Today, I’m thankful for those who rescue others.
The word ‘rescue’ comes from the old French word ‘rescorre’, which translates “to protect, keep safe, or free.” Today, many of us think of ‘rescues’ as responsive operations that result in a life saved from a dangerous situation – often one shrouded in darkness. In my life, I can recount several historic examples of deft-defying rescues.
In October 1987, an 18-month old baby named Jessica McClure, who was just learning to walk, stepped accidentally into an abandoned ditch in Midland, Texas, plummeting nearly 22 feet down a slender wall shaft less than one foot wide. For nearly 58 hours, rescuers labored to relieve the child from the ditch. As the world watched, rescuers successfully lifted the baby out of the well, courtesy of the ingenious thinking of neighbors, firemen, and other concerned citizens. Amazingly, ‘Baby Jessica’ survived the harrowing experience without any significant long-tem consequences.
In August 2010, 33 miners were caught in a collapsed shaft in Copiapo, Chile. Enveloped by nearly 750,000 tons of rock, the miners survived in a small chamber that contained a borehole to the outside world. After more than two months of diligent work, rescue workers had built an adjacent tunnel that they then connected with the ‘Refuge’ room where the men had spent their endless days of distress and misery. These brave rescue workers, many of whom worked at the mine, successfully extracted all 33 trapped men from the dark chasm.
And, in July 2018, the world watched as adept divers rescued twelve boys and their soccer coach who had been trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, following an unanticipated monsoon. As the rains flooded the cave, the frightened crew ventured further into the cave – unaware of the eventual trap they’d laid for themselves. One by one, the boys were successfully pulled through crevices, many often under water, by professional divers adept in rescue procedures. Their 18-day ordeal in the darkness had come to a fitting end.
The rescue workers shared in these 3 accounts are true real-life superheroes. Unlike a fictional stock character, such as Spiderman, who swings from one building to another at the end of some magically-woven web, true rescuers often do not possess superhero powers. Rather, a real-life rescuer possess the inventiveness, fortitude, and desire to put oneself in harm’s way to rescue others suffering in darkness. Of course, I mean no disrespect to the great Stan Lee, the creator of Spiderman (and many of Marvel’s other superhero characters), especially on this day (Dec 28) that would have been his 98th birthday.
Rather, on this day, let me share with you the story of another American hero, Araminta Ross, who saved many from the darkness and misery of America’s troubled past. Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1822, Araminta’s life was full of despair. She was often whipped and beaten as a youth by her ruthless slave owners. At any early age, she witnessed in horror as three of her sisters were sold off to distant plantations, much to the verbal protestations of her distraught mother. When she was just an adolescent, she was struck in the head by a heavy object thrown by an irate slave owner intending to prevent the escape of another slave. For two days, she suffered in an unconscious state as she bled incessantly from her injured skill. From that day forth, she suffered from chronic headaches, intermittent seizures, and bouts of narcolepsy. When she was 22, she married a free Black man, named John Tubman, assuming his last name and changing her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother. Finally, in 1849, the 25 year-old ‘Harriet Tubman’ could no longer tolerate her life as a slave. Together with her two brothers, she fled the estate in the middle of the night, making her way to Philadelphia, in the free state of Pennsylvania.
As a free person, Harriet Tubman soon realized, she was ‘a stranger in a strange land.’ Rather than remaining in the safety of the Keystone State, she decided to dedicate her life to the mission of rescuing other slaves from the wretched chains of bondage, thereby hoping to turn her new home into a more familiar place. In a daring feat, she returned to Maryland in 1850, less than a year after her own bold escape, to rescue her niece and two siblings from being sold off in a slave auction. Over the next decade, she would make at least 13 different trips across the border to rescue some 70 other slaves. Harriet utilized a network of safe houses owned by abolitionists to make these audacious escapes. She used this ‘Underground Railroad’ to travel north from one safe haven to another, often in the bitter cold of the long, dark winter nights. Her journeys were further complicated by the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which compelled Northerners to aid in the capture of escaped slaves. So, Harriet re-routed the Underground Railroad up through the state of New York and into Canada.
On this day (Dec 28) in 1860, Harriet Tubman completed her final rescue. Thereafter, she turned her attention to supporting the Northern states and the Union army in its fight against the Confederate states in the American Civil War. During the war, she served as a cook, nurse, and spy. In 1863, she even led an armed raid against Combahee Ferry in South Carolina, ultimately securing the freedom of some 700 slaves. Eventually, after the war, she settled in Auburn, New York, where she purchased a small tract of land from the Secretary of State, William Seward. There, she lived with her family and friends until she died in 1903, at the age of 91.
Harriet Tubman is a fitting example of someone who risked her life for others. But, today, I’m grateful knowing that rescuing someone or something doesn’t necessarily require you to place your own existence in jeopardy. I’ve been rescued before by family & friends when I’m feeling depressed or by colleagues when I lacked a solution to a work dilemma. A good rescue only requires one thing: the power of love.
As Leo Tolstoy once summed it up best, “love is the only way to rescue humanity from all its ills.”
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