Word: skutnik
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...minute televised performance, in which he outlined the idea of a New Federalism, was vintage Reagan, as flawlessly paced and as forcefully persuasive as any of his campaign speeches-which is what the address basically was. With a showman's instinct, he evoked the heroic spirit of Leonard Skutnik, who dived into the Potomac last month to rescue a drowning plane crash victim (see box), and stirring speeches to Congress by Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Only when he touched on foreign policy did he shift about nervously, as if on unsure terrain...
...their behavior. Donald Usher and Eugene Windsor, a park police helicopter team, risked their lives every time they dipped the skids into the water to pick up survivors. On television, side by side in bright blue jumpsuits, they described their courage as all in the line of duty. Lenny Skutnik, a 28year-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...
...powerless in the world. In reality, we believe the reverse, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind us of our true feelings in this matter. It is not to say that everyone would have acted as he did, or as Usher, Windsor and Skutnik. Yet whatever moved these men to challenge death on behalf of their fellows is not peculiar to them. Everyone feels the possibility in himself. That is the abiding wonder of the story. That is why we would not let go of it. If the man in the water gave...