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Walking Willow, our goldendoodle, early in the morning before the California heat sets in has become a ritual I treasure.
The air is cool, the streets are quiet, and each step feels like a prayer of gratitude. My wife, Pris, and I are approaching 37 years of marriage, and together we have built a life woven with love, family, and friendships that have carried us through every season.
We’ve traveled to more than 75 countries, immersing ourselves in cultures, sharing meals, and listening to stories that have reshaped our own. These days my time is spent advising organizations on culture and leadership, writing books that gather the lessons of my journey, and tending to bonsai trees on our patio, each one teaching me patience and resilience.
It is a life full of meaning, joy, and wonder.
All of it might have ended long ago.
The Fire
January 1966. Stone Park, Illinois. I am six-years-old, a first grader walking Lassie, our young border collie, near the frozen creek down the block. Lassie listens better than anyone else in my life. In a house where silence is survival and truth is forbidden, I whisper my secrets into her fur. That winter the snow piles higher than me in some places. The older kids laugh as they slide across the ice. My father has warned me never to walk on frozen water, so I stay on the path.
The sky is white, the air sharp. That is when I see the smoke.
A neighbor is burning trash in a barrel. In Stone Park, this is how people handle what does not fit into garbage cans. I stop. I pick up a stick and toss it into the fire.
A spark leaps out.
It lands on my sleeve.
This is before fire safety laws required flame-resistant clothing for children. The nylon coat ignites instantly, the flame racing as if it has been waiting for this chance.
At first, I slap at it, thinking I can put it out. Then I panic. The fire runs up my arm, devouring nylon, cotton, and then my skin. I roll in the snow, yet the fire clings to me. I try to tear the coat off, yet it melts into my body.
I run.
I scream.
The sound of it rips through the neighborhood like an alarm no one knows how to answer.
The older kids freeze. Their faces blur in the heat. For a moment, the world holds its breath.
And then one boy moves.
Roy White.
He is maybe 14 or 15, a teenager from across the street. He does not stop to think. He does not wait for permission. He runs straight toward me, throws me into the snow, and presses his bare hands into the flames. He packs snow onto my body, pressing it into every place that burns.
The smell of scorched nylon and skin hangs in the air, heavy and unforgettable.
Then he lifts me onto his back. He carries me home, careful not to touch the raw, blistered flesh. I see my mother’s face at the door, her scream lodged in her throat.
There is no ambulance. My mother drives. My father meets us at the hospital, furious not at what happened, furious instead at the choice of hospital. His anger burns hotter than my wounds.
Survival and Scars
I spend weeks in the ICU. I slip in and out of a coma. Machines hum and hiss around me. Nurses whisper. I endure skin grafts that stretch over wounds too deep to cover. The pain sears day after day, a constant companion.
Roy visits. A local newspaper takes our picture—me, bandaged and smiling, handing him a savings bond for saving my life. I look up at him with a smile that tells only part of the story. Perhaps I smile because he saved me. Perhaps I smile because I already know how to pretend everything is fine.
The scars never leave—some visible, many buried deep. Yet that act of courage becomes a thread I hold through the darkest years. On nights when I curl into myself, trying to stay small, I remember: someone once ran toward me instead of away. Someone chose to save me.
That memory becomes proof that kindness exists, proof that love can arrive when you least expect it.
The Search
Two decades later, in 1986, I am on a layover at O’Hare Airport. Something stirs. I pull a Chicago phone book from the counter and begin dialing every Roy White listed. I find him. He comes to meet me, his wife by his side. I thank him. We speak briefly. He does not ask for more, and I do not offer. That is the last time I see him.
Years pass. I search again. School records. Obituaries. The internet. Leads trail off into silence…
Still Looking
Which brings me back to today.
I think about the life that has unfolded across the decades: the love of my marriage, the friendships that have become family, the joy of raising children, the gift of traveling the world and learning from cultures so different from my own. I think of the books I have written, the stories I have carried, and the quiet joys of home—the bonsai trees, Willow tugging at her leash, mornings that begin with coffee and evenings that close with gratitude.
All of it exists because Roy White chose to act.
And I am still holding at least one more thank you.
An Invitation
So I turn to you.
Dear friends around the world, the Elephant Journal community is vast.
If you are Roy White, if you knew him in Stone Park in the 1960s, or if you are part of his family, please hear this: he did more than save a boy.
He gave me a life—one filled with love, family, friendship, and wonder.
Help me find him. Share this story. Pass it along.
Because healing grows deeper when gratitude is spoken. And sometimes the most important journeys are the ones that lead us back to the people who changed everything with a single act of courage.
~
author: Ed Cohen
Image: Author's Own
Editor: Molly Murphy
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