Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [57]
I made sure someone called 911 and that someone checked that she had a pulse and was breathing and not bleeding, while I helped direct traffic around her before the police arrived. I was impressed with the other motorists. They recognized the gravity of the situation and were patient. No one was honking. No one tried to pull out and drive around the scene. It seemed as if everyone had the right attitude, the right values, and did the right thing. Someone got the woman’s dog. Another person found the woman’s cell phone and pulled up her daughter’s phone number from the phone’s contact list. The woman was taken away in an ambulance and survived.
I was pleased to see the people of Danville respond so well, and I was glad to be involved.
I’VE BEEN moved and impressed by my daughters’ eagerness to help others.
Kate raised and trained two puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind. The program sent us our first puppy, a yellow Labrador retriever named Misty, in November 2002. Kate immediately fell in love with the puppy. She worked day after day helping Misty understand verbal orders. To get a puppy to relieve herself on command, the trainer has to wait for her to go to the bathroom, and then say the command “Do your business!” The idea was that Misty would then associate the words with doing her business, and when serving a person with disabilities, would be able to “relieve on command.”
Kate, then nine years old, took her responsibilities very seriously. One stormy day, I looked out the window and saw she was outside in the pouring rain, wearing her yellow slicker and galoshes, waiting for Misty to relieve herself so she could tell her, “Do your business!”
I called Lorrie over to the window to watch. We were proud of Kate. She was so responsible. And she loved that dog so much.
Once Misty was trained, we had to give her back to the organization so she could be placed in a home with a person who needed a guide dog. We knew that the good-bye would be very hard on Kate. “Recall Day” turned out to be Valentine’s Day 2004, when Misty was fifteen months old. Kate held herself together until it was time to leave Misty behind. Then she began bawling. For a while after that, she said she didn’t want to allow herself to fall in love with anything or anyone because it was going to be too hard when it was over. She said losing Misty was the first time she’d ever had her heart broken.
Through it all, though, she saw the great value of the guide dogs program. “We’re helping people,” she’d say, “and giving them their freedom back. It feels good to be able to do that. Besides, it’s fun to have a puppy.”
Kelly, meanwhile, is one of the most empathetic people I know. Starting in preschool, she always has been the kid who’d raise her hand and volunteer to be the teacher’s helper. She also embraced “Books for the Barrios,” the brainchild of the wife of a former naval officer and American Airlines pilot. The program has sent twelve million books to impoverished students overseas.
In second grade, Kelly’s class took a field trip to the organization’s warehouse in Concord, California. They learned about all of the disadvantaged kids on the outlying islands in the Philippines. They were told that many of the children slept on dirt floors, and welcomed the cardboard boxes that Books for the Barrios were packed in. Families broke down the boxes and used the cardboard as mats to sleep on.
Kelly was moved by what she heard on that field trip, and for her eighth birthday party, she decided on her own to ask her friends to bring books and gifts for children in the barrios. The children were instructed, when selecting gifts for Kelly, to pick presents that were appropriate for children in the Philippines. The party was held at the warehouse, and Kelly placed the wrapped gifts into shipping boxes. She and her friends then spent an hour helping pack donated books into boxes they decorated.
Everyone’s reputation is made on a daily basis. There are