Illustrations
July 1, 2005
Farewell Message Written in Blood
A train wreck that killed eleven and injured several others near Los Angeles in January (2005) left an indelible impression on Firefighter Captain Rosario. Hours after the rescue began, using the jaws of life device, rescuers were able to extricate a man, John Phipps, from the wreckage. That's when Rosario saw the message.
While Phipps was pinned under debris from the crash and having trouble breathing, he wrote a message to his wife and children using his own blood. With whatever energy he could summon and a heartbreaking economy of words, he scrawled a farewell on the seat. "I § my kids. I § Leslie," he printed (using a heart symbol in place of verbs). The blood ink seemed to be running out as he got to the second sentence. As Captain Rosario later related the story for TV cameras, the firefighter choked with emotion. "The fact that this guy in this situation had the amount of love he had for his family, and for him to realize 'I'm possibly going to die here,' how could any words explain it?" Pilots Conditioned to Obey
During the Vietnam War, Captain Ray Baker flew for the Strategic Air Command. The Air Force trained the SAC pilots to run from their barracks to their aircraft at the sound of a buzzer. When Baker arrived home in California on a furlough, his family took him to his favorite Mexican restaurant. Everything was normal until Captain Baker jumped up without warning and ran out of the building into the parking lot. Catching up with him when he finally stopped running, his bewildered family asked him, "Where are you going?" "I heard the buzzer," he said, "I'm looking for my plane." He was still searching the horizon for a B-52. Later the family realized that directly above their ...
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