There Is Hope for the World in This Wonderful Story

July 14, 2017 //

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/11/a-riptide-swept-away-a-florida-family-then-beachgoers-formed-a-human-chain/?utm_term=.d9e60b8ab518&wpisrc=nl_most-draw7&wpmm=1

People can rise to the occasion to save others. What a great story and photo.

Categories Education Reform

18 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

kindergarteninterlude says:

July 14, 2017 at 2:32 pm

Whenever you post something from WP and I go to click on the link, up comes a subscription offer and I can’t get to the article. Any suggestions?
Thx:)

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  July 14, 2017 at 3:17 pm
  
  Oh, dear. I am sorry to hear that. I have a subscription but I have also logged on using computers when I did not have a subscription.
  
  This is a great story about a group of people of all ages who were swept away by a rip tide into the Gulf of Mexico. People on the beach saw that they were screaming and calling for help, and they formed a human chain reaching far out into the Gulf to save them, one by one.
  
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  - kindergarteninterlude says:
    
    July 14, 2017 at 3:29 pm
    
    Awesome & beautiful. Plugged into Google and read the whole story. Great that you share these hopeful stories! Boy do we need it…
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    July 14, 2017 at 3:33 pm
    
    I just copied it to share with you. After 3 days, I assume the Washington Post wouldn’t mind.
    
    But the photos and videos are priceless!
    
    It starts here:
    
    When Jessica and Derek Simmons first saw the beachgoers pausing to stare toward the water, the young couple just assumed someone had spotted a shark.
    
    It was Saturday evening, after all, peak summer season in Panama City Beach for overheated Florida tourists to cross paths with curious marine life. Then they noticed flashing lights by the boardwalk, a police truck on the sand and nearly a dozen bobbing heads about 100 yards beyond the beach, crying desperately for help.
    
    Six members of a single family — four adults and two young boys — and four other swimmers had been swept away by powerful and deceptive rip currents churning below the water’s surface.
    
    “These people are not drowning today,” Jessica Simmons thought, she told the Panama City News Herald. “It’s not happening. We’re going to get them out.”
    
    She was a strong swimmer and fearless in the face of adversity. But others had tried to reach them and each previous rescue attempt had only stranded more people.
    
    There was no lifeguard on duty, and law enforcement on the scene had opted to wait for a rescue boat. People on the beach had no rescue equipment, only boogie boards, surf boards and their arms and legs.
    
    “Form a human chain!” they started shouting.
    
    Roberta Ursrey was among those caught in the treacherous rip currents. From 100 yards away in the Gulf of Mexico, between crashing waves and gulps of salt water, she heard the shouting, she told The Washington Post.
    
    By then, Ursrey and the other eight people stranded with her had already been in the water for nearly 20 minutes, fighting for their lives. Ursrey and the others had ventured into the water to rescue her two sons, Noah, 11, and Stephen, 8, who had gotten separated from their family while chasing waves on their boogie boards.
    
    Stephen Ursrey, 8, and his 11-year-old brother Noah. (Courtesy of Roberta Ursrey)
    Tabatha Monroe and her wife, Brittany, in Panama City for a birthday getaway, were the first two to hear the boys’ panicked cries for help. The couple had just gone into the water when they saw the boys far from shore. They swam over and grabbed hold of their boogie boards.
    
    But when they tried towing them back to shore, the women couldn’t break free of the current.
    
    They tried to swim straight and they tried to swim sideways, Tabatha Monroe told The Washington Post, but nothing worked. After about 10 minutes, a few young men with a surfboard snagged Brittany and towed her back to shore, just as the number of people who needed rescuing grew.
    
    Soon Ursrey, who had heard her boys’ cries from the beach, was also caught in the rip currents, followed in close succession by her 27-year-old nephew, 67-year-old mother and 31-year-old husband. Another unidentified couple struggled to tread water nearby.
    
    “The tide knocked every bit of energy out of us,” Ursrey said.
    
    So much water went up Tabatha Monroe’s nose that she was sure she would drown, she told The Post.
    
    “I was exhausted,” she said.
    
    On shore, the human chain began forming, first with just five volunteers, then 15, then dozens more as the rescue mission grew more desperate.
    
    Brittany Monroe, 25, left, with her wife, Tabatha, 35. (Photo courtesy of Tabatha Monroe)
    Jessica and Derek Simmons swam past the 80 or so human links, some who couldn’t swim, and headed straight for the Ursreys, using surf and boogie boards to aid their rescue efforts.
    
    “I got to the end, and I know I’m a really good swimmer,” Jessica Simmons told the News Herald. “I practically lived in a pool. I knew I could get out there and get to them.”
    
    She and her husband started with the children, passing Noah and Stephen back along the human chain, which passed them all the way to the beach.
    
    By the time Jessica Simmons reached Ursrey, the 34-year-old mother could hardly keep her head above water.
    
    “I’m going to die this way,” Ursrey thought to herself, she told The Post. “My family is going to die this way. I just can’t do it.”
    
    Ursrey remembered Simmons coaxing her to carry on.
    
    “I blacked out because I couldn’t do it anymore,” Ursrey said.
    
    She woke up on the sand to the sound of more screams in the water.
    
    Someone yelled that Ursrey’s mother, Barbara Franz, still in the water, was having a heart attack. Simmons told the News Herald that Franz’s eyes were rolling back. At one point, the 67-year-old woman told the rescuers “to just let her go” and save themselves. Instead, Ursrey’s husband and nephew held Franz’s body up as they struggled to keep their own heads above water.
    
    “That’s when the chain got the biggest,” Ursrey said. “They linked up wrists, legs, arms. If they were there, they were helping.”
    
