A Knowing Universe

Every once in a while, I’m reminded of what George Wald said about life. He shared the Nobel Prize for working out the chemistry of vision and later became a mystic. I was privileged to know him in Hawaii when he spoke at a conference I organized. “We live,” he told me, “in a knowing universe that wishes to be known.”

I was thinking about this when I received a phone call from Ken, a close and dear friend in Canada, who has worked with me on matters and history pertaining to the Halifax bomber, in one of which my father lost his life during WWII. I’ve never been completely sure that Ken is sympathetic to my tendency to mysticism (coincidences meaning purpose etc.) but after what he had to share with me, I suspect he might be more inclined that way.

Ken recently came back from a cruise to Europe. It sounds as if he had a much better time that he was expecting before he left, but the whole idea of traveling is so fraught with inconvenience these days that he prefers to stay home and do startlingly beautiful photography of the various wildlife that cross his acreage. Anyway, this time he went. It was a large liner with several thousand others on board and he and his wife were seated with three other couples, complete strangers before this moment.

Hang with me—you need to know all this or there is no wonder, as Dickens would say.

The couples exchanged addresses and phone numbers, as couples do after a week of enforced intimacy and pledged to keep in touch. One of the couples came from a town not far from Ken, so he gave him a call the other day. They started talking about the restored Halifax bomber in Trenton, Ontario, for which I wrote my first book Extraordinary Things to raise money for the endowment fund. Ken soon found out that this fellow had an uncle in the RCAF, but he didn’t know very much about him except that he flew Halifaxes.

One thing led to another in the conversation and Ken thought he might see if he could help since the Halifax Families Association of which I am director and Ken is advisor exists to help families with research. “Which Squadron?” Ken asked. It turned out to be 640 Squadron, which those of you who follow my saga will know was my father’s squadron. Surprised and rather intrigued, Ken looked in his considerable air force library for this uncle and very quickly determined that the uncle in the RCAF was none other than the navigator on my father’s crew. I’d been searching for him without success for several years.

What were the chances of this, I wonder? Among thousands of passengers, among hundreds of dinner tables, that they should be there at the same moment on a cruise that Ken was reluctant to go on. An improbable coincidence? But this is the third similarly huge coincidence I’ve personally experienced in regard to the Halifax. Without those coincidences, I would never have found the wireless operator or my father’s family. If I stopped to question them, I guess I'd never believe them. I guess they've primed me to look for purpose and meaning.

Today, AOL is reporting the death of Henry Allington, who at 113 had been the world’s oldest man. He'd experienced the horrors of WWI and, despite being nearly blind, spent his later life urging the world not to forget those who gave their lives in the horror of war. I think the coincidences surrounding the Halifax Bomber that I’ve experienced give me the same message. The universe does not wish us to forget these young men. I know I will never forget the loss of a crew where the youngest member was 19 and the oldest 27, and I will not forget all the other crews on other aircraft and in other uniforms lost flying Ops.

Now if it's not asking too much, I'd like another coincidence please. I want to find the family I haven’t been able to find, that of the pilot, Doug Thomas of Toronto, Ontario, so I can bring him back to his squadron family.