The heartbreaking news of UH football player Shannon Smith's death while saving coach Fred vonAppen's young son from drowning brought back two long-buried memories. A hero’s death
evokes chilling memoriesThe first was a time in my teens when a friend and I went to swim in the Wailuku River above Rainbow Falls in Hilo. We had swam there many times, but this time it looked different. There had been a rainstorm the night before and the water lacked its usual clarity. A current disturbed the usually still pools.
My friend didn't like the looks of it and stayed dry. But full of teen-age bravado and craving the cool waters, I jumped in.
I was quickly swept into a powerful current even stronger than it looked. I was only a few hundred feet from the big waterfall and seconds from a long fall to certain death if I didn't do something fast. A paralyzing fear shot through my body. I don't know how I managed to grab the last rock before open river.
A decade later, I was visiting my mother in Los Angeles and took my kids and my sister's kids to a pool near her townhouse. We picked up some neighbor kids along the way and I ended up responsible for more children than I could keep track of.
I was catching my nephew Josh as he jumped into the water from the edge of the pool. He was little more than a toddler and couldn't swim. Another child called me and I looked away. I didn't see Josh jump into the water.
A woman screamed that a boy was drowning. The same fear I had felt in the Wailuku River gripped me as I turned back and saw Josh thrashing helplessly underwater. Before I could react, the woman plunged into the pool and fished Josh out of the water unharmed.
These nightmares come back when I read about Shannon Smith because I have known both kinds of terror he must have felt last Saturday -- the terror of knowing his life was in danger and the terror of seeing a child for whom he was responsible in grave danger. The difference was that Shannon Smith had to choose which fear to serve.
In the river above Rainbow Falls, I had only myself to save. In my mother's pool, I was in no personal danger as I watched Josh struggle for air. Shannon Smith had to decide in an instant: me dead and the boy alive or the boy dead and me alive.
We all like to think we would make the choice Shannon Smith did, but self-preservation is a powerful natural impulse. Most times the adult gets out but can't save the child or the adult hesitates and both drown.
From all accounts, it was no choice at all for Shannon Smith. He knew what he had to do and acted without hesitation. He was the calmest person in the water as he kept Cory vonAppen from going under, passing him back and forth to Thea vonAppen. He made sure everybody else was safe before he let the swirling water take his exhausted body.
We call a lot of people heroes who are really only survivors -- hostages, crime victims, folks who make it through terrible storms.
The true hero is rare -- somebody who willingly embraces mortal danger to protect another person. We recognize true heroes by how deeply their sacrifices touch us, by how we never forget their names.
Shannon Smith lived only 20 years but he made a difference in this world few of us will match. We'll see Shannon Smith's life in every breath Cory vonAppen takes. We'll see Shannon Smith's sacred purpose every time his memory inspires somebody to take a risk in the service of others.