he was repatriated to spend the next 44 years of his life suffering from war-induced emphysema, bronchitis and asthma. Then, when he was 41, war broke out again. Another EE in my father’s lifetime. How weird is that? And — the same country, Germany, initiated both wars.
World War II was in progress when I was born, ending when I was two so not being aware of it, I cannot regard it as an EE in my life. I consider the first EE to happen in my lifetime was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
I was shocked at the murder of such a likable leader, even being only 20 at the time and not that…