It is perhaps fitting that it was on Dr. King's birthday - thirteen years ago - Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger performed the "Miracle on the Hudson" and effected an emergency water landing of US Airways Flight 1549, which had lost both of its engines to bird strikes shortly after departing LaGuardia Airport.
Photo Credit: Janis Krums (Associated Press)
Dr. King's message regarding the importance of human beings being able to look beyond and past the color of one another's skin and, instead, to assess one another on the quality of one another's character is perhaps more important now than it was even at the time he first said it. It certainly is not any less so.
Thirteen years ago, as Captain Sullenger, his crew, and the passengers on Flight 1549 floated percariously on the Hudson River's surfaces, New York Waterway ferry crews sprang into action and came to their rescue. Neither the rescuers nor those being rescued hesitated for even a moment to inquire about another's ethnicity, gender, political affiliation, race, religion, or sexual orientation.
Actions undertaken for the benefit of another without thinking about any of that person's ancillary or component parts. Imagine that.
-AK
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