AOW #1 Due: Monday!

Directions

1.  Chunk the article into manageable (2 paragraphs max.) pieces. Number them. Don’t forget title/opening!

2.  Highlight at least three words you are not familiar with and define them. (on back)

3.  Show evidence of a close reading. Mark up the left side of the text chunks with questions and/or comments that demonstrate interacting with the text.

4.  Identify on the right side of the chunked paragraphs the Purpose, Audience, Techniques, and Tone used by the author. Remember, these can change from one paragraph to another. “Serious” or “formal/informal” is vague if repeated too often. Be specific! Use short phrases if necessary.

5.  Make sure you HIGHLIGHT words/phrases that indicate the techniques you list!

The Gift and the Guilt of the Sole Survivor By Jeff WiseReader's Digest MagazineOctober 2014

The odds of surviving even the most serious plane crash are 76 percent. The odds of being the only one left alive are infinitesimal.

On June 30, 2009, French schoolgirl Bahia Bakari, 12, and her mother, Aziza Aboudou, 33, were aboard a packed Airbus A310 on their way to Comoros, a group of islands off the eastern coast of Africa, to visit family for the summer. Minutes from touchdown, Yemenia Flight 626 shook violently in the swirling 40 mph winds; the lights flickered, the engine stalled, and the plane, holding 142 passengers and 11 crew members, plunged into the Indian Ocean, breaking apart on impact.

Bahia was ejected from the plane. With no life vest, food, or drinking water, she clung to a piece of wreckage for 13 hours until a sailor from a private rescue boat plucked her from the ocean. Days later, as she recovered from her wounds in a Paris hospital, a psychologist shared unlikely news: Bahia was the only survivor of the disaster. Call it a miracle, coincidence, or luck—the distinction ofonly one left aliveis a heavy weight, says Kay Dickens, 36, whose 2013 documentary filmSole Survivortells the stories of several plane-crash survivors.

“They feel an incredible amount of pressure,” says Dickens, a survivor of a car crash in her teen years that killed several of her friends. Drawn to the topic partly because of her personal experience, Dickens contacted other crash survivors likeJim Polehinke, a co-pilot on a plane that crashed, killing everyone else on board and asked him to share his story with the world. Says Dickens, “Naturally they wonder, was I spared for a reason? Am I supposed to do something amazing?”

Here Jim Polehinke describes what he lived with every day as a member of a tiny club he never sought to be part of but is very fortunate to have joined.

SURVIVOR: Jim Polehinke, copilot
• Date: 8/27/2006 • Flight: Comair 5191 • From: Lexington, Kentucky • To: Atlanta • On board: 50 • Crew deaths: 2 • Passenger deaths: 47 •The pilots steered the airplane down a runway that was too short. The plane continued past the runway end, knocked down a metal fence, and continued onto a field, where it struck several trees and burst into flames.

As the pilot in command taxied the plane from the terminal to the runway, I was going through the preflight checklist of equipment settings, so I didn’t look out the window to check the runway number like I would before most flights. Even if I had, I might not have noticed that the markers along the taxiway didn’t match the runway we’d been assigned, because so many of the lights at the airport were broken.

We waited to be cleared for takeoff, and then the captain said, “OK, let’s go.” He taxied out onto the runway, turned, and straightened us out. He said to me, “OK, your brakes, your controls.” I said, “My brakes, my controls,” and away we went.

I don’t remember anything after that. On the cockpit voice recorder, you can hear me say, “That’s weird, no lights.” A few seconds later, we ran off the runway and hit an embankment. The plane rose into the air for a short distance, then clipped the airport fence, hit some trees, and broke into pieces.

When the rescue crews arrived, they heard me coughing and cut me out of the wreckage. Instead of waiting for an ambulance, they put me into their vehicle and took me to the hospital. I was in an induced coma for four days. My body was like a broken rag doll. My left tibia and femur were both fractured. My right heel bone came out of my foot. I had broken ribs and fingers and a pelvic fracture. My right lung had collapsed, and I’d suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Once they got me out of the coma, they waited for my head to clear up. My wife was there. I thought, OK, I’m in the hospital, and I’m really messed up here. So what happened? That’s when my wife explained that I’d been in a plane crash. My response was a question: “Was everybody else OK?” And she said, “No. You’re the only survivor.” When I heard that, I pretty much lay there and cried.

For the first week, the doctors kept cleaning out the left leg to try to save it. Finally the doctor

came to me and said, “Listen, we can do one of two things. We can see if this is going to work, and there’s a possibility that you could die from an infection, or we can amputate.” Once they took my left leg, the rest of my body recovered very quickly.

Emotionally and psychologically, I was very black the first couple of years after the crash. I was angry that all the blame was put on the captain and me. And I felt sad for the family members of those who had died. Sometimes I’d say to myself, “I’m alive!” And a split second later, I’d think about the 49 families who had lost loved ones. And I’d wonder, Should I be happy to be alive, when all those people are gone?

I’m grateful that my wife, Ida, is as strong as she is. She was my rock. She supported me, took care of me. I’m grateful that I have the wife that I do.

My advice to somebody else in my situation would be “Keep looking forward.” Keep looking for that light at the end of the tunnel. You can’t change the past, so just always keep moving forward.

I’m basically paralyzed from my right knee down. If somebody took me out of my wheelchair and said, “Stand up on one leg,” I’d drop. But I love to ski, and I get out whenever I can on a mono-ski. When I’m at the top of the mountain, I don’t think about the crash. I look out over the world stretched below me and say, “Maybe I don’t have a reason to complain. Thank you, Godfor allowing me to be alive and able to do this.”