Tag: suicide

sully-plane-with-people-on-wings

Sullenberger manages to land the aircraft in the Hudson without any casualties.

sully-with-co-pilot-jeff

Tom Hanks as Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Aaron Eckhart as co-pilot Jeff Skiles.

SULLY

By Marlene Ardoin

January 2009 was a month of miracles. The first African American became a U.S. President, and on January 15^th, an American pilot, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger saved 155 passengers by landing his plane on the New York Hudson River.

The film, “Sully”, not only captures this event, but it plays homage to the experience of an older pilot, who used his years of training to its maximum advantage. His aircraft was disabled by striking a flock of Canada geese during its initial climb out of LaGuardia Airport of New York City.

We all have had experiences where we cannot believe that something is happening, then we are forced to let go and let intuition take over. The angel guides of Sully Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) and his crew landed what appeared to be an impossible plane landing.

Happening just a few years after New York’s 9/11 event in 2001, the New York rescue teams were well prepared for such an event.

This film also brings up the question of what other actions might have been taken. Of course, the event had to be investigated, even though all the passengers were saved. Someone has to think about the damage to the plane. Can one sue the Canadian geese? How about the Canadian government as the responsible party?

Sully had no previous experience with water landings, but he was a glider pilot and a safety expert. In this film, he tells the investigators that he just eye-balled it. Tom Hank’s Sully has a lot of personal dignity and charm in his communication style.

Here are a few interesting side facts.

His co-pilot, (Aaron Eckhart as Jeff Skiles) was a relative stranger. They had little experience flying together. “At the time of the accident, Captain Sullenberger had logged a total of 19,663 flight hours, 4,765 of which were accumulated in A320 aircraft. He was also a safety expert and a glider pilot.

The first officer was Jeffrey B. Skiles, 49, who was on the last leg of his first assignment in the Airbus A320 since passing the training course to fly the type. Skiles has accrued 15,643 flight hours throughout his career.

Sully’s own father, committed suicide in 1995, which is not brought up in the film. “On December 7, 1995, Sullenberger’s father committed suicide by gunshot shortly after being released from the hospital for major surgery. He had been suffering from depression in the face of a long and difficult convalescence ahead of him.” Among other things, Sully is a suicide prevention activist.

Sullenberger married fitness expert and television personality Lorraine “Lorrie” Sullenberger in 1989 (Laura Linney as Lorraine Sullenberger), with whom he has two daughters, Kate and Kelly. The Sullenbergers reside in the San Francisco Bay Area.

And director, Clint Eastwood, has made yet another provocative film featuring the resilience of Americans.

Chesley Sullenberger – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger

Real events vs. Hollywood depiction:

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/sully/

9/21/2016 # Sully

Spotlight, Child victim, Boston Globe

Breaking story in Boston Globe 2002, priests molesting children.

Spotlight, reporters with new editor.

Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron, the new editor, listens to reporters.

SPOTLIGHT

By Marlene Ardoin

Spotlight is also about diversity, low income children. One of the Best Picture Oscar nominees, Spotlight shows us the process of investigative reporters of the Boston Globe 2002 breaking a story of Catholic priests molesting children in their city. To be fair, this was not about all Catholic priests, just a few bad apples. But, those bad apples did plenty of damage and turned out to be more than originally suspected.

This film points out another example of where the weak are victimized by the strong. I assume the sexual exploitation of children from poor families by priests, started out small, then gradually grew to staggering numbers, worldwide. If the gatekeepers do nothing to stop it, it grows.

The children of poor families were easy pickings. Unfortunately, the vetting of priests was not very thorough at that time. And to be fair, the Catholic Church does a lot to help the poor, probably more than any other religion. Even today, the first thing one would suggest to a homeless person is to check with Catholic Charities.

The consequences of the victimization is heart rendering in this film. What resonated with me was the point that when you take away faith in religion from the poor, they are left without any kind of support system. What they turn to instead of religion is alcohol, drugs and suicide.

What the gatekeepers did at that time was to move the offending priests to new parishes, whenever problems were revealed. As a result, the priests had no feelings for or bonds with the communities that they served. I do not understand how anyone who has received religious training could do this. Why did they become priests in the first place? Was it a cover for their perversion?

The 4,392 priests who were accused amount to approximately 4% of the 109,694 priests in active ministry during that time. The report stated there were approximately 10,667 reported victims (younger than 18 years) of clergy sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002.

When sexual scandals involving Catholic priests in the US came to light in 2002, the Philippines media began reporting on abuses by local priests. In July of that year, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines apologized for sexual misconduct committed by its priests over the last two decades and committed to drafting guidelines on how to deal with allegations of such offenses. According to Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference, about 200 of the country’s 7,000 priests may have committed “sexual misconduct” – including child abuse, homosexuality and affairs – over the past two decades.

Stanley Tucci as Mitchell Garabedian, attorney, stood out for me. He was characterized as a bit of a character, but I would characterize him as noble. His clients were the victims, the poor families. One of the last scenes was of him greeting such a family in a kindly, upbeat manner, which was endearing. He was a priest in attorney clothing.

Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron, the new editor, also made an impression on me. He carried a persona of a do not mess with me, quite, but deadly, intelligent boss, who was not afraid to go to battle. Apparently, the molesting priest story got lost in the machine years earlier, but he saw the merit and the value to the paper’s readership, who were largely Catholic. He was raised Jewish, so the Catholics had no one to manipulate.

Mark Ruffalo as Michael Rezendes, reporter, Michael Keaton as Walter “Robby” Robinson, reporter, and Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeiffer, reporter, all did excellent work in their roles.

The story this film tells was a paradigm changer for the world. It came right after the 9/11 disaster, and changed how the world viewed children. The countries most affected included the USA, Canada, UK, Mexico, Belgium, France, Germany, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Tanzania, Philippines, Austria, Norway, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Slovenia and Sweden, to name a few.

3/8/2016 # Spotlight