How to Live With Gratitude When Life Gives You a Second Chance

Fifty-eight years ago, a 23-year-old soldier named Larry Weist was stacked with the bodies of the dead after a helicopter was shot out of the Vietnam sky. Then someone saw his hand move. 

In this episode of Commander's Intent, retired Air Force Colonel Derek Oaks shares the story of his friend Larry, and the one decision Larry made when he realized he'd been given a second chance at life. It's a quieter episode than most, and it might be the one you remember longest. 

You'll hear why gratitude is a decision rather than a feeling and how to make it daily, the mindset shift that turned 58 borrowed years into a life of impact, what it looks like to lead your family, your work, and your community with love even when life hurts, the question Derek wants every leader to sit with this week, and why the most important decision you make today might have nothing to do with strategy. 

If you've been moving too fast to notice what you've been given, this one is your pause button. 

Subscribe to Commander's Intent and head to commandersintentpodcast.com for Derek's free leadership guide.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Whether it's in business or in life, it can cost you everything. Commander's Intent will teach and inspire you how to lead with clarity, courage, and purpose. So here's your host, retired Air Force Colonel, fighter pilot, and your leadership mentor, Derek Oak.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Commander's Intent. This show is going to be a little bit of a departure from my normal shows. I'm going to share an experience that I had just recently, and it's one that really made me think about what am I doing with my life and what am I doing as a person? And am I acting with gratitude in everything that I do? I went to the funeral of a friend of mine named Larry Weist. He was 81 years old. He was a father. He was a husband. He was a veteran. He was a big-time patriot, but mostly he was somebody who loved his family and loved God and was lived his life grateful for all that he had been given over the years. At the funeral, one of his daughters spoke about an event that happened 58 years ago, and I'd heard about this event beforehand. It was when he was a specialist in the Army, an infantryman in the Army in the 25th Infantry Division. He was in Vietnam, and his unit was involved in a firefight. He was back at their headquarters or whatever you want to call it. And they had a some of the four deployed units were involved in a firefight. And so they were moving forces forward via helicopter to go relieve some of the guys who were under fire at that time. And so he jumped on a helicopter and he flew out to the area. And as they were getting ready to land in the landing zone, they were taking heavy fire, and the helicopter was literally shot out of the sky. He said it fell from about 90 feet up in a sort of a controlled type of a crash, hit the ground so hard that a lot of people on the helicopter were killed. And Larry, they thought he was killed because he's sitting next to his platoon sergeant, and his platoon sergeant's rifle was sticking muzzle up, and Larry's forehead hit the flash suppressor, which is on the end of a rifle. It's not a smooth piece of equipment. He mashed his forward into that with the violent crash of the helicopter. Blood went everywhere, broke the skin, obviously, and he was left for dead as they engaged in the firefight. And later on, as they got the conflict under control, they're gathering up the wounded so they can take care of them, and they're also stacking the bodies of the killed in action. And Larry was put in the stack of the killed in action initially until somebody saw that his hand was moving. And so they got him out of that and they pulled him out and they took him to a field hospital and they immediately operated on him. And he was able to recover well enough from that operation and from that injury that he was able to go back with his unit. He served for almost a year after that with his unit. In fact, he earned another Purple Heart during his time there. So Larry, after that incident, finished his service. He returned home. He worked. He finished college. He married. He raised four kids and multiple grandkids. He was an editor, a journalist, worked at a bunch of different newspapers. And he loved the wonders of the world. He loved what was going on around him. He loved taking things apart and mostly putting them back together. He loved understanding how things worked. And he was willing to share his love with just about anybody, whether it was through a microscope or a telescope or getting on a plane or a bus or a train to go see a site that he had heard about and he wanted to see for himself. When I spent time with Larry, nearly every single conversation, if it was longer than five minutes, you could see that he lived with a sense of gratitude. He lived with a sense of I'm living on borrowed time because I have buddies who didn't make it back and who are not with us today because of the sacrifices that they left on the battlefield. Larry came home and he had 58 years after that incident until his funeral, until the day he died, to be able to enjoy life, and he did enjoy life. Even in the last few years, he struggled a lot with his health. He struggled a lot with headaches that he had, and honestly, he had struggled