EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — They are the threads that bind one generation of the Pratt family to the next.
Threads bonding 7-month-old Nellie Granath to her mother Karly.
Threads linking Karly to her father Dave.
Threads connecting Dave to his father Bob Pratt, a WWII airman whose life would have ended if not for the threads of the parachute he grabbed as his B-17 bomber was shot down.
“It's very, very special,” Dave Pratt says.
Dave unfolds the escape map his father carried on his missions. The map shows highways in France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland meant to help guide American airmen to safety.
The map does not show Yugoslavia, where Bob Pratt and his parachute landed.
“It was cold and it was mountainous,” Dave explains. “He wrapped himself up in the silk in order to stay warm that night, so it saved his life twice.”
Perhaps that’s why Bob carried the parachute home.
His mother then took the silk from the parachute and sewed it into a baptismal gown.
“My grandmother knew she had to do something special with that parachute because it saved her son's life,” Dave says. “And it's more than an heirloom, it's sacred.”
Dave and his siblings wore the gown for their baptisms.
A generation later, their children were baptized in the gown, too.
Then, the tradition continued to a third generation.
“Without the parachute, I wouldn't be here, my siblings wouldn't be here. Our children, grandkids — we wouldn't exist,” Dave says. “It gives me goosebumps.”
By May of this year, 26 Pratt family arrivals had been baptized in the threads of the parachute that gave each of them a chance to live.
This Memorial Day weekend, in a baptismal service at Pax Christi Catholic Church in Eden Prairie, Nellie became the 27th.
“I hope my daughter and Nellie, when they get older, they will realize how special this is,” Dave says, as he pauses to fight back tears.
Eighty years ago, the threads of a Parachute saved Bob Pratt from death.
Today, they honor the lineage of his life.
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