The heroism aboard that train speeding from Amsterdam to Paris just keeps growing. We cheered the quick action by Airman First Class Spencer Stone, 23; Alek Skarlatos, 22, a specialist in the Oregon National Guard; and their friend, Anthony Sadler, 23 of Sacramento. They and British consultant Chris Norman, 62, received France’s highest recognition, the Legion of Honor, from French President Francois Hollande. A fifth man, Mark Mongolian, who was born in Virginia and teaches in France, is hospitalized from injuries suffered when he tried to wrestle the AK-47 rifle from the gunman. He will be honored by France when he recovers.
There are other heroes in this event, some you may not have heard of because they sought no publicity. I ran across one reading the Oregonian newspaper of Portland. It started when a pilot for sportswear executive Tim Boyle called the CEO after finding out the moms of the three Americans were invited to France for the ceremony but had no way to get there. From the Oregonian:
“Would we be willing to fly them in our plane to Paris?” asked pilot Doug Perrill.
“Yeah, we’d be happy to do that,” replied Boyle, chief executive of outdoor gear company Columbia Sportswear in Washington County.
“I was really intrigued with the story,” Boyle said in an interview with The Oregonian / OregonLive. “It was sort of a movie script — just very interesting. And then the Oregon connection. These guys who were so brave as to do what they did, I just felt they deserved to have their moms present.”
Transportation wasn’t the only problem. “‘At least one and perhaps all of the mothers did not have passports,’ Boyle said. He said Perrill, working with the U.S. State Department, resolved this issue.”
Also, last-minute flights through international airspace are “a complicated venture that was made much easier by the State Department, apparently, which coordinated the whole event.”
Boyle and his wife, Mary, greeted the women before they boarded the 11-seat plane. The brother of one of the men — a California Highway patrolman — also made the journey.
“They were very ebullient, talking about the excitement they had for their kids,” Boyle said.
I’m impressed by Boyle’s eagerness to help and to do it without seeking publicity for himself or his well respected company. That puts him and his pilot on my hero list. The Oregonian said Boyle didn’t think to present any of the moms with Columbia sportswear before they departed. But, he told the paper, “one of the mothers brought her Columbia vest and said that she wears it every day.”
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