To Err is Human
Retired Army Chaplain Col. Edward G. Wulfekuehler Jr. lives on Maui in Hawaii with his wife, Carol, and is not to be held accountable for any misspellings in this story.

During the spring of 1965 in Korea, I was the 1st Cavalry Division Artillery chaplain with about 30 compounds under my service. With so many compounds to tend to and so much to do, my year there went by rather quickly.

A good amount of my time, however, was spent on long jeep trips between units. I was accompanied by my loyal assistant, Marty, on these drives. He was astounded by how quickly I could fall asleep sitting up as we traveled the gravel roads of the Korean countryside in our bouncing, swerving jeep.

One day the division chaplain entrusted me with a special mission. Marty and I were instructed to drive from our division headquarters to a printing house in Seoul, Korea.

As he handed me a folder, the division chaplain explained, “Ed, don’t lose this—in it is the only copy of the Easter bulletin. The printer in Seoul is expecting it this afternoon for the 1,000 copies he’s making for the service on Sunday.”

Nodding, I told him I understood. Then, he asked me to do him a favor.

“The president of the World Council of Churches is going to give the sermon, so everything on the program has to be perfect,” he said. “I’ve read it over a hundred times, and I’d like you to do the same in case I’ve overlooked something. I thought you could proofread it on your way to the printing house.” It took more than an hour to drive from division headquarters to Seoul, so I knew I would have ample time to read the program, but I also knew that meant absolutely no snoozing on the way there.

I spent the entire drive carefully reading the program word by word, forward and (literally) backward to try to catch any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors. Marty was impressed; I didn’t snore at all on the way to the printing house.

Once in Seoul, we made our way through the crowded streets, filled with weaving bikes, speeding cars, and fuming buses. When we finally reached the printers’ office, I took the program out of the folder for the last time. My holy mission was complete.

But then, at the last minute, my eyes caught something—an error! Despite numerous readings by both the division chaplain and myself, it had gone unnoticed. According to the program I was about to give the printer, the president of the World Council of Churches would give the assembled faithful not an “Easter Message,” but an “Easter Massage.”

I wrested the program from the startled clerk’s outstretched hands. With a red face and silly smile, I cleared my throat and said, “Ah, yes, but there is this one correction.”

Since then, I’ve proofread other similar programs for various occasions. Even today, try as we might to avoid embarrassing misprints, the menehunes (Hawaiian goblins) still mess with our priestly pages. The latest was a recent Christmas program where “O Come All Ye Faithful” was printed, and the second stanza, “Sing choirs of angels,” encouraged that angelic host to “Sin in exaltation!”