Wind Beneath Her Wings

by Rhonda Lane

There are two types of wingmen. One is the kind that helps his buddy get the prettiest girl in a bar. The other kind is as Goose was to Maverick in the movie “Top Gun,” helping his partner to live another day.

There’s even one more kind of imaginary winged creature that’s very visible this time of year: Cupid. He promotes flowers and hearts and lots of revenue for the stores, but that has nothing to do with real-life love.

My father, being too young for World War II, left his beloved Murray County, Georgia, and a gem of a beautiful, blueeyed brunette named Ruby, whom he had just begun “courting,” to work for the Bell Bomber plant in Marietta, Georgia. This plant was one of three in the United States that produced the B-29 Superfortress, the type of plane that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan.

Being a skinny, 16-year-old farm boy, he was put to work crawling into the very shallow, unfinished wing assemblies to “buck rivets.” This involved holding a metal plate against the inside of the wing to mold a red-hot rivet into place when it was inserted through the wing’s shell by another employee on the outside.

His job ended along with the war, and he came home to his beloved Murray County bringing with him a small plexiglass heart carved from scraps of the plane’s windshield. It was strung on a silver-colored chain to adorn Ruby’s neck. His next, and lifelong, job was to be her very own wingman for the next 73 years of her life till death did them part and he was carried home on angel’s wings to await her arrival 48 days later. “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall know no need of spoil” (Proverbs 31:10-11). 22 // February 2021

Their only subsequent long-term separations were his 19 months in Korea when he did go to war and a few brief nursing home stays. Together, they weathered the good and the bad, the storms and the sunshine, the new and the old, the tears and the laughter. Together, they raised a daughter; together, they planted my mom’s favorite flowers, pansies, in their yard; and together, they planted wild purple thrift on their tiny stillborn daughter’s grave.

To paraphrase one of my mother’s favorite songs, he was “the wind beneath her wings.” He would have killed for her, he would have died for her, but mostly, he lived for her. Christ killed Satan’s power over us, He lived on Earth for us, and He died for every one of us. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25).

I wonder if my dad and my sister were planting pansies in front of my mother’s mansion when she got to Heaven?

About The Author Rhonda Lane is a native of Dalton, Georgia, and is an orphaned, old maid, and only child trying to find her way in the world and lose herself in Jesus Christ.