Everyday Heroics

Recently, while going through some family papers that had been collected by my late brother, I discovered a 1902 newspaper account of a relative who died after being hit by a train. The headline read:

GROUND BENEATH CARS
Sad Death of Lola Irving Leonard

Lola Leonard

It tells the story of an 18-year-old high school senior in Yonkers, New York who was on her way home after school one rainy December afternoon. Apparently she slipped and fell while trying to board a train and the wheels of the last car ran over her legs. After an emergency amputation and four and a half hours of suffering, she passed away.

The “unfortunate girl”, as the article described her, was my great grandmother’s sister, but this was not a story I grew up with. In fact, the only “Lola Leonard” I knew of was not my great grand-aunt, but my grandmother, born in 1905, just a few years after the train station tragedy. Clearly she was named for her mother’s lost sibling. You’d think such a story would become family legend, but the episode might have been too painful pass along. I literally heard it for the first time a few weeks ago. I’m glad someone decided to save the article, and that I had a chance to see the yellowed newsprint before it crumbled away to nothing.

All of that came to mind yesterday when I spotted a You Tube video which has since traveled around the world several million times. If you haven’t seen it yet you should take a look, especially if you admire courage and like happy endings. Spoiler Alert – A man in Madrid falls off a station platform on to some railroad tracks and another man pulls him out of the way at the last possible moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGyl3DawS8Q

I’ll be interested to read the complete story when someone manages to tell it. Some accounts have said the man who fell on the rails was drunk. That’s possible. Being drunk would certainly explain what happened, though there are other ways to topple off a platform.

Another account said the off duty policeman who performed the rescue ran to the spot where he jumped down on the tracks to help. Maybe so, but he seems awfully relaxed as he approaches the scene. Maybe he’s not relaxed, but exhausted, or scared. Another story claimed the rescuer’s name was “Angel”. Perhaps it was. If not, it’s possible his name will be “Angel” by the time the Hallmark TV special is filmed.

If you watch the video, note the reaction of the people in the station. Clearly they are concerned. Man on the tracks! They want to save him and they try to flag down the onrushing train. Some turn away at the last moment because they can’t bear to watch what they fear is about to happen. I understand all of that completely. I think we’d all like to be the strong person of action who moves quickly and decisively in a moment of crisis, but if I was put in the same situation I’m pretty sure I would be one of the well-meaning people who stayed on the platform, and not the hero who faced the danger.

A salute to the Spanish policeman for his physical courage!

And in the lesser category of linguistic feats, I commend one of the commentators following this story in the online edition of London’s Daily Mail.

A typographically challenged reader named Jeremy remarked about the hero:
“And he was so clam doing it!”

To which another reader named “K” responded:
“It would be difficult to accuse that bloke of being shellfish.”

What a brave bit of wordplay. My hero!

What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever seen?

69 thoughts on “Everyday Heroics”

  1. Rise and Shine Babooners:

    My very belated sympathy to your family Dale — what stories, both past and present. The YouTube video is hard to make out–could not even see the guy fall on the tracks the first time, then the rescue was ghostly, too.

    The most heroic action I have ever seen was drawn out over time. My father was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at age 29. The disease cut short the agricultural career of a brilliant and charismatic man slowly destroying his intellectual and physical self. The daily behavior of my mother, and my Aunt Donna and Uncle Jim (mom’s sister) over many years allowed our family to keep him at home. When my parents received this news about dad’s diagnosis, my mother was pregnant with my brother, who we knew would be an rH baby who would need blood transfusions at birth. Dad could not drive anymore due to his symptoms, so my mother drove herself in labor 45 miles to deliver my brother then give him the medical care he needed.

    My mother returned to teaching, moved us to a larger Iowa town where she could finish her teaching degree and be nearer to her family in Pipestone, MN. My aunt and uncle lived in that town, too. We saw them nearly every day because they were often present to help with dad, babysit us, share meals, play cribbage, at church where we all attended, shovel snow, move dad to the basement during tornadoes, and provide stability. Mom provided well for us, made a home, and allowed us a somewhat normal family life by going to work every day. She not only earned her BA in Education, she also got her MA in Education.

