Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [108]
I assume my father would have summed up Flight 1549 by telling me something like: “It looks like you learned your lessons well. You became good at something you cared about it and it paid off. You made a difference.”
I don’t know if he would have bought into any of the hero accolades thrown my way. In his generation, people were put in tough situations and they were up to the task. His contemporaries won World War II, and for the most part, did it humbly and without personal aggrandizement. I think my dad would have been proud of my achievements, but he would have put what happened in perspective: I did my job well. So have a lot of other people before me.
My father and I were affectionate, and we were close in our own somewhat stiff way. But we weren’t as close as I wish we could have been. That was his temperament and mine. We were both quiet and pretty stoic. We never shared a lot of personal feelings. We kept a lot to ourselves.
There wasn’t really any yelling and screaming in our house; we were all too polite and reticent. That made for a calm childhood, but there was a flip side to that. Though we enjoyed each other’s company, we didn’t share a great deal of emotion. We didn’t talk about too many personal things. As I got older, a part of me envied and admired those big, stereotypical ethnic families where people argued all the time, almost as a way of showing love. I didn’t grow up in a family where everyone was always offended and making grand, dramatic pronouncements. Don’t get me wrong. It was wonderful to be in a peaceful household. But it could also feel slightly passionless at times.
I think that the urges toward staid family dynamics are in my DNA. I’ve tried to broaden myself and break out of the mold with my daughters, to be more outwardly emotional. I’m still working on it.
KATE AND Kelly were toddlers when my parents died, and I wish my mom and dad were alive to see the lovely young women they have become. I have tried to pass on my parents’ values to them, and I can see that the girls have embraced many of them.
The girls also have attributes and gifts that come from within them. It’s not that Lorrie and I have taught them, or that we’ve even shown them the way. And in the wake of Flight 1549, some of these attributes of theirs have become clearer to me.
Kate, for instance, is supremely self-confident. When Lorrie and I reflect on how comfortable Kate is with herself, we sometimes say we want to grow up to be just like her. Now sixteen years old, she is also very focused and funny, and she is a conscientious student. She has always wanted to be a veterinarian and has never wavered.
Her friends say she may be the most self-assured kid they know. They have stories about her that prove their point. Once, in middle school, a girl didn’t like the shirt Kate was wearing and told her so. “I’m sorry you don’t like it,” Kate answered, “but I like it a lot.”
Lorrie says many girls would have dissolved in the wake of a peer’s dismissive fashion comment. Not Kate.
She’s comfortable around boys, too. Once, when she was nine years old, we were on vacation at a ski resort and she saw a bunch of older boys making a snowman. “I’m going to go play with them,” she told us.
We cautioned her. She didn’t know any of them. They were a few years older. But she marched fearlessly right into that circle of boys and announced she was there to play. She staked her claim. At first the boys looked shocked. And then, because she was so sure of herself, they let her join them for the rest of the afternoon. Lorrie and I marveled at her confidence.
A few weeks after Flight 1549, I saw that confidence again, when she took her driver’s license test at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Lorrie and I went along, and we were both nervous for her. She had prepared well, and I trusted her behind the wheel, but you never know how a kid will perform in the tension of the moment.
While Kate took her