Fr. Paul and an eerie coincidence

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a couple of years will remember that I posted on the sickness and then the death of The Rt. Rev. Fr. Paul W. Moses, an Archimandrite of the Antiochian Orthodox Church. He was a WWII veteran who had been a bomber pilot. During one of his flights, he was hit by anti-aircraft fire. One person was killed immediately, but Fr. Paul managed to keep the plane airborne until he was able to ditch in the English Channel. A second airman died in his arms in an inflatable boat while they were waiting for rescue.

Yesterday I received an email from the great-nephew of the man who was killed immediately. His name was Kenyon Miller. The incident happened on May 12th, 1944 in one of the bombing raids that was preparing the ground for the invasion on D-Day. His nephew is trying to put some of that history together and has managed to find and contact 5 of the 9 crew members who were on board that day. I hope that they manage to pull together a reunion and that the nephew manages to pull all that history together and writes it out soon.

But, there was an eerie coincidence that struck me immediately upon reading his letter. You see, I had never known the name of the man who was killed immediately. There would have been no reason for Fr. Paul to tell me. So, I never knew that his given name was Kenyon. That struck me because in the spring of 1969 I graduated from high school. That fall I entered my first year of college in Gambier, Ohio, at Kenyon College. I did not end up graduating from that college. My bachelor’s degree is from another college.

But, it did strike me as eerie that those many years ago Fr. Paul was with Kenyon when he died. Many decades later, a man who attended Kenyon was with Fr. Paul when his turn came. Just coincidence?