Clara Daly, 15, and her mother were traveling home to Calabasas, California, and had planned to fly non-stop from Boston to Los Angeles. Their flight was canceled, so Alaska Airlines booked them on another flight with a layover in Portland, Oregon.
That’s how Clara ended up meeting Tim Cook, 64. Mr Cook, who is deaf and blind, wasn’t able to communicate easily with the flight attendants.
Another passenger, Lynette Scribner, described in a Facebook post what she saw. “The flight attendants sincerely wanted to assist him, but had no way to communicate,” she wrote. “I watched as they didn’t flinch when he reached out to touch their faces and arms. They took his hand and tried so hard to communicate with him, to no avail.”
The attendants asked if anyone onboard knew American Sign Language. Clara, who had taken sign language classes for a year, pressed the call button.
The attendants asked her to sign letters into Mr Cook’s hand, so she knelt in front of him and began spelling out words.
“How are you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
They chatted a few times during the flight, once for about 30 minutes. She told him where she went to school and about her grandmother in Boston. He told her about his childhood and about his sister, who also lives in Boston.
Ms Scribner, 56, who was traveling to Seaside, Oregon, and sitting in the same row as Mr Cook, took a picture of the two of them: Clara looking intently at Mr Cook’s face as she signed into his hands, which were clasped around hers.
“I don’t know when I’ve ever seen so many people rally to take care of another human being,” she wrote. “All of us in the immediate rows were laughing and smiling and enjoying his obvious delight in having someone to talk to.”
At various points during the conversation “they were both laughing,” she said. “His frustration was greatly reduced. You could just see him lighten up.”
Read more here.
Source: The New York Times, 24 June 2018