{"id":16873,"date":"2016-06-30T01:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T06:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=16873"},"modified":"2016-06-30T01:00:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T06:00:23","slug":"profiles-in-courage-byron-and-gladys-mckaig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/30\/profiles-in-courage-byron-and-gladys-mckaig\/","title":{"rendered":"Profiles in Courage: Byron and Gladys McKaig"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I read this story I was of course sad at the tragedy that had befallen the McKaig’s, but I was also Proud that this man, Mr. Byron McKaig, a retired Priest, died trying to Protect his wife during a recent wildfire in California.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. McKaig\u00a0EXEMPLIFIES all the qualities that I try to have in my own life and also teach my children: Duty, Honor, Self-Sacrifice, Courage and Committment.-SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

As a fire\u00a0roared across Squirrel Mountain Valley on Thursday evening, the flames left little untouched.\u00a0Trees and homes were torched like kindling. Propane tanks exploded like bombs. Oil fields caught fire. Lake Isabella, an hour northeast of Bakersfield, Calif., disappeared behind\u00a0a haze of smoke and ash.<\/p>\n

When the fire had passed Friday morning,\u00a0locals assessed the scene.<\/p>\n

They saw hundreds of homes, gone; dozens\u00a0of vehicles burned to a crisp; tens of millions of dollars worth of damage.<\/p>\n

And then, amid the smoldering ruins, Bill Johnson spotted\u00a0his\u00a0neighbors.<\/p>\n

Byron and Gladys McKaig were lying against a corner of their fire-ravaged fence.<\/p>\n

They were not moving.<\/p>\n

The retired priest and his church organist wife, so close in life, had died together\u00a0during the blaze.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was, like, on top of her, and they were together, like he was blocking her from the fire,\u201d Johnson told the Los Angeles Times<\/a>. \u201cIt made me sick because immediately I saw and knew exactly what had happened \u2014 that they were alive and ran out of this burning inferno and got stuck, and that was where they ended.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was terrible for those people to go like that. Just horrible,\u201d he added. \u201cThey didn\u2019t deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friends and family members, however, took some solace in the fact that the elderly couple died embracing each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was beautiful, his devotion to her,\u201d Bishop Eric Menees\u00a0told\u00a0Bakersfield.com<\/a>. \u201cHe cared for her up until their very last seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at Washington Post<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I read this story I was of course sad at the tragedy that had befallen the McKaig’s, but I was also Proud that this man, Mr. Byron McKaig, a retired Priest, died trying to Protect his wife during a recent wildfire in California.\u00a0 Mr. McKaig\u00a0EXEMPLIFIES all the qualities that I try to have in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74,1247,1860],"tags":[12571,12572,12573,12574,12575,3766],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}