    Mom was by no means an easy person to live with. She had her own mental health difficulties that made her life hard. Dad’s illness was heartbreaking. But Mom, Uncle Jim and Aunt Donna made a home anyway, day-by-day. And what they did is the most heroic thing I’ve every seen.

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    1. What I find even more amazing, is that your Mom and family were caring for your dad at a time when there probably was a lot less known about MS and its treatments. A testament to some strong willed, brave folks.

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    2. wow, Jacque – such strength. thanks for sharing that story. gotta go cogitate on the topic (and stick my nose into Dream’s hair and breath deeply while i milk her) a good and gracious morning to You All

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    3. My mom has MS and it’s a terrible disease. Hers has been very slow progressing and I think old age will get her before the MS does. Your mom is a true hero to take matters in hand and take care of everyone the way she did.

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    4. Thanks for the inspiring story, Jacque.
      If your dad was diagnosed at 29, this could have gone on for quite a long while. How many years did your mom, Uncle Jim and Aunt Donna provide care for him?

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      1. From 1958 until 1983 when he was diagnosed with diabetes. It complicated everything. It still took my sister, brother, and I sitting my mother down and saying, “It is time for a nursing home.” Dad was there until 1996 when he died at age 67. The nursing home was 3 blocks from her house. In 1990 my grandmother joined dad at the same nursing home for 9 years until she finally died.

        Everyone in my family has Long Term Care Insurance.

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  2. What a sad story, Dale. It was moving to see the video of the clam hero, and boy he was just in time!

    I loved your story, Jacque. My own is almost identical, and I won’t say much about it here because it is the subject of the book I’ve written about my parents. Like you, I’m most impressed by courage that is humble and yet difficult and which takes a very special commitment to express itself.

    The bravest thing I’ve seen anyone do is when my father cared for my severely ill mother the last six and-a-half years of her life. He was in his 70s at the time, and she was so compromised by her problems that any other husband would have left her in an intensive care nursing home environment. But Dad brought her home and devoted every waking moment of the last years of her life to making her as comfortable and happy as he could.

    I have a story to add that I’ll post later. Here’s wishing you all a great start to the week. The Blevins Book Club meets Saturday, and Anna has posted about this. I hope to see many of you there (“there” meaning “here,” at my house!).

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  3. One of my grandfather’s relatives (can’t remember if it was one of his brothers or an uncle) was killed in a logging camp up near Cloquet. Apparently there was a fight of some kind and he was struck by a large and heavy piece of blunt logging equipment. Apparently no one thought much of it (a fight in a logging camp…how shocking!) until he died a few days later from some kind of internal injury. Then it was ‘murder!’ Just like Dale, we had no idea until we found an old newspaper clipping in my grandfolks’ things. Seems like talking about these things was ‘just not done’ back in the day.

    I like the idea of integrating this ‘clam’ idea. I mean, if there’s a fire or some kind of disaster and someone yells, “Keep calm!” no one ever does, everyone panics. But if someone yelled, “KEEP CLAM EVERYONE, JUST KEEP CLAM!” everyone would be so confused and/or bemused, it would be much easier to get them to evacuate orderly. Hm….have to think about that…

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      1. I’m sorry, did you say something? I’ve got a fish in my ear, so my herring is off.

        I’d pull it out but my hand won’t work. There’s something wrong with my mussles.

        I tried with all of my heart and sole but I just couldn’t fish it out.

        ~sigh~…etc, etc, etc…

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      2. OK, who else has the LP of Kip Addota singing ‘Wet Dream’ and it’s all fish puns… ‘Don’t call the cops, Gil. This guy needs a sturgeon’… ‘My Stingray was in the shop… they said I’d blown a seal… I said Leave my private life out of this OK Pal?’
        And yes, the halibut pun… too many others I can’t remember… I think I won it from a radio station way back when…
        Suppose Mike would play it on RH?

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      3. Ben, I don’t have the LP, but am sure I heard it on the radio at some point.

        I’m also playing Send Me a Love Letter on a Fish in my head today.

