Most of you kids won't know who I'm talking about but the oldsters will remember watching the video of "The Man In The Water." On January 13, 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Airport) to Tampa Florida. Operated with a Boeing 737, the plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River after being airborne for just 30 seconds. On the bridge, it hit 7 occupied vehicles. From the plane, only four passengers and one flight attendant were rescued. Another passenger, Arland Dean Williams, Junior assisted in the rescue. A Park Police helicopter arrived shortly after the crash, lowering a line to the survivors and using it to pull them to shore. Each time the helicopter returned to pull another survivor, Williams handed the rope to another until they finally returned to him but he had been lost to the cold. Because it happened in the middle of big city and there happened to be journalists nearby, much of the response was caught by video and newspapers. The Washington Post wrote, "He was about 50 years old, one of half a dozen survivors clinging to twisted wreckage bobbing in the icy Potomac when the first helicopter arrived. To the copter's two-man Park Police crew, he seemed the most alert. Life vests were dropped, then a flotation ball. The man passed them to the others. On two occasions, the crew recalled last night, he handed away a lifeline from the hovering machine that could have dragged him to safety. The helicopter crew who rescued five people, the only persons who survived from the jetliner, lifted a woman to the riverbank, then dragged three more persons across the ice to safety. Then, the lifeline saved a woman who was trying to swim away from the sinking wreckage, and the helicopter pilot, Donald W. Usher, returned to the scene, but the man was gone." The Man In the Water is laid to rest here. There are a number of memorials to him, including in 2003, the new Arland D. Williams Jr. Elementary School here in Mattoon. It is a simple headstone and otherwise completely unremarkable for a hero who saved lives. [Review 1283 of 2024 - 210 in Illinois - 22306 overall] read more

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