From Accidental Heroes
An Unlikely SantaMarc Howard Wilson
From The State (Columbia, South Carolina)
The winter after 9/11 was a hard one for me. I had just left the rabbinate in Greenville, South Carolina, and embarked on what proved to be long-term unemployment and, at midlife, many endless depressed days. I felt a void inside. My one happiness was having my grandchildren, Sophie and Simeon, with me for Hanukkah, but when they returned home, I was left with a dark state of mind and that inner emptiness again.
It was then that my wife, Linda, deputy director of the Upstate Homeless Coalition, suggested that I play Santa for 30 children in a holiday program at a local hall. As she pointed out, I looked the part. I have the gift of girth and a full, almost white beard.
The question of stumbling across customs and religious boundaries did not concern me; I'd always believed in encouraging people to be less rigid about maintaining those rigid lines. Yet, for reasons having nothing to do with religion, I must confess that year, my heart just wasn't in it. Linda insisted "the show must go on." So I practiced my sonorous "Ho, ho, hos."
I was not prepared for the 30 sets of eyes that fastened upon me when I walked in. "Santa! Santa! Look at my new shoes! Santa! I've been a good girl. Santa! Can we sing 'Jingle Bells'?"
They swarmed over me, hugged and kissed me. Each child sat in my lap and posed for a picture and I gave them all a present -- a teddy bear, a doll, a paint-by-the-numbers kit.
Their uninhibited delight and excited voices brought tears to my eyes. I felt a wave of compassion. These children were God's most fragile gifts to a cold world -- gifts of innocence. That insight confirmed for me the deep truths of God's word. These homeless children lifted me from self-doubt and disillusionment. At that sweet moment I lost my mind and regained my sanity.
Strength in Numbers
Hal Karp
On the day after Christmas last year, traffic was zipping along on Cedar Avenue -- a four-lane main artery of Fresno, California. Suddenly a white van ran up onto the median and launched into the air. The vehicle, its side painted with "Aladdin's Carpet Care," rocketed over the divider in a midair somersault. A split-second later, a thundering crash filled the quiet, post-holiday streets as the van bounced hard on its nose, the front end collapsing like aluminum foil.
Bob and Grace Hatmaker, driving south on Cedar, had just passed that very spot. The couple looked back to see the vehicle still moving -- spinning sideways across the road, spewing shards of glass and metal. Finally colliding with the opposing curb and devouring a light post, the van came to a stop. Grace, a trauma nurse of three decades, popped open her door.
Driving directly behind the van when it flipped were Hung and Nhung Nguyen. The husband and wife made the first U-turn possible and pulled up close to the scene. Resting on its driver's side, the van -- loaded with carpet cleaning equipment and water tanks -- hissed into the cool, humid air.
Some 25 yards away, across a fence and a backyard, Jordan Thomson, 18, his sister, Heather, 16, and their cousin, 13-year-old Scott Beatty, were sharing a delayed Christmas dinner with their grandparents. Suddenly, the table shook and the sound of the crash roared through the house. Jordan ran into the yard and heard a man scream, "Help! Get me out!"
"Call 911," the teenager yelled to his grandparents before he hopped the fence. Heather and Scott followed.
Running toward the accident, they spotted the source of the scream: Jim Tracy, his face covered in blood, was pulling himself out of the wreckage through the shattered windshield.
Yvette Crozier-Matula and Michael Matula, who had also witnessed the crash, tried to help him after he collapsed on the curb. Relief blew through the crowd at the thought: This must be the driver -- and he's alive.
But Grace Hatmaker, standing near the front of the van, looked down and discovered the awful truth. Covered by a blanket of glass lay the actual driver, pinned by the vehicle from the chest down. Tilted at an angle -- half on the curb, half off -- its weight now came to bear on the man's body.
"There's someone under here!" Grace shouted.
Her husband, Bob, moved the glass aside. Zoe Anne Pope, who'd recently arrived on the scene, helped. In seconds, they could see the man beneath. Jonathan Stewart, 35, was ashen and still. Although his eyes were open, no signs of life emanated from his body.