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    1. This is a lot off-topic, but I read something pretty funny while browsing a free online dating site yesterday. Folks who use such sites are supposed to write a title about their profile. This guy wrote: LOOKING FOR A WOMAN WITH INTEGRITY AND WHO’LL BE MY BEST FIEND.

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      1. too bad. I think I have the integrity thing down, but am only a fiend at the amateur level, I don’t think I would make it as “best”

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  4. courageous stuff is a challenge in this era of complacency. there are wars that bring out great stories of heroism and cowardice, there are epic moments that occur that make great stories and have to do with sailing the oceans and climbing the tallest mountains. there is an adrenalin rush out there that goes with certain life styles and that is the appeal to those lifestyles. i am an adventurer and would like to be in those situations but i use my family as an excuse as to why i don’t do it. i love hanging out in the mountains, i love relaxing by the water. i love travel to foreign places and to put myself in unfamiliar situations but the moments of courage are few and far between. the time the flask of brandy fell in the fire and i rushed in to pull it out doesn’t count. the time i told my draft board that i would fill out the conscientious objector form rather than move to canada and they told me to wait until i had been drafted doesn’t count. i have mustered up courage to go in far a tax audit, to go to divorce court, to figure out a way to mae up the difference when my business is coming up a little short to pay the bills, life is such a ballancing act to get involved in situations where courage is the theme is closer to a mater of getting out of bed than i like to admit sometimes. i find my courage is usually a case of putting one foot in front of the other when i get myself in a situation where i wish i wasn’t. i am a risk taker and i do get myself in these situations little more often than i would like but the option other than figuring out how to go from here is never very apparent at the moment. if i can avoid courage inspired feats of daring i do. when they are required i try to do them with as little bravado as possible. have a good week andi hope courage isn’t required more that once or twice. it can be exhausting.

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    1. Tim, there are pearls scattered throughout your soliloquy, as usual.
      I would give you more credit than you want for the incident with the brandy and the campfire.
      Alcohol is flammable. That thing could have blown!

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  5. Good morning to all,

    I haven’t seen any heroic efforts like the one in the video. I am familiar with the kind of heroic efforts that Jacque and Steve reported above and appreciate their admiration for their family members who gave of themselves in the ways they described. My father made a similar effort in caring for my mother at the end of her life.

    My father, who had his own health problems, completely devoted himself to caring for my mother after she was disabled by a severe stroke. Many people told my dad that he should put my mother in a nursing because he was barely strong enough to take care of her in an assisted living facility. The only way he could take my mother to the dining room in the home was by supporting himself by holding onto the wheel chair used by my mother.

    My dad probably should have moved my mother to a nursing home. I’m sure the effort he made to care for her agravated his health problems and made his life shorter. However, I’m certain no one could have talked him into putting her in a nursing home.

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    1. All these references to putting a loved one in a nursing home are making me shiver. I’m a bit PTSD from having just spent six weeks in a nursing home and all the horror stories are true. I liken it to being sentenced to prison …..only the bars are missing. I was not quite sick enough to warrant the hospital, but too sick to be at home alone so “extended care” seemed appropriate. Being surrounded by the smells, sights & hopelessness of a much older population was in every way a preview to a future nightmare most people fear. They overdosed me a couple of times and argued with this fact after I researched the symptoms on my laptop; they totally messed up my transition from feeding tube to solids; they didn’t notice that – after five days of refusing all food & liquid -I was dangerously dehydrated. Only an emergency trip to Mayo Clinic & a full week in their hospital saved me from further deterioration.

      I’ve vowed that neither I nor anyone for whom I care will ever enter one of these facilities in my lifetime. I applaud all those loving care givers who take on the arduous job of keeping a loved one at home.

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      1. crystalbay, I also have seen some not very good care given by nursing homes, although not as bad as you experienced. One of the problems is the lack of funding for nursing homes and that isn’t getting any better. I was very suprised to see the good care that my aunt was getting in her nursing home. All of the other nursing homes I know about seem to be under staffed with a lot of under paided and marginally qualified people as well as some good staff that is trying to do their best in a bad situation.

