The Present Is Not For My Son's Future

In the May 28, 1998, edition of USA Today, the following appeared among the letters to the editor:

Will somebody help me save my son?

My son is two years old and is a reflection of complete innocence.  His vulnerability to this harsh, violent ignorant and uncaring world just rips my heart apart.  He knows nothing of the killing within the schools that are supposed to prepare children for the world.  He knows nothing of the abuse that happens within the homes of children just his age.  As he plays with his toys, he is oblivious to the tragedies that occur every day across the country.  And as he clutches his blanket, sleeping soundly, dreaming of the mommy and daddy who love him, he has no idea of the complete social and moral decay of our country.

Does anyone care anymore?  Will somebody please, please help me save my son?

- Edward Moats, Bellair Beach, Florida

- Letters to the editor in USA Today, (May 28, 1998)

Glad To Have Helped

In 1999, Kevin Stephan of Lancaster, New York, was a batboy for his younger brother’s Little League baseball team. During one game, a player who was warming up accidentally hit Kevin in the chest with a bat. Kevin fell to the ground, unconscious. His heart stopped beating.

“All I remember is that, all of a sudden, I got hit in the chest with something, and I turned around and passed out,” Kevin says. Penny Brown, a nurse whose son played on the team, was able to revive Kevin.

Seven years later, Penny Brown was eating at the Hillview Restaurant in Depew, New York, when she began to choke on her food. “The food wasn’t going anywhere, and I totally couldn’t breathe,” said Penny. “It was very frightening.”

Patrons screamed for help. One of the restaurant employees — a volunteer firefighter — ran out from the back. He wrapped his arms around the victim, applied the Heimlich maneuver, and saved the woman’s life. The firefighter was Kevin Stephan, the boy whom Penny had saved seven years earlier.

 — Aaron Saykin, “Teen Saves Life 
of Woman Who Once Saved His,” 
wusatv9.com (February 4, 2006)

Keeping Each Other Afloat

In Guideposts magazine Donald Vairin of Oceanside, California, told of serving as a young hospital corpsman in the invasion of Guam during World War II.  Suddenly his boat came to a grinding halt.  They had hit a coral reef, and the commanding officer ordered everyone off the ship.

Donald jumped into the ocean and sank like a rock, his carbine rifle, medical pack, canteen, and boots dragging him down.  He forced himself to the surface, gasping for air, only to sink again.  He tried to pull off his boots, but the effort exhausted him, and he suddenly realized he wasn't going to make it.

Just then he saw a man thrashing in the water next to him, and in desperation he clutched onto him.  That proved enough to hold him up and get him to the reef where he was picked up by a rescue boat.  But Donald felt so guilty about grabbing the drowning man to save himself that he never told anyone what had happened.

About six months later, on shore leave in San Francisco, he stopped in a restaurant.  A sailor in uniform waved him over to sit with him, and as he did so he announced to his friends, "This is my buddy.  He saved my life."

"What are you talking about?" asked Donald.

"Don't you remember," said the man.  "We were in the water together at Guam.  You grabbed on to me.  I was going down, and you held me up."

- Donald Vairin, "His Mysterious Ways," Guideposts (September 1999)

A Mother's Selfless Rescue

Police don't know where Deborah Kemp found the strength.  But Kemp knows.  Six-year-old daughter Ashleye was in the backseat, and Kemp wasn't going to let the man steal her car after she pumped gas.  The thirty-four-year-old mother was dragged on her knees for several blocks as she clung to the door and steering wheel of the moving car.

"I wasn't trying to be a hero," she said.  "I was concerned about my baby... there was part of me in that car."  Kemp eventually pulled the suspect from the car and beat him with an anti theft club device while he apologized and begged her to stop.

The driverless car went out of control and smashed into a restaurant, breaking a gas line.  That's when the child woke up.  Kemp suffered only ripped pants and bloody knees.  The child was not injured.  The suspect can't walk: One leg is broken, the other fractured.  He also suffered head injuries.

- from an Atlanta newspaper, December 1994, submitted by Rose Hodgin to Parables, Etc. (July 1995)