He had always been rather reserved. Nine years in the Navy could do that to a man. If it didn’t need to be said, it wasn’t. But as I sat down with Chris Bilecki in Syracuse, New York recently, Bilecki, for the very first time ever, shared a story of a close encounter that ultimately changed his life in ways he’s still trying to fully understand. And it all began on a warm summer night, on a lonely road back in 1972. Bilecki was 23 years old and almost three years into his service with the U.S. Navy.