Guest Post by: David Tonaszuck
A reflection on the Epiphany of the Lord. The Gospel of Matthew 2:1-12
Dear friends in Christ,
They say the sea has a mind of its own, but on the night of February 18, 1952, it was a monster. The wind howled over Cape Cod, Massachusetts, turning the Atlantic into a black, heaving wilderness. Two tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, broke in half, scattering sailors across the freezing waves. The radio called it a “dual disaster,” and for a while, it looked like nobody would come back alive.
Bernie Webber was a young Coast Guardsman, steady but quiet, not the sort who chased glory. He took the helm of the CG-36500, a wooden lifeboat barely 36 feet long—just big enough for a handful of men and a prayer. The Coast Guard didn’t expect much. The storm was too fierce, the water too cold, the Pendleton mostly gone. But Bernie and his crew set out anyway, following the flickering beam of the Chatham light into the wild unknown.
They found the Pendleton’s stern battered but afloat, thirty-two men huddled on deck, faces lit by the ship’s emergency lamps and the jagged blue of lightning. Every wave threatened to smash the little boat to pieces. But the men jumped, one by one, and Bernie caught them all. When he’d taken on the last man, the boat was so loaded it barely cleared the waves. The compass was gone, swallowed by the storm. The radio was dead. There was no way to steer home except by faith.
That’s when the miracle happened. As the rescue boat neared the shore, the men saw a strange glow on the horizon—dozens of car headlights, shining out from the parking lot at Chatham. Families, friends, strangers and townsfolk all lined the coastline, their cars pointed toward the sea, their lights blazing to guide the lost men home. It was hope writ large, a signal fire made of headlights, a promise that someone was waiting, that the darkness would not win. The CG-36500 followed those lights all the way to safety. Every man survived.
The story of that night is retold in books and movies—The Finest Hours—because it’s more than just a rescue. It’s about what happens when people risk everything to follow the faintest hint of light, refusing to let fear or darkness have the last word.
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