An Unforgettable Speaker

Probably Fall 1977

(Mailed to Mom—CBC years)

We had an excellent Chapel service recently—one of the most stunning true stories I’ve ever heard. The speaker was a veteran of the Viet Nam war, named Reever. On an exploratory mission, preparing to throw a grenade onto the beach to detonate any booby traps, one of his men made sudden acquaintance with tragedy when a sniper bullet hit the explosive, still in his hand. He was immediately on fire. The blast threw him from his boat, and the boat sank on top of him. It had been a phosphorous grenade: phosphorous burns relentlessly, even under water.

Pinned beneath his own ship, both drowning and burning to death, Serviceman Reever realized how impossible his situation was. He realized that he must no longer have a face. He had no hearing and no vision. But he was prepared to die. He knew he had lived right and was not afraid to die. At that time Bible verses went through his mind, and he thought that maybe, just maybe, he would survive. Somehow he got free of the weight on him. He swam with “supernatural strength.” As his wide skin floated away behind him, “I was beside myself,” he told us. He staggered up onto the beach and, before falling, shouted as a declaration that he did not blame God, still believing in God.

A friend who had been sharing his faith with him in the past, seeing his buddy’s horribly mutilated body and hearing this proclamation of loyalty to God, at that moment dropped to his knees, asking Jesus to forgive him and accept him.

Everyone thought Reever was dead. When they were able to get him on a stretcher his body, still on fire, burned a hole in the drop cloth on the sand. They had to wrap him in wool army blankets to get him to the helicopter. This time Reever was conscious. Then the helicopter managed to “conk,” all it did, and he so scared the medic and the pilot into thinking they were going to wreck the craft that he would die anyway.

When they got to a hospital in Japan, they could technically find no pulse or heartbeat, so the doctor examined him hurriedly. Reever’s tongue had swollen so large that he was unable to breathe through his throat; the phosphorous had burned a hole in his lungs, and he was breathing through that. Occasionally a puff of phosphorous flame would leap from the cavity. He overheard the doctors —

“There’s nothing we can do for this man. He’s almost dead.”

After some discussion, one of them said, “Well, we ought to at least put the fire out.”

Reever somehow survived, he said, “despite their surgery.” The recovery process was to be quite long. The pain must have been tremendous, but he didn’t mention it to us. When he was able to talk he asked for a mirror. What he saw made him want to die.

He was eventually flown home to America. The thought that had kept him living was that of his “little 18-year-old wife.” And yet he was afraid for her to see him. The time came when she neared his room. He waited for her reaction. She looked at the man who was her husband—an ear missing, no hair, and a face too horrible to talk about. Through his one good eye he watched her. There was no fear, no horror, no disgust—she only smiled.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you,” he croaked. And she bent down and kissed him.

“I’ll never look good again!” he exclaimed. There was a pause.

“You never did,” she said.

His face had to be remade totally. 60% of the skin on his body had been destroyed. He walked the platform of our chapel telling us all that had happened to him. Speaking of his right hand, he said, “This here’s my microphone hand. See these fingers? They don’t open up. Only this one does.” He wiggled his index finger. “That’s my preaching finger. This thumb’s just for decoration. The microphone fits right in there.”

A girl asked me how I play piano. I told her I play by ear…” and he indicated how he would take off his plastic ear and strike the keys.

(Back side—continuation)

On the right side of his head he wore a toupee. On his left hand he had no thumb.

“God is good!” he bellowed. “He gives us joy!” He had us holding our sides with laughter. Every time he told us another detail of his tragedy, he would make a joke out of it. We were never able to feel sorry for him because he had us laughing about it.

“I don’t want your ungodly pity! I don’t need it!” he told us.

The man has found the secret of joy: owning joy in spite of his circumstances. He insisted he was not preaching something he doesn’t live. He was not there to be pitied, or honored—he was there to tell us that God loves us, that God can make life beautiful, that we are special and that God can give us joy. We had known that. Now we knew it so that we could never forget it. The man was proof. He had witnessed for ourselves in a dramatic way that real happiness is dependent not upon the circumstances in our lives, but the God in our lives.

To finish his message to us, Brother Reever shared a song with us. “After I got out of the hospital,” he said, “I wanted to learn to play the piano. So in the last few years I taught myself. It might not sound like much to you, but here it is anyway.”

He sat down at the instrument. We all waited, prepared to listen politely and appreciate his attempt. Some music majors, no doubt, were not only surprised, as the rest of us were, but envious. With the index finger of his right hand and the four fingers of his left hand he played for us a song as beautiful as any we’ve heard all semester.