    Nearly an hour after they first started struggling, just as the sun prepared to set, all 10 of the stranded swimmers were safely back on shore.
    
    The entire beach began to applaud.
    
    “It was beachgoers and the grace of God’s will,” Ursrey said. “That’s why we’re here today.”
    
    Both Brittany Monroe and Franz were transported to a hospital. Monroe was later released after being treated for a panic attack and Franz remains hospitalized, her daughter said. She suffered a massive heart attack and an aortic aneurysm in her stomach, but has been taken off the ventilator and is considered to be in stable condition.
- Laura H. Chapman says:
  
  July 14, 2017 at 8:54 pm
  
  Same here. I am maxed out on subscriptions. I am relying on some roundupsand links from Moyers, ProPublica and a few other sources, including ever watchful Diane.
  
  Reply
retired teacher says:

July 14, 2017 at 2:44 pm

That coordinated effort took place at Panama City Beach, about a hour from where I live. There are lots of current and former members of the military around the panhandle in Florida. There is a large air force base in the city as well. I have noticed some similar stories in car accidents. A group of men joined together to upright an overturned car. Another special forces member jumped off a bridge to save a child in a car that went into a river. We have no way of knowing how many volunteers in Panama City were from the military, but I imagine quite a few. They have a “can do” sense of team work from their training.

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- kindergarteninterlude says:
  
  July 14, 2017 at 3:30 pm
  
  God bless them!
  
  Reply
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    July 14, 2017 at 3:34 pm
    
    It is inspiring and reminds us of the way people are supposed to behave. Not ME ME ME ME ME, but WE, US, Together.
retiredbutmissthekids says:

July 14, 2017 at 5:21 pm

Saw this–incredible. &–sorry–this is sort of off-topic, but just an URGENT request to PLEASE contact the following senators in YOUR states:
Jeff Flake, AZ; Mike Leo, UT; Rob Portman, OH; Hoven, ND; Heller, NV; Murkowski, Alaska; Moore Capito, WVA–& tell them to vote NO on GOP healthcare act, NO to repeal of ACA. ONLY their constituents can put the pressure on them. Also, for those aforementioned states w/Republican governors, PLEASE contact their offices, as well.
People are asking to put some pressure on those governors to put some on the senators.
Sorry–I have no links (am having some e-mail issues).
For those of you w/friends, relatives, anyone in those states, PLEASE contact them & give them this info.

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Lloyd Lofthouse says:

July 14, 2017 at 6:10 pm

The Washington Post won’t let me read it unless I lower my desktop’s level of security and let them sent me ads I don’t want, and open up my system to their info gathering cookies.

Translated that means The WP wants to be able to plant spies on my computer to gather information about my online habits.

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- stiegem says:
  
  July 15, 2017 at 12:49 pm
  
  That’s correct, Lloyd. Maybe change to Linux and put an Ad Block on the system. Otherwise, we risk getting stupid consumer ads and getting “spied” upon hearing about the “feel good” stories. I’ll opt out on that. For every “feel good” story, we get exponential e-mails. You consistently make excellent points. This is one of them.
  
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    July 15, 2017 at 1:03 pm
    
    There is no escaping the ads. Whenever I google a search for a product, that product pops up again and again on my screen
  - Lloyd Lofthouse says:
    
    July 15, 2017 at 3:16 pm
    
    Even with the level of security I have on my system, and I ramped it up higher after my desktop was taken over by Ransomware a few months ago, I get repeat ads too for products I expressed interest in.
    
    But over time we can train our brains to ignore those images from our eyes until we don’t pay them much attention unless they are irritating pop ups that block our view of what we want to read.
    
    When I find a site with those irritating pop-ups, I tend to never return to that site.
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    July 15, 2017 at 3:36 pm
    
    The ads are wasted on me. I seldom notice them and never buy
  - Lloyd Lofthouse says:
    
    July 15, 2017 at 6:22 pm
    
    I understand. Most of the repeat ads are a waste of time on me too. I do my research on a product through Google, and then first check Costco to see if they sell that product in their stores or on-line. If they do, I buy it from them but keep getting the ads from Amazon and others about that same product. Google must have sold them information about my search.
    
    After Costco, I’ll check at Home Depot, then Lowes, then ACE Hardware, etc. I turn to Amazon last.
  - stiegem says:
    
    July 15, 2017 at 2:34 pm
    
    Diane, there is a way of escaping the ads. Don’t Google a search for a product. Go and buy it. Cause and effect. Do we need to teach our children the technological way to shop for what we need… or what we want? I Google for information. That’s how I found you way back. I distributed 3 copies of your book and got laid off. Many people don’t want to hear your truths. I’m always listening. We must all learn – to live in this technological age. As teachers (or speech-language pathologists!), we must learn to teach technology to the future children of America (wrought by genocide). That’s where it’s at (grammar here!!!!). You are correct. There is NO ESCAPING – just FIGHTING. (I prefer to call it disseminating information for those who are open.) THEN – the FIGHT comes (once one gets the true information).
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    July 15, 2017 at 3:08 pm
    
    Stiegem,
    
    I was looking for a water filtration system. I don’t know anything about them except they are supposed to purify the water that comes into your house. This is a perfect Google topic as there are many sites that offer i formation as well as product. Now I have water filtration systems following me. Better than shoes.
Dottie says:

July 14, 2017 at 10:25 pm

I shared this story on Facebook a few days ago. My nephew’s wife who lives in Florida sent the story to my Facebook. I thought the same as you. There is hope. It is a feel good story. Thanks for sharing.

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