        One person told me that he and a friend, as a joke, suggested that prisoners on work release would be better than some of the people currently working in nursing homes. This person quit his job in a nursing home because he found that it was too short on staff to give proper care to the people staying there and he wasn’t willing to work under these conditions.

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      2. One more thought about this subject…….I’m too old to afford
        long term care insurance so my only option is counting on the
        good will of my children & grandchildren (if I even live to see old age). Since I’m heading up on 10 grand kids, hopefully one of them will be open to free rent in exchange for helping me stay in my home. Hopefully.

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      3. My daughter dated a guy once who frightened me about hiring practices in nursing homes. He got a job as head cook in a nursing home although he could not read English. Each day he’d get a big list of special dietary requirements for the patients, a list he studied with great interest and then stuck aside because it was gibberish to him and then he’d go ahead with a food order (in Spanish) that he hoped wouldn’t kill anyone. He finally got nervous and quit that job.

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  6. re the clam, rather than re the heroic acts:

    does anyone else remember a bit they did on Captain Kangaroo with a song that began:
    “Let”s make the sound of a train, the beautiful sound of a train!…la la la la la, together, we’ll sound like a train. [puppets make choo-choo sounds; la la = words i can’t remember]”

    it went through several verses, then finished with:
    “let’s make the sound of a clam, the beautiful sound of a clam”
    and at the end, the singing puppets just clamped their mouths together in silence….

    i thought this was the height of wittiness as a child….

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  7. Since I can’t remember seeing any physical acts of heroism, I’ll have to say single moms (or single dads for that matter) who have no car. Whenever I ride the bus (about once a year) and some mom hoists her stroller up the steps, then grabs the had of her other mobile toddler, I am just in awe of them. If it’s 8 a.m. she’s taking them to day care. Then she would get back on another bus to get to work, and do the reverse trip at 5 p.m. Then have to go home and feed them… I honestly don’t know how they do it, except as tim et al. have pointed out, you put one foot in front of the other.

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  8. I have been thinking about this all morning.

    I keep hearing Garrison Keillor’s voice in my head;

    my people are not heroic people. My people take being called risk-averse as a compliment to their good judgment and common sense-proof that they have not been lured by thoughts of fame and glamor into dangerous situations. Heroics are only necessary when people neglect to think ahead.

    That said, I have seen a lot of heroic love and care as some of you have detailed above. My 80+ neighbor welcomes home her 50+ mentally disabled son every weekend with a home cooked Sunday dinner including homemade apple pie (and for good measure, she sends a pie home with my son as well). Last winter, she could barely walk, and had my son come over to carry the laundry up from the basement and such, but she never once told the group home director not bring home her boy for the weekend. I call that heroic, she thinks of it as being a mother.

    I’ve also seen a lot of moral courage from people working for civil rights and justice issues.

    In one case, it cost the person in question their career. They knew that was going to happen, so they left the job first, rather than putting everyone else through the trauma they knew that would cause.

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    1. It is interesting how many of us have chosen “heroes” who do difficult things in obscurity in everyday life rather than walking into a blazing building to save a tot in a crib.

      I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the other kind of courage, the blazing act of heroism. And I don’t think any of us knows if we have it in us to do something like that. When the moment comes, if it does, we act or we don’t act. And there is no predicting it.

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  9. BTW, i think the fellow who falls on the tracks is actually not drunk–he seems to be backing up in order to view better a painting on the wall!

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  10. Being a home body, who enjoys travel, but prefers “home” to stay within a smallish radius, it seems an act of bravery to move to a different city or state. I continue to be in awe of my ancestors who not only picked up stakes to move, but pretty much blindly packed what they needed into a hand cart, walked over the mountains to the fjords and set up farming in Wisconsin. Or the earlier ancestors who moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony…(including the founding aunt who successfully defended herself during the witch trials in Massachusetts – that’s either bravery or knowledge that your accuser is not believable).