Grace dropped to her knees and placed her hand on Jonathan's neck. "He doesn't have a pulse," she said. "He's not breathing either." This van is crushing him, she realized. Turning to the crowd, she said, "We've got to relieve some of this pressure!"
Preserving Peace
Bob Hatmaker stepped up first. He placed both hands on the hood of the van and leaned in. Zoe Anne's husband, Roy, a pastor, and the couple's daughter, Hilary, a petite high school junior, lined up alongside the van. Mike Matula, Jordan and Heather Thomson and Scott Beatty jumped in too. Together, the group began to push. But the van just wouldn't budge.Zoe Anne knelt down across from Grace and began reciting the Lord's Prayer. Grace joined in. Within seconds, the van started rising. Several more people -- Wendell Gentry, Hung and Nhung Nguyen and others -- laid their hands on the vehicle and bore down. The van rose higher still.
"Thy will be done," Grace and Zoe Anne said aloud, and as the prayer continued, Jonathan began, with ragged gasps, to suck in air. His pulse returned with such strength that Grace's fingers were pushed off his neck.
"He's breathing! He's got a pulse!" Grace shouted. "Keep going!"
But the van, now leaking sudsy water, wouldn't move any more. Heather grabbed a length of the downed lamp post and tried to use it as a lever to lift the back of the van. Spotting his sister struggling, Jordan yelled, "Heather, bring it over here!"
Sliding the post under the vehicle, Jordan and others pushed with every bit of their strength. Although they had to fight to keep the post from slipping on the wet, soapy pavement, the van lifted another foot.
Capt. Lionel McPeters of the Fresno Fire Department was among the first of the emergency personnel to arrive. His training had taught him to not utilize untrained civilians in rescues. But he quickly realized these people had just saved a man's life. "Hold it steady," he encouraged the group.
It took rescue workers 10 minutes to extricate Stewart. Finally McPeters ordered everyone to let go, and the van slid down with a creaking sigh.
All told, they had lifted the vehicle some 18 inches off the ground and held it for 20 minutes -- maybe longer. Moments later, most of the good Samaritans were gone. Jonathan Stewart suffered a torn aorta, a collapsed lung and more than a dozen broken bones, including his skull and several vertebrae. But despite that, he was going to live, thanks to a bunch of strangers who stopped that day to deliver a late Christmas present -- his life.
Ship of Miracles
Jennifer Goldblatt
Adapted from The New York Times
Benedict Ahn is excited, intense, a man with a vision. Though he wasn't yet born during the Korean War, the businessman is on a mission. On the grounds of a monastery in New Jersey, Ahn plans to build a monument to Korean-American friendship -- and to a supply ship, the Meredith Victory. Why this ship? Why there? Why now? Therein lies a story, and perhaps a miracle -- or a double miracle -- that unfolds over 50 years.
On a freezing December night in 1950, six months after the outbreak of the war, Leonard LaRue, skipper of the supply freighter Meredith Victory, with 300 tons of jet fuel in the hold and combat raging all around, took his ship into the port of Hungnam, 135 miles north of the 38th parallel. Thousands of Chinese troops had poured into North Korea to aid the Communists. And over 90,000 peasants fled south to escape them -- across freezing mountain roads, down to a burning city under bombardment.
Desperate, the refugees waded into the water, clambering onto the docks and aboard any boat that would take them. Leonard LaRue took them. And took them -- lowering thousands into the holds on wooden pallets. Frightened refugees were packed shoulder to shoulder. As the Chinese closed in, the ship steamed out under fire just two days before Christmas with 14,000 on board. Despite a lack of food, fresh water and heat in the holds, not a life was lost during the three-day journey to Koje-do Island. In fact, five babies were born aboard by Christmas Day.
Captain LaRue won international acclaim. But with his lifelong faith confirmed by the extraordinary adventure, he withdrew from the clamor and entered St. Paul's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in New Jersey, as Brother Marinus.
When he arrived, the abbey was flourishing. Fifty monks ran a boarding school, a retreat center, a camp and a Christmas tree farm. And as he hoped, the abbey gave him peace.
The '60s, however, brought revolutionary cultural changes inside and outside the church.
