"Did I do my best?"

On September 8, 1860 the steamer Lady Elgin collided with the schooner Augusta a few miles north of Evanston IL. There were 385 passengers on board. Edward Spencer a student at Northwestern came to the shore and for the next six hours dove into the frigid waters over and over again to rescue survivors. Spencer saved 17 passengers, and as he collapsed on the shore he was heard to repeatedly ask “Did I do my best?”. The ordeal left him confined to a wheelchair.
Nearly 150 years later, people are still drowning in Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes. They don’t drown in big numbers with tremendous media coverage; they die one or two at a time up and down our coastlines. Their stories are carried by local papers and news outlets but are quickly overshadowed by Brittany’s latest re-hab or Numa-numa‘s you-tube.
As we work to educate the general population and empower surfers and other watermen (and waterwomen) to carry on the lifesaving traditions of Edward Spencer. I often ask myself, “Did I do my best”