Courage & Faith

SIX MONTHS after moving into the first home he bought himself, 38-year-old Scott O’Grady is still living like bachelor. His friends in Indianapolis kid him that the walls of his Dallas home are largely unadorned and there are boxes he has yet to unpack.
But O’Grady isn’t one to obsess on what he calls the “small stuff.” A reformed perfectionist, O’Grady says he’s now pared his life down to the basics. O’Grady says the most important time he spends each day comes while reading and studying the Bible he keeps on his bed stand. O’Grady’s life and priorities changed in an instant nearly nine years ago, when a surface to air missile rocketed from the Bosnian hillside into the sky and went straight into his cockpit.

Plunge into danger

It was 2 June, 1995, when O’Grady, then a 29-year-old Air Force Captain based in Aviano, Italy, was flying what should have been a routine mission over Bosnia. O’Grady was one of two Air Force F-16 pilots patrolling the United Nations designated ‘no-fly zone’ when his cockpit warning alarm suddenly sounded. The onboard radar tracked three surface-to-air missiles launched from the ground. Two of them missed the fighter jets, but the third missile hit O’Grady’s plane directly behind his seat.
O’Grady remembers the sound of the impact and the flash – the searing heat of the flames. He pulled his ejection lever, and to his astonishment, it worked. He was catapulted into the sky, nearly five miles above the Earth.
O’Grady knew enemy forces were on the ground below, but he wasn’t inclined to wait to see whether his parachute would work. He pulled the ripcord, and said a silent prayer of thanks as his parachute unfurled. A dangling, floating target, O’Grady began the agonizingly long drop into enemy territory.
O’Grady managed to land unscathed, and found cover in a nearby patch of woods, where he dodged capture for six days and nights. Several times, enemy troops came within a few feet of his hiding place, close enough that he could see their boots and watch them fire random shots into the woods. He remained motionless during the daylight hours. At night, after exhausting his relief supplies, O’Grady foraged for bugs to eat and rainwater to drink, and attempted to use his radio to make contact with rescue crews to tell them he was alive.

New lease of life

O’Grady, a Catholic since birth, says those six days and nights were the most intense and sustained period of prayer of his life. O’Grady says that during the daytime hours, highlights of his life played out in a sort of review, like a movie in his head. He had time to consider his regrets – a relationship with a girl he’d cut short for his military career, and some hurtful words he’d exchanged with loved ones. He was overcome with feelings of love and longing for his parents and two siblings. O’Grady says he could feel the prayers being said on his behalf.
On his third day on the ground, halfway through the experience, O’Grady says something miraculous happened. He had been thinking about the village of Medjugorje, a Bosnian town that is a pilgrimage site for Catholics from all over the world. Many Catholics believe the Virgin Mary has been appearing to six village children – now young adults – every evening for more than a decade. O’Grady said he had never “bought into the phenomenon” of miracles and apparitions attributed to Medjugorje. But he decided to send up a prayer in honor of the village, which was less than 100 miles from O’Grady’s location.
O’Grady has difficulty articulating what happened next. “You have to understand there are no words to describe the feeling,” he said in 1996, while describing his experience just a few months earlier. “It’s not like I saw someone walking in the forest, but I saw something. It was a shimmering image. But the image was insignificant compared to the feeling that accompanied it.”
O’Grady said it was as if the warmest arms he’d ever felt came around him and through him. The feeling of love and warmth permeated his body. He said if one could “will the feeling to happen,” one would never leave it. O’Grady said he knew in an instant that it was coming from God, and that whether he lived or died, “I was God’s child, and I was going to be OK.” O’Grady says it took away his fear of death. “I realized that to die, is actually to gain.” O’Grady says the “mountain-top feeling” eventually ebbed, but left him on a “spiritual high,” that sustained him through his final days on the ground.

Out of the woods

On the sixth day, after making radio contact with O’Grady, an elite team of Marines moved in with a chopper, dodged enemy fire and whisked O’Grady out of Bosnia to safety.
At a press conference following a triumphant reunion with his family and rescue team, O’Grady told the waiting reporters, “If it wasn’t for my love for God and God’s love for me, I wouldn’t be here right now, and I know that in my heart.” He says he still felt the “spiritual high” of what he calls his “epiphany” in the forest. But weeks later, it was replaced with a feeling of guilt. O’Grady felt guilty for not sustaining the level of prayer that had seen him though his Bosnian ordeal.
He confessed it to a priest who told him, “Scott, God was there for you in the intensity you needed, when you needed it. He’s gone on to someone else in need with that intensity now. But He’s always there. He’s as close as your next prayer.”
O’Grady returned to the Air Force with a new lease on life. “Growing up in Christ, I knew the priorities in life, but that doesn’t mean I lived them. Now those priorities have become more real. When I focus on what’s important, it’s my relationship with God and with my family and loved ones.”
“Life is short. You have to make the most of each day. I realize it’s not about what I have at the end of the day in my bank account that’s important, it’s what I did that day to make a difference in someone’s life.”
O’Grady eventually transferred to the Air Force Reserve and opted to leave the military in February 2001, after 12 years of service.
He moved from Salt Lake City, where he had been stationed, to Dallas, where he enrolled in classes at a seminary with a Bible studies graduate program that intrigued him. “The more I study the Bible, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”
O’Grady now splits his time between school and traveling the country for public speaking. O’Grady says he makes time in his life for prayer, for family and for leisure. He says he is actively searching for the right woman, and would love to get married and have a family.
O’Grady plans to get his graduate degree in Biblical Studies, but doesn’t know where it will lead him. He readily shares his faith.
“I have a book ministry,” he laughs, “I love to buy books and share them with people. Whatever I wind up doing after school, it will be something of service to others.”
O’Grady says his experience in Bosnia broadened his view on faith. He’s explored Christian churches beyond the Catholic faith.
He currently attends a Bible-based church near his Dallas home where he’s actively involved in Bible study. “I go to Mass too, when family and friends come in,” he says. “My relationship with Christ is important: it’s Christ who saves.”
O’Grady says he still makes plenty of mistakes, and occasional errors in judgment.
“I still struggle with life, like everyone else. But those six days made my faith more real. It was a wake-up call. I had the greatest peace in my life when I had no worldly distractions – just total faith and trust in God.”