The thrill of a miracle

By the time I did hear, the news was astonishing. The pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, a 29-year veteran commercial pilot with a degree from the Air Force Academy, military experience flying F-4 fighter jets, and certification as a glider instructor, had managed a perfect water landing — “one of the rarest and most technically challenging feats in commercial aviation,” as the Wall Street Journal would later observe. All 150 passengers had exited the sinking plane in less than two minutes, thanks to their own calm behavior in a terrifying situation and also to the expert work of the five-member flight crew, who then checked carefully to make sure that no one had been left behind. Captain Sullenberger was the last to leave the plane.

Tug boats, tour boats, and ferries rallied from all directions to offer help. Police divers arrived by helicopter and dropped from the sky into the 36-degree water to help get people onto a boat. Those waiting coatless in 20-degree weather to be saved from a raft or from the wing of the sinking plane agreed among themselves that they would go with a policy of “women and children first.” Passengers on the ferries and tour boats passed their own warm winter coats to total strangers.

I can’t write those words, I find now, without being moved to tears. Why is that? Initially I thought my intense reaction to this “Miracle on the Hudson” was a result of my lifelong immersion in the world of aviation and my own experience as a flight attendant, which included one genuine and unforgettable scare. Maybe too, I thought, it was my pride in New York and New Yorkers — quick responders and softies all. Often maligned as hard-bitten rough customers, New Yorkers would unanimously give you the coats off their backs, if need be, and they had just proven it once again, God bless ‘em.

But then I heard veteran journalist Daniel Shore, now in his 80s, say that he had watched the story of Flight 1549 “hour after hour” on TV Thursday night, and still could not talk about it without getting choked up. It was the opposite of the story of Hurricane Katrina, he said. Katrina had been about “incompetence and not caring,” but Flight 1549 was about compassion and “enormous competence” — a story of “the better angels.”

There is a lot still to learn about the “Miracle on the Hudson,” but perhaps we’ve already gotten what we needed most: a reminder, as we welcome a new president and set out with him to “take arms against a sea of troubles,” that we can win out over all that challenges us. We just have to know what we’re doing and do what we know is right. And once in a while, with nerve and grace, someone comes along who makes that look easy.

Susan Harper is director of the Commerce Public Library. She lives in Commerce.