I just read an article about a man whom I remember reading about in 1976. Ed Ray was a quiet humble man who did what needed to be done when it needed to be done and in the process probably saved the lives of a bus full of children who had been buried alive. He just passed on at the age of 91. Thank you for saving all of those children, Mr. Ray. That is quite a legacy you have left.
Here are some snippets and a URL or link to an article recounting those terrifying hours and the role he played in saving them all:
The nation called Ed Ray a hero when he led a terrified group of children to safety after they were kidnapped aboard their school bus and held underground for ransom in the summer of 1976.
But the unassuming bus driver from a dusty farm town in Central California never saw himself that way, even after news of the infamous Chowchilla kidnapping grabbed headlines and inspired a TV movie.
As for the 26 children he saved, Ray became their lifelong friend until he died Thursday at 91 from complications of cirrhosis of the liver.
“I remember him making me feel safe,” said Jodi Medrano, who was 10 when three men hijacked the school bus and stashed the group in a hot, stuffy storage van in a rock quarry.
Medrano held a flashlight as the bus driver worked with older students to stack mattresses, force an opening and remove the dirt covering the van so they could escape after 16 hours underground. She never left Ray’s side during the ordeal.
“I remember he actually got onto me because I swore,” said Medrano, now 46. “Mr. Ray said, ‘you knock that off.’ I thought, whenever we get home I will be in so much trouble. That’s when I knew I was going home, because he made me have that hope.”
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“Mr. Ray was a very quiet, strong, humble man. He has a very special place in my heart and I loved him very much,” Medrano said, crying.
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The kidnappers sealed the children and Ray inside the storage van and covered it with 3 feet of dirt as part of their plan to demand $5 million ransom.
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“He told me that he felt it was his responsibility to get the kids back home to their parents safely, that’s all he could think about,” Ray’s son, Glen Ray, said. His father loved kids and they were his life, the son said.
Ray, who grew corn and alfalfa and raised dairy cows, never boasted about his role in the rescue, his granddaughter Robyn Gomes said.
“The community will remember him as a hero, but it’s not at all how he saw himself,” she said. “He was a remarkable man. If you met him, you loved him. He was that kind of guy.”
http://news.yahoo.com/driver-hero-76-calif-bus-kidnap-dies-163635323.html
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Russ Towne's A Grateful Man 