Connecting Across Generations
After 47 years of quiet, faithful service to the abbey and its bookstore, Brother Marinus lay dying. So too was his beloved monastery. It was 2001 and not a single monk had joined and remained at the abbey in 25 years. A spiritual life that started with such joyous salvation seemed to be ending with a slow, sinking sadness. And so the head of the congregation in Germany, Archabbot Jeremias Schroeder, began looking into the question of whether the monastery should be phased out. He learned about Marinus's history and learned too that many Korean Catholics had migrated to New Jersey.Schroeder contacted monks from the flourishing Waegwan monastery in South Korea. It had been founded in 1952, the year the Meredith Victory was decommissioned and its skipper, Leonard LaRue, began his search for a new life.
Now, the monks of Waegwan were looking for a mission of their own. On October 12, 2001, Father Bosco Kim accepted the challenge to rescue St. Paul's Abbey. Two days later Brother Marinus died, in peace, at the age of 87.
Since his death the abbey has been rejuvenated. Every Sunday there are masses in English and Korean. New gardens produce a flourishing vegetable crop. A retreat center has been reopened. And Koreans from all over the New York metropolitan area have come to volunteer and to pray.
The Rev. Bosco Kim says, "We believe that this is our time to return something." Benedict Ahn wants to return something more. He expounds enthusiastically about his campaign to build the monument. He has a website, and a colorful brochure that shows a model of the plan: a grassy park, a black monolith near its center crowned like a Korean rooftop, and supporting it all a dark stone in the shape of a ship. It's an ark, if you will, that symbolizes the daring rescue of 14,000 souls. And it suggests what the life of one quiet, faithful man can do.
Under the Arch
Natalie Garibian Peters
from The Palm Beach Post
I was studying in Paris, reveling in college classes, weekend train trips and my own youthful Renaissance. My family-oriented father had asked me to look up relatives who might live somewhere about. But I didn't. I wanted to feel sophisticated and free, cutting family ties and abandoning the trappings of my American upbringing. Summer passed. The days grew longer, cooler, darker. And even in the City of Light, I was beginning to miss my family. It was my first time away from home and I was feeling lonely and disconnected, longing for the familiar joys of Christmas. I wondered, was I turning the pages of my life too quickly?
So on this one particular cold and dreary day in 1996, I found myself walking to the Armenian Church, a modest stone edifice on the opulent boulevard rue Jean-Goujon.
I took a seat out of the way and under one of the beautiful stone archways. As the Der Hayr (priest) spoke and the service progressed, I saw an old woman, hunched over, walking up and down the aisle looking for a seat.
Given the length of an Armenian church service, I didn't exactly want to give up my place, but I was 20 and she was 70. So when she came by, I spoke in Armenian and offered her my seat. She took it without speaking and I stepped to the side under the arch.
From time to time I saw her looking at me. I found myself staring back. There was something soft and gentle in her dark eyes, deep and mindful. I watched her cross herself, sing, and cross herself again. I envied the comfort and security she seemed to feel in singing and lifting her hands to God.
As the service drew toward a close, she quietly spoke to me. "You are not from here, are you?" she whispered.
"How did you know?" I asked.
"Because you speak to me in Armenian. The young people here speak French. Where are you from?"
"America. Florida," I said rolling the "r" to make it sound more Armenian.
Keeping her eyes on the service, she said: "I have family in Florida. Three brothers. Sarkis, Dikran and..."
"Ara," I said. A lump rose in my throat. "Ara is my father."
Her strong, weathered countenance crumbled in tears. She raised her hands again. "Asdoodzo Kordzeh (God's work). I have been looking for your father for 30 years," she cried. "I knew you were someone special. I knew it in your face."
She was my "auntie," a relative of my paternal grandfather's widely dispersed family who had been part of the Armenian diaspora across Iraq, Syria, America. She herself lived in Syria, and was only in Paris temporarily. But she happened to be there under that arch at the very same moment I was. Overarching oceans and generations, the two of us connected.
I thought I was in France to discover who I was, to collect stories for the future. Perhaps I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but then I didn't need to -- because an angel from the past, Arev Kasparian, found me and reunited our family.