"After the radio call, if it floated and could get there, it got there."
I found this clip yesterday and have watched it a couple of times as I never knew this had happened:
At about 9:23 into the clip was this:
"You couldn’ta planned nothin’ to happen that fast that quick."
"No training, this was just people doing what they had to do that day."
"Average people, they stepped up when they needed to. They showed me, you know, when the American people need to come together and pull together, they will do it."
It points out the essential being of what being American really is – self organizing and self-governing. Seeing a need, voluntarily coming together no matter the price, getting the job done, and then going about one’s regular life.
America’s greatness does not come, as President Obama maintained, from Government programs and Government size; it is on the strength of its people. It is not from Government that our goodness comes from but from within the hearts of average Americans. Government wants to plan, wants to control, wants to organize. Yes, the Coast Guard put out the call, and yes, Government boats (e.g., larger ferries) came on scene, but it was the hundreds of individual skippers taking control and working with each other to help those hundreds of thousands that lined up on the seawall. And none of them knew if they would be in the path of the next act of destruction.
They just made it work. After all:
"I believe somebody has a little bit of hero in them, you just have to look in."
– Robin Jones, Engineer, Mary Gellatly
