The Man in the Water--Roger Rosenblatt

As disasters go, this one was terrible, but not unique, certainly not among the worst U. S. air crashes on record. There was the unusual element of the bridge, of course and the fact that the plane hit it at a moment of high traffic. Then, too, there was the location of the event. Washington, the city of form and rules, turned chaotic by a blast of real winter and a single slap of metal on metal. The jets from Washington National Airport that normally fly around the presidential monuments like hungry gulls are, for the moment, represented by the one that fell. And there was the aesthetic clash as well — blue-and-green Air Florida, the name of a flying garden, sunk down among gray chunks of ice in a black river. All that was worth noticing, to be sure. Still, there was nothing very special in any of it, except death, which, while always special, does not necessarily bring millions to tears or to attention. Why, then, the shock here?

Perhaps because the nation saw in this disaster something more than a mechanical failure. Perhaps because people saw in it no failure at all, but rather something successful about themselves. Here, after all, were two forms of nature in collision: the elements and human character. Last Wednesday, the elements, indifferent as ever, brought down Flight 90. And on that same afternoon, human nature — groping and struggling — rose to the occasion.

Of the four acknowledged heroes of the event, three are able to account for their behavior. Donald Usher and Eugene Windsor, a park police helicopter team, risked their lives every time they dipped into the water to pick up survivors. On television, side by side, they described their courage as all in the line of duty. Lenny Skutnik, a 28-year-old employee of the Congressional Budget Office, said: "It's something I never thought I would do" — referring to his jumping into the water to drag an injured woman to shore. Skutnik added that "somebody had to go in the water", delivering every hero's line that is no less admirable for being repeated. In fact, nobody had to go into the water. That somebody actually did so is part of the reason this particular tragedy sticks in the mind.

But the person most responsible for the emotional impact of the disaster is the one known at first simply as "the man in the water". Balding, probably in his 50s, a huge mustache. He was seen clinging with five other survivors to the tail section of the airplane. This man was described by Usher and Windsor as appearing alert and in control. Every time they lowered a lifeline and flotation ring to him, he passed it on to another of the passengers. "In a mass casualty, you'll find people like him," said Windsor. "But I've never seen one with that commitment." When the helicopter came back for him the man had gone under. His selflessness was one reason the story held national attention; his anonymity another. The fact that he went unidentified gave him a universal character. For a while he was Everyman, and thus proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.