Proof

When Air Florida Flight 90

crashed into a bridge in D.C. back in 1982,

some survivors clung to a section of the tail

while a helicopter lowered a life ring.

A Man in the Water would take it

and pass it to another.

He repeated this five times

while the cold winter water

challenged him.

When the helicopter came back for him,

he was gone.

And we were one less.

                                He was “proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.”*

In a tail section classroom

crashed with students,

he passed out life rings.

They looked like books, essays and a joke or two.

Students took them.

They read brave words on a page, wrote essays

and, with his encouragement, spoke their minds.

He roped them in with a friendly manner,

taught them,

and sent them down the hall;

they, knowing or not, swam away with a life ring.

He repeated this many times

until cancer challenged him.

Then he was gone.

And we were one less.

One less man in the water

He is “proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.”

* Time, “Man in the Water,” Roger Rosenblatt, January 25, 1982