Blog Six
Acts of bravery, selflessness and self-preservation have been hallmarks of the human condition for as long as people have walked the earth.
There are many incidents that become known world-wide.
But every day, there are the situations that garner less attention, like the woman who rescues her children to flee an abusive husband; or the firefighter who breaks into a burning home to rescue a family; or the children who collect face masks for hospitals, volunteer at food pantries, give virtual aid to elderly and sick.
Others give of themselves to help veterans and the homeless; people with mental illness.
Or those times when communities band together in times of crisis and refuse to give up.
Age is no barrier to courage and the will to survive.
Take, the case of 4-year-old Evely Sides, a three-foot tall, 40-pound girl, who wandered from a caregiver in the backyard of her Alabama home in March.
Evely and her dog, Lucy, were found four days later after a search of the Alabama woods by 400 volunteers, two helicopters and K-9 search teams. Evely in good spirits and unhurt beyond some scratches and dehydration.
According to published reports, Evely slept by the side of a road for two nights. When she was found, Evely’s first words were “Oh, I can’t wait to tell my mommy about my two nights out here.”
Another example of young bravery unfolded last December in the remote village of Venetie, Alaska.
A 5-year-old child had been left alone with his baby brother when the power went out to his home. The frightened 5-year-old wore just socks and light clothing, gathered his 18-month-old brother and set out in subzero temperatures to the safety of a home about a half-mile away.
Both children suffered unspecified injuries from the 30-below zero cold but were expected to make a full recovery.
Remember the soccer practice in June 2018, when 12 members of a Thai soccer team and their coach decided to explore the nearby Tham Luang cave, one of Thailand’s longest cave.
The 11- to 16-year-old boys and their coach were in the cave when a flash flood trapped them. They would not be rescued for 17 days, while they had no food, and relied on dripping stalactites for water.
A team of Thai Navy Seals and international divers found the group and three days later, each boy had been rescued by wearting a diving mask while two divers led each boy for hours through tight squeezes in the cave.
All of the youths and the coach survived while one Navy Seal died in the rescue effort.
And there are the heroic journeys to freedom, that range from prisoners of war who endure untold torture; victims of the Holocaust who managed to survive and some to even escape; and the many slaves who risked their lives for freedom.
History.com recounted the stories of slaves who fled to freedom.
They included Henry “Box” Brown who was sold into slavery in 1848 in Virginia. With the help of a free black and a white shopkeeper, Brown concocted a plan to ship himself from Richmond to Philadelphia in a wooden crate on March 23,1849. Brown made it safely to Philadelphia after 27 grueling hours inside the cramped confines of the box.
Frederick Douglass was a 20-year-old slave in September 1838 when he disguised himself in a sailor’s uniform to escape from his job as a Baltimore ship’s caulker and boarded a train bound for the North.
Along the way, Douglass was nearly spotted by a ship captain he had once worked for. He arrived in New York, where he hid in the home of an anti-slavery activist. Douglass later became one of the nation’s leading abolitionists.
Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in North Carolina, and endured a cruel master who refused to let her marry and made repeated and increasingly brutal sexual advances toward her.
In 1835, she fled the plantation and briefly hid in some friends’ houses and then lived in the small, coffin-like attic crawlspace in her grandmother’s rat-infested home.