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    1. Defended herself during the witch trials? That has to be a fascinating story! Is she in the historical records, or is it a family tale? If I had such an ancestor, I’d want to write her story as a novel (except then I’d have to do a ton of research, and we all know where THAT leads…)

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      1. I think the proving you weren’t a witch wasn’t the hard part; I think the SURVIVING proving you weren’t a witch was the really difficult part!

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      2. My mom found a story about it in a newspaper archive in Springfield, MA back in the 70s when we were out there on a family trip (and doing some genealogical research). Not sure when the article was written, but as I recall it was something along the lines of an article either about Margaret (from whom I am directly descended) or her grandchildren (one of whom would have been the child of the founding aunt in question). I’ll have to see if my mom still has the copy/print she made of the article when she found it. The story goes that the neighbors pigs were dying and Founding Aunt was suspected of witchcraft in their deaths – she was suspect because her mother, Margaret, was an woman who clearly didn’t know her place and had come into her marriage with money and expanded the family farm after her husband died. Margaret was smart and a good businesswoman – clearly making her and her offspring worthy of suspicion in 17th century Springfield. Auntie, then, reared by this clearly suspicious mother, must be hexing the pigs…it couldn’t *possibly* be poor animal husbandry or disease. 😉

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    2. Maybe we are related way back on that family tree! Last summer I read a book about this called “The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.” It is about a witch trial at the time written by a descendent of a “witch”–Katherine Howe. We had an ancestor hung that shows up on the Salem website for all this: Elizabeth Jackson Howe.

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      1. That’s a great book! My brother and sister-in-law gave it to me for my birthday last year…or Christmas…anyway, it was a very good book 🙂 Thanks for reminding me. I’ll have to find it amongst my unpacked boxes.

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  11. I met a remarkable man once whose life story sort of fits in here today, although he would deny any personal heroism. Dave is a sensitive and caring doctor (which already makes him unusual). He planned a trip to Italy with his fiancée, Linda, and his parents. They were traveling around the country when their rental car stalled on a railway line. They couldn’t get the car started again, and a train was coming. Dave was able to help his parents out, but they were old and slow, and they blocked the way for Linda. As Dave reached out to her, the train hit the car and pushed it fifty yards down the track with her legs sticking out the door.

    Because he was a doctor, Dave was able to stop the bleeding from Linda’s lower body. They got her to a hospital, and she survived. But her legs where lost from just below her hips.

    In the hospital, Linda told Dave that their engagement was obviously “off” now. Dave proposed to a young woman with legs, and that woman now was just a torso. She would not hold him to his vow to marry her.

    They’ve been married 25 years or so, now, and are one of the happiest couples I know. Linda works in the same research hospital as Dave. Some people who have worked with her for years don’t know that underneath her hospital gown she has no legs. She moves fluidly and naturally on artificial limbs.

    One of their favorite activities is backpacking the mountains of western Montana. Dave has a special pack for Linda. She is easy to carry, for he says about 40% of our total body weight is in our long legs. Dave packs Linda up to a nice campsite and dumps her there. She sets up camp while he hikes down to get the other pack with the rest of the gear.

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    1. Nice story. It sounds like a screenplay, Steve. All they need is another crazy, impossible obstacle to surmount together … like an encounter with bigfoot in the wilds of Montana perhaps, and Hollywood will come calling.
      Angelina Jolie as Linda.

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      1. No, maybe something more like Rear Window, exploiting that delicate span of time when she is left, legless and exposed, at the campsite. As a twist, rather than being attacked by Bigfoot, she sees Sasquatch scoop up Dave as he heads back down the hill … and must somehow figure out a way to find and rescue him!
        Perhaps Dave’s elderly parents could parachute in to help.

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  12. Afternoon…

    Had a road trip this morning and just home scanning through the entries today. Good stuff everyone… very interesting as usual.

