Columbus Day - By Chuck Stilwell

Columbus Day - By Chuck Stilwell

I have always been interested in history. The history of our own country hasparticularly been of personal interest since some of my forefathers came over onthe Mayflower and three presidents of the United States were close ancestors ofour family. In a time of national despondency and discontent, we tend to forgetthe determined intentionality of those heroes who have gone before us. They hadvision and courage to attempt the impossible to reach the incredible. Recently I have been reading about Christopher Columbus. He was from a poor weaver’s familyin Genoa and he and his brother, Bartholomew, were expected to carry on theweaver’s trade. Yet, they both had another vision. Whenever possible they wentto the docks to see the sailing vessels and dream of sailing. The seeds ofimagination grew in their minds and hearts. Bartholomew left the weaver’s trade and became a map maker for the sea captains, gaining much knowledge about theseas. Christopher joined him for a while and learned much from him about bothsea and land potential explorations. Christopher finally was able to sail with a ship and ended up, possibly the only survivor of a pirate raid. He was seriouslywounded and was thrown overboard and grabbed a plank of the wrecked ship anddeterminedly made it to the rocky shore of Portugal where he lay unconscious.Found by fishermen he was nurtured back to health. Later, he pursued his vision of sailing the great Ocean Sea in search of a new route to the Indies. Withextraordinary obstacles and during severe weather and political upheaval, he wasfinally able to reach the islands off the coast of our country. In so doing heserved to remove the fear of many European seamen and rulers about sailing west.The rest is history! The Spanish, Portuguese, English and many other countriesset out to sail west and found America’s northern and southern hemispheres. Ofcourse, we now know that others preceded him by centuries. However, we have himand his brothers and even the rulers of Spain at the time for the colonizationand later freedom in what is now our country. Columbus was a devout man of God,even though we would not condone some of the things that occurred during histime as Admiral. Remember happens in our country’s coming elections and political decisions, let’s remember that change comes from those who are boldand fear not when they know their vision is correct and noble, no matter theirbackground.