A True Outlier . . . And What His Life Says About All of Us
how GoD orchestrates our lives and uses our differences to His glory is not luck, nor will it always Be apparent to us.
By: Bobby Scott, Headmaster Emeritus
Yesterday, my family laid to rest my uncle, Ellis Vernon Cruse, at age 98. A lady at the visitation from his Bible group told me she had written him a birthday note every year since his 90th telling him he would be the first of the group to become a centenarian. He almost made it.
My uncle had his strengths, his quirks, and his way to do things. Some would call him an “outlier,” defined as a person different from all other members of a particular group. Perhaps he was an outlier due to his longevity, his lifetime bachelorhood, his love of the best in automobiles, his devotion to classical music, his admiration for poetry and Shakespeare, his ability to repair machines by creating the parts himself, his retention of information, and his fascination with aviation. Some of my uncle’s traits may have been more common at one time but have become increasingly those of an outlier as his “greatest” generation disappears.
Ellis served his country both in World War II and in Korea, able to see his passion for flying fulfilled to the hilt: first, as a test pilot for all available WWII aircraft, then from combat and cargo missions in the South Pacific. The most thrilling of these he described as the latter, flying supplies to numerous South Sea Islands that were virtually unmapped, knowing if he could not locate the remote airfields, he did not have the fuel capacity to make it back to base. Imagine enjoying that!
Then after WWII and completing his university education, he aggressively pursued the honor to fly again, eventually logging 2200 hours of nighttime reconnaissance/bombing missions over North Korea. Gratefully eluding anti-aircraft fire for the most part, he once had to land on a carrier with only one landing wheel remaining!
Now, if you have been around Perimeter School a while, you may ask, “did we ever honor him at our Veterans Celebration?” Well, here is one of his immovables: “I will not ever drive in that Atlanta traffic! People get killed on that I-20 all the time!” Yep, hundreds of combat missions, but not a drive to Atlanta, even if others drove him. That kind of quirkiness is the wonder of personhood . . . and it is in all of us in some way.
But those like author Malcolm Gladwell who study and describe outliers say that those whose lives are deemed significant had the luck to live at the right time. For example, Bill Gates and the folks who are responsible for the personal computer explosion all were born between 1953 and 1956, putting them alive at just the right time to use their skills to change our culture. There may be some truth to that, but does that mean that others who missed those dates have less significance?
In fact, how God has and will orchestrate our lives and use our differences to His glory is not luck, nor is it always apparent to us.
One example is my Uncle Ellis’s insistence on detailed and perfect execution. This could be and was at times aggravating. All my brothers and I were under his tutelage with the upkeep of our automobiles. We scheduled times with him for all maintenance and repairs. Once I left a rag under the engine hood of my VW beetle, which got sucked into the cooling fan and almost burned up the engine. Not knowing the cause, I arrived semi-terrified at his basement garage saying, “I don’t know why the car is running hot. I have checked everything, and I promise I changed my oil every 2000 miles!” Within a minute he reached behind the fan cover, removed the rag, and said firmly, “When you change the oil, remove your oil rag.” “Yes, sir,” I said. He didn’t yell, letting my humiliation be the lesson.
This is just one of my many memories of how he took an unstructured teenager, taught him discipline, good habits, and to clean spark plugs, set engine timing, change disc and drum brakes, etc. He lamented the day when most of the mechanical functions became computer controlled, as we could no longer fix some problems together. Ironically, it was my own nephew John at the funeral who shared this astute idea to me concerning my uncle’s unique personality . . .
Had Ellis not been so strictly meticulous and detailed and precise about things, how would he have ever found those South Sea Islands and delivered those needed supplies?
In addition, how could he have survived that carrier landing? How would he have found the way to get back home on those night missions? How could he have removed the numerous “oil rags” in his profession as a pilot and later serve others for 35 years as a lawyer? Often what we and others may see as annoying quirks can be the unique gifts of our personhood.
It is wondrous how God wove us in the womb to one day engage others, not by luck, but by preparing good works for us to do in our time (Ephesians 2:10).
Ellis Cruse was not a perfect man, struggling with the generational attitudes of a man living 98 years in the Deep South. But even those puzzling and inconsistent prejudices are still wiped away as he had surrendered to Him. Jesus makes scarlet failures become as white as snow. I am so grateful that my uncle saw himself rightly, not as having it all together, not as any kind of hero, but primarily a sinner in need of a Savior. What a life! I will miss him.
God shows up in our messy places and transforms ordinary moments into holy ones.