    I would say the hero’s I’m most familiar with are the ones dealing with medical or personal issues. I know several people who have put up with medical problems and current long term health issues that would take out a “normal” person.
    And a friend who has lost, within the last three years, his Dad, Sister, Business and now his wife is divorcing him.
    He’s still carrying on though…

    A long lost tragedy from my family is a cousin who worked in the city bus garage in Rochester back in the late 1940’s or early ’50’s. He was killed when the brakes failed on a bus and it rolled down a hill and crushed him against the shop wall.
    The only newspaper article I’ve seen of it was a little two sentence recap in the ‘Fifty Years Ago Today’ column…

    My wife Kelly and I had the pleasure of meeting Anna today. Delivered to her two burnt loaves of Amish Friendship Bread and a batch of starter. (No, the bread wasn’t supposed to be burnt… dang it… shouldn’t have tried baking on the car engine…)

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    1. It may have been slightly “Cajun blackened,” but it’s darn yummy. The cinnamon smell was too much to resist and I dug into a loaf with my co-workers this afternoon. There’s a little left on that one for me to have with my coffee tomorrow…

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    2. the story about the guy who lost his dad sister business and now wife is reinissant of job in the bible. they say you are never given more than you can habndel but i’ll bet he is wondering who is keeping score up there huh? tell him from me that if this doesn’t give him an indication that it is time to start living for yourself, i do’t know what will. job came through it .so will your friend, but i will toss in a kind thought or two on his behalf. how is amish friendship bread done? must be buttermilk based huh?with cinnamon, sounds interesting

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  13. We just got back from my father-in-law’s funeral. His act of heroism was to run up the stairs in a cathedral in France under fire to see where the enemy was during WWII. He received 2 purple hearts during that war. Most recently he lost both legs to an infection and died with really good care in a veterans’ home in Michigan. My mom is in assisted living after recovering from a stroke in Feb….also with very good care. Good, heroic health care workers can be found.

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    1. good story holly. i have tom hanks or gregory peck pictured. is he remembered for being on the feisty side. running up stairs under fire is a special kind of courage. talk about being on a mission.

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  14. My father’s brother died in an attempt to rescue a man who had fallen off a pier into the ocean. Another bystander managed to pull the first man to safety. It happened before I was born. My sister still has the newspaper clipping about it. Like Dale’s relatives, the family didn’t talk about it – I probably wouldn’t even have known my father had had a brother but for one photograph.

    My father’s younger sister, who was my godmother, survived breast cancer in an era of poor treatment options – she likely had a radical mastectomy. Also not talked about. In those days many women were afraid to go to a doctor if they suspected breast cancer, since the surgery was so devastating, but my aunt got through it and quietly got on with her life, living for about five decades after her diagnosis. I didn’t hear the story until many years after she died.

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    1. i forgot about the guy who saw a little fishing boat two of my little cousins were in tip and he jumped in a swiftly flowing river. one of my cousins age 5 or 6 died and the 7 year old said he felt someone pushing him to shore. the guy who jumped in and likely save d the cousin drown in the process. thats bravery and a shame all at once. that cousin is 58 today and i think he still has mixed feeling about being the survivor. grateful but sad.

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  15. great stories everyone. i left right after the halibut comment and am jut now returning. perfect mixture of heartfelt funny wise and sublime. this is a good group. after thinking about it today i decided the person with courage was not a caregiver but a guy who knew his brain and body were giving out. my dad was 70 when he retired because he forgot names and prices and while that is forgivable it is not what he saw as the way to finish the time he had left. he was the guy who the kids and the dogs loved to see. he would come in sit on the couch and the hugs and the stories would begin. i think that is the way he was with other people too. people enjoyed seeing him because he was such a non complainer even when his body and brian were not serving him well. always asked about you. for a while there he would ask three or four times the same question within 20 minutes but if that is your sin people are pretty forgiving. the meds raised hell and the doctors in northern minnesota are buried and tired. he always thought they were nice people and understood that they were doing their best. he went into a couple of nursing homes and loved it. always was surrounded with nice people with interesting stories. they did have a problem with staffing and it probubaly sped him off to his final rest a bit but i am not so sure he wasn’t ready to go. he wanted to be sure we all knew and loved the memories of his final days and when it was time to go. he did that heroically too. changed my mind about living long. i want to live good.

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      1. My dad also reached a point where brain and body did not work well together – especially brain. “Brian” not serving him well would have amused him greatly (though “brian” might not have connected him to the right words to say so).

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