Surviving two of the bloodiest naval battles in history - at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, in 1945 - made A. Robert Smith feel that a Higher Power was responsible for transferring him off of a ship destined for death and destruction from an enemy kamikaze. Why, he wondered, was he saved from that terrible attack on the USS Sandoval and allowed to live a long, purpose-filled life? His memoir, God Gave Me a Mulligan, is the story for how these events played in wartime and how his purpose-driven life evolved. Smith came home from ...
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Surviving two of the bloodiest naval battles in history - at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, in 1945 - made A. Robert Smith feel that a Higher Power was responsible for transferring him off of a ship destined for death and destruction from an enemy kamikaze. Why, he wondered, was he saved from that terrible attack on the USS Sandoval and allowed to live a long, purpose-filled life? His memoir, God Gave Me a Mulligan, is the story for how these events played in wartime and how his purpose-driven life evolved. Smith came home from World War II to become a newspaper correspondent, covering Congress and seven presidents - Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter ???- and the history-making admittance for Alaska and Hawaii into the Union, leading ultimately to the election of Barack Obama. His life was a series of purposeful adventures for a lad whose talents were less extraordinary than his opportunities. He came out of a small Pennsylvania town, fought for our country, married exceptionally good women, raised four gifted children, published several books, and later founded a spiritual magazine. As a journalist he got to look many a potentate in the eye, and even unnerve a few. Nonetheless, shaking the hands of Queen Elizabeth and a few U.S. presidents never failed to stir him. As Dizzy Dean, the St. Louis Cardinal's pitcher, declared: "If ya done it, it ain't braggin." He "done it" all right. In his "last hurrah" event at the Capitol, a senator asked what he had learned from covering Congress for 27 years. "Everything is negotiable!" he said. Negotiation is how two parties can reach a settlement that they can support. It is the pathway of peace in a divided world. It is the way to solve differences between Republicans and Democrats, between husbands and wives, and children and parents. Negotiation is the essential tool to lead us to a more peaceful world. "That is the truth I discovered, sitting in the Capitol press galley all those years," declared Smith, "something that will serve all people as we learn to live together peaceably." God Gave Me a Mulligan can be ordered from Amazon.com.
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