1.13-What Courage Is Not

1.13-What Courage Is Not

John 15.

¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

I remember seeing the live news feed of the after math of the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 on this date in 1982.

A helicopter came to rescue some of the survivors from the frigid waters of the Potomac.  Over and over they lowered a rescue rope and a man kept getting the rope of rescue and handing the rope to others and help them to be saved. 

 I kept thinking, "I hope he survives this himself."   

When all other five survivors had been rescued the tail slipped beneath the waters taking this man down with it.

Who was this man?  Arland Dean Williams Jr.  After helping others he drowned.   They named the bridge after him. In his hometown, Mattoon, Illinois, named an Elementary School after him.  What was so amazing about this story.  He attended the Citadel in South Carolina and according to a high school friend his only concern about attending there was that they had a swimming requirement and he had a fear of water.

Courage is not the absence of fear, it is going through the fear to do what is right.

Roger Rosenblatt wrote about him:

"So the man in the water had his own natural powers. He could not make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do."