through his entire life with severe headaches because of that injury. But he was able to function for the most part until towards the end of his life. But he still traveled more than the average person. He still loved going to see the sights. If he could get one of his family members to go with him, he was going to go see something and enjoy what God had given him on this earth. Larry was a bit of a pied piper and he loved the kids. He always had a warm embrace in a story for any kid who was willing to listen and any kid who was willing to get close to him. As an aside story, nine days before he died, we had a neighborhood kid who went missing. And Larry heard about it. And without telling anybody, here he is, he's an 81-year-old man on oxygen. He has to have oxygen with him. He only had an hour's worth of oxygen. He goes and he gets his car and he starts driving in the neighborhood. And then obviously when his wife found out and his daughter found out, they panicked a little bit because that could have been pretty catastrophic in and of itself. But that's the kind of person that Larry was. He was going to help a neighbor. He was going to help those around him. He wasn't going to say, I can't help, I'm sick, or I don't feel good, or I'm busy. And I'm sure he was the same way when he was younger. If he had time or if he could make time, he was going to make time to help those around him and to be with those around him to help them enjoy life like he did. But he would bring kids over, he would show them his machine shop that he no kidding had a machine shop in his basement. He was a gunsmith and he would show them how to take apart and put together trains, how to take apart and put together cars, appliances, whatever needed fixing at that time, whatever had his attention at that time, those kids, that whatever kids were with him, were going to be able to participate in that. So you go back to the injury in 1968, the crash that caused the damage to his frontal lobe. It didn't inhibit his executive function. Like I said, he lived with pain his entire life. But you always knew with Larry around that things were going to be said that were said without a filter if he thought it was coming out of his mouth. And yet with Larry, nobody got offended. You just kind of knew that's the way Larry was. And nobody got offended because those statements were always wrapped in love. They were always surrounded by other acts and other statements of his that were full of love. So why do I tell this story? Why do I share with you what I consider a very personal and a close relationship in my mind and talking about the loss of losing a friend like that? It's not my normal leadership decision-making approach to a show. I only knew Larry for a little over 10 years, but think about how he lived his life. It all ties together. 58 years ago, Larry found himself alive and he made a decision. He made a decision to live with gratitude. He made a decision to find the joy in the world. He had a lot of buddies who didn't make it home. He had a lot of buddies who came home much more damaged than him, much more hurt than him. And he could have easily left everything on the battlefield in the jungles of Vietnam, but he didn't. God gave him the chance to come back home. So he was able to come back home and enjoy the rest of his life, enjoy 58 years. And that decision he made to show gratitude, to live as best he could, and to honor the God that kept him alive long enough to experience all the wonderful things in the life were the blessings that he focused his life on. His 58 years weren't easy. Like the rest of us, he had challenges beyond that accident. And they weren't always filled with successes and joy. But Larry found the success and found the joy despite the setbacks and the challenges that come with a normal life. So as his friend, the reason I share that is because I feel obligated to ask each of you. I ask myself and to ask each of you, what are you doing with the gift of life that you've been given? All of us have been given the day that's in front of us, all have been given hopefully many years in front of us, but have we decided to use those days and years to the fullest? Have we decided to live with the kind of love for life that Larry did? I hope so. I, for one, have been reminded of what I have, the blessings that surround me, and I've recommitted myself to decide to live with the kind of joy Larry carried throughout his life. Thanks for joining us in this short, but I hope impactful discussion on Commander's Intent. Subscribe, follow, and comment as you like. And if you have any comments about this particular show and any thoughts about it, I'd love to hear them. If you have your own stories, if you have your own stories of gratitude, stories of decisions that you made to focus on the good things in your life, I'd love to hear about them. Join us for upcoming shows so that we all can become better decision makers for better results. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

So that's it for today's episode of Commander's Intent Podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will be entered in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private exclusive leadership coaching package with Derek Oaks himself. So head on over to Commanders and Head Podcast.com and pick up a free copy of Derek's Leadership Guide and join us on the next episode.