Peter Sipe

Riskers

The Private

Emmanuel Mensah, a Ghanaian immigrant, was a National Guardsman. Although not on duty two weeks ago, he remained true to his vocation.

“He brought four people out. When he went to bring a fifth person out, the fire caught up with him.”

The Philosopher

Anne Dufourmantelle was at the beach last summer when she saw two children struggling in the water. She went in to rescue them, dying in the effort. She probably had a sense of the risk involved, as she was a student of the concept:

“We say in French ‘to risk one’s life,’ but perhaps we should say ‘to risk being alive.’ To be truly alive is a risk few take.”

The Bank Examiner

Twenty minutes after the crash, the sun was going down, and no one had been able to reach the six survivors. They were doomed… until suddenly, miraculously, a rescue chopper came whisking across the darkening sky. It dropped a life ring right into the hands of one of the survivors and plucked him from the water. Then things turned really strange.

The next person to receive the ring handed it over to someone else. The chopper lofted her to safety, then wheeled back.

The man gave away the ring again.

And again.

Arland D. Williams, Jr. was on a business trip when his flight crashed into the icy Potomac River. Until that moment he was, according to this profile, “a man whose life was a monument to playing it safe.” Williams helped five fellow passengers to safety before he went down with the plane.

A Christmas Memory

On December 6, 1917, two ships collided near the shore of Halifax, Nova Scotia. One, filled with munitions for the Western Front, caught fire. Most of the city’s inhabitants were unaware of their mortal danger.

Vince Coleman, a train dispatcher, saw that calamity was imminent, and delayed his own evacuation so that he could warn inbound trains to halt. He and two thousand others perished in one of history’s largest explosions.

The city of Boston responded quickly. Abraham Ratshesky, a banker, public servant, and philanthropist, led the way:

Ratshesky mobilized that first “relief special,” getting the workers out of Boston on the night of December 6. The group was so determined to reach Halifax that its members climbed out of the train in the snowstorm to help shovel the tracks.

In gratitude for Boston’s help, every year the province of Nova Scotia sends the Hub its official Christmas tree.

The Doctor, the Submariner & the Cook

In 1958, a Soviet virologist proposed that all countries work together to end smallpox. As this tribute notes, “no disease had ever been eradicated. No one knew if it could even be done.”

In 1977, the last case was found in Somalia.

Smallpox is the only human disease to have been eradicated. Thanks to what Viktor Zhdanov started, efforts to end polio, malaria, and several other diseases are now underway.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a US warship began to fire warning shots at a Soviet submarine. Unfortunately, only the Americans knew it was a warning.

The submarine’s officers, out of radio contact with Moscow, assumed that war had begun and prepared to launch their nuclear weapon. It was only the second-in-command’s reasoned refusal that prevented “a cascade of destruction.”

Many years later, the director of the National Security Archive concluded: “The lesson from this is that a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world.”

One of the lives Mr. Arkhipov probably saved was that of Ali Moaw Maalin, a cook in a Somali hospital. He also worked part-time as a smallpox vaccinator. Unbeknownst to his colleagues, he himself had declined to be vaccinated, for fear it would hurt. He thus earned his place in history as the last smallpox patient.

Upon being cured, he resolved to put his own experience to good use in polio eradication campaigns:

Now when I meet parents who refuse to give their children the polio vaccine, I tell them my story. I tell them how important these vaccines are. I tell them not to do something foolish like me.

In 2013, he succumbed to malaria while continuing Dr. Zhdanov’s magnificent endeavor.

The Explorer

In her spare time, Alexander wrote two books on science for children and mentored young people, especially African American girls. “She wanted children of color to see themselves as scientists,” her sister Suzanne said.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799. Carved two thousand years before, its text was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, which had been a mystery.

Claudia Alexander was NASA’s top scientist on the Rosetta project, which launched a spacecraft on a ten-year mission to a comet. Comets are small icy worlds created when the planets were formed, billions of years ago. By studying comets, we learn about our own origins.

As she said in a Los Angelse Times profile, published less than a year before her death from cancer, “For me, this is among the purposes of my life — to take us from states of ignorance to states of understanding with bold exploration that you can’t do every day.”

The Guarantors

The French Revolution, like the American Revolution, advanced an idea that was then revolutionary: people have basic rights.

Police officers Ahmed Merabet and Xavier Jugelé died protecting these rights.

“He was very proud of the name Ahmed Merabet, proud to represent the police and of defending the values of the Republic – liberty, equality, fraternity.”

Officer Merabet, a Muslim, was killed by terrorists who attacked a satirical newspaper known for mocking Islam.

Officer Jugelé, a gay man, was killed guarding the cultural bureau of Turkey, a Muslim country.

One of the fundamental documents in the cause of human rights comes from the French Revolution, and Officer Jugelé’s husband discusses it in his eulogy:

This profession of policing is the only one to which the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen refers. In Article 12, it states: “The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen requires a public force,” with useful precision in this politically important moment: “This force is instituted for the benefit of all, and not for the advantage of those to whom it is entrusted.”

Our human rights include writing what we believe, loving whom we choose, and worshiping according to our faiths. To do so, we depend on police officers like Ahmed Merabet and Xavier Jugelé.