Captain Dave Carey, U.S.N.

Hello, I’m Joe Pursch, and this is a Transforming Moment. In the skies over Vietnam on August 31, 1967, Navy pilot Dave Carey’s A4 Skyhawk was shot down, and Carey parachuted into a five year stint in the hell of the Hanoi Hilton as a POW. Under the agony of daily torture, both physical and mental, Carey gradually deteriorated to the point where one day he realized he couldn’t keep even one thought straight in his head. Terrified he was losing his mind, and fearful that his captors would use something he might mindlessly babble forth against his shipmates or his country, Dave Carey groped for even one sentence to focus his mind. And then it came to him. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” The words of Psalm 23, buried in his memory twenty years before, now arose as the only words he could sustain in thought. They saved his mind, and his life, in the very presence of his enemies. I’m Joe Pursch, and this has been a Transforming Moment.