Amazing coincidence and a heartwarming story
While we're not trying to make the Mellow Monk blog into the Oprah show, we came across a heartwarming story that we just couldn't resist passing along.
During World War II, when the Army was segregated, a white soldier named Everett Hines was pulled from the burning wreckage of a B-17 bomber by Abe Watson, a black serviceman near the crash site. Hines would surely have burned to death had not his rescuer acted so quickly. Both men were burned but recovered. Hines thanked Watson for saving his life during a brief meeting they had while recovering, then they went their separate ways.
Both survived the war but didn't meet again until the early 1990s, when Hines was visiting a friend in the hospital and saw a man being wheeled by on a gurney -- it was Watson. He had suffered a heart attack and died the next day, but not before Watson asked his long-lost friend to look after his daughter, a single mother with three small children. Watson, who was living alone after having been widowed a few years earlier, immediately agreed. "How could I say no to this man?" he said. Watson's daughter and three children moved in with Hines, who for the past 14 years has been father and grandfather to the now-teenaged kids.
This story is positive on so many levels... the amazing coincidence of the two men's reunion, his agreeing to be an adoptive grandfather. Having the chance to return one favor with another so many years later.
The full story is available here.
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posted by Mellow Monk @ 12:58 PM
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This story has appeared in Jet and was covered by TV,radio and the print news media. To date, 2/5/10, no record has been found to indicate that this event ever happened at Ardmore Army Air Field, Oklahoma. A Pfc. Everett Hines, was stationed here as was a Pfc. Donnel Watson, possibly the "Abe" Watson of the story. My interest in the story is due to contacts made to me by Associated Press and AARP magazine personnel concerning validity of the story. I am compiler of the Ardmore Army Air Field/Ardmore Air Force Base website, a historical account of both bases during WWII and Korean Conflict. http://www.brightok.net/~gsimmons As such, records of each accident and incident, with fatal or non fatal results have been obtained. A recent contact with the only surviving base fireman who would have worked the accident, stated he doesn't remember ever working that accident. An aircraft afire on the base with billowing smoke, would have been difficult to hide from local newspaper and radio news coverage. Civilians worked on the base and they go home! It is an interesting story and I hope it is factual. Maybe the accident report fell through the cracks somewhere. But without documented evidence of the crash, it will not become a part of the accident and incident history of the base.
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