Sean Gaffney launched my career

Happy 50th Birthday to Sean Gaffney!

Sean and I in Colorado, July 1995.

Sean launched a 20 year career in the performing arts for me. I’m sure that’s not what he had in mind when he invited me to drive out to Seattle from NYC to take the position of managing director at Taproot Theatre, but when I said yes to the trip I quit my day job forever. He and I pulled together some of our own sketches, including Sean’s “Lazarus," which I still perform all over the world in a one-man version. We drove together six days and performed together just about every night. Somewhere out there between jumping over a 15’ cyclone fence and running through a cemetery in a Nebraska downpour only to discover the folks we were supposed to perform for in a park on the other side of that cemetery decided to go camping instead, to long chats about good and bad plays, to the Lamb’s Theatre where we met, Sean encouraged me not to go back to my day job. Miraculously I never have, and Sean was a very big part of that.

We both happened to be in London early this July, 20 years to the month after we started that trek. I was tremendously disappointed that our schedules didn’t quite coincide, but the Lord connected us in a very cool way. I was in London to perform with John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings, Beyond the Mask) and Helen George (Call the Midwife) for an audio movie on Alfred the Great (www.RichDrama.com/TheDragonAndTheRaven). Toward the end of one day a colleague approached me: “Is your last name Swingle?” I confirmed it, and he said, “I’m about to have tea with your friends Sean and Cath Gaffney.” I was tremendously disappointed that I couldn’t join them, but I sensed the Lord celebrating two decades of artistic service in that Divine appointment.

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Interviewing a Hero

Joyce and I drove from Denver, where we're celebrating our Lord's birth with her family, to Nebraska to interview Tad Nagaki, one of seven paratroopers who liberated the internment camp where Eric Liddell died. Tad will be 90 years old next month and is still farming!

We connected with him through Mary Previte, the great-granddaughter of Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission. She was a member of the New Jersey State Congress and was asked to speak at a Memorial Day service for the China-Berma Veterans Association. She had been a 12-year old girl in the internment camp, when the seven paratroopers dropped into a field nearby. That was Tad's second jump. The first was in active duty over Burma. They didn't know how many Japanese guards there would be facing them, but after 1,500 internees rushed the gate, the guards lowered their weapons and went back to their barracks.

After telling that story to the veterans Mary asked, "Are any of my heroes here today?" The room went silent. That began a search which connected her to all six American jumpers or their widows. The one Chinese jumper, Eddie Wong, is believed to be in China, if still alive. Tad was the first living member of the team that Mary contacted.

We connected with Mary through her brother, the late Rev. Jim Hudson Taylor, III. He saw my play, Beyond the Chariots in Hong Kong in 2006, which was set up through fellow George Fox grad Brian Van Tassell. Rev. Taylor was also in the internment camp, and the first thing he said after I finished my play was, "It was softball. We didn't have enough room to play baseball." I changed the script.

Here are some articles we found in preparing for the interview:

Soldier Becomes 'Armored Angel' Freeing Prisoners
Tad Nagaki

Find dozens of more articles by visiting Weihsien-Paintings.org and searching for "Tad Nagaki".

En route to a hero

We're driving through Nebraska to interview Tad Nagaki, the last surviving member of the seven-man paratrooper team that liberated 1,500 Allied civilians from untold Japanese guards after their emperor surrendered, ending World War II. The internment camp they liberated had held Eric Liddell, featured in my play Beyond the Chariots, until he died six months earlier.

If you look closely at the photo you'll see three crosses atop the bluff.