True Story

[Gordon Nore]

I stumbled upon this story that I had almost forgotten about. Mary Dohey was a friend of my parents -- in fact, she introduced my parents. Mary had gone to nursing school with my mother in Newfoundland. Back in the days, flight attendants were registered nurses. It's been nearly years since the events described below, and thirty years since Mary received the Cross of Valour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Dohey

Mary Dohey, CV was a Canadian flight attendant who was awarded the Cross of Valour, Canada's highest award for bravery, for her conduct during a skyjacking on a commercial DC-8 aircraft in 1971.
At the risk of losing her life, Dohey declined an offer of safe conduct from an Air Canada DC8 to remain with her fellow crew members and pacify a hijacker Paul Cini, on a flight from Calgary, Alberta on November 12, 1971. During eight hours of terror, a hijacker, with a black hood over his head and armed with a shotgun and two bundles of dynamite, threatened to take the lives of the crew and all the passengers on board the airplane. Although continually threatened with the gun, Miss Dohey spoke gently to the aggressor and succeeded in discouraging him from undertaking violent measures which would have cost many innocent lives. When the aircraft was diverted and landed in Great Falls, Montana, she was able to persuade the hijacker to allow all the passengers and part of the crew, including herself, to disembark. With absolutely no assurance that she would come out of the ordeal alive and because of her concern for the welfare of the remaining crew members, Mary Dohey turned down the offer of release and continued to appease the hijacker until the drama was brought to an end.
Because of the courage she displayed during the hijacking, Dohey was awarded the Cross of Valour in 1976.
She was from Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland.

 

[Andy Moynihan]

I'm very glad she had an atypical outcome for refusing to accept a hostage taker's favor. In most cases, refusing to go when told you're released tends to anger them because now it's cost you your position with them you've disobeyed their authority and now after having offered, they most often feel that they can no longer trust you, and that usually leads to a very bad end.

Glad this wasn't what happened here.

 

[Ronin74]

Now THAT'S a HERO.

 

[MA-Caver]

Here on MT we've been talking about how to take down, take out a potential threat. Using this or that technique if the situation presented itself and so on and so on. We talk about being CCW's and so on and (again) so on.

Ms Dohey shows us that "there are alternatives to fighting". One can assume that certain situations presented themselves time and again had Mary been a CCW or trained well in a MA (whatever art)... but she calmly and rationally managed to thwart the "terrorist's" violent intentions long enough to save other lives and her life without any violence at all.
Was she lucky or did she choose the alternate route of confronting violence with peace?

It's been said that the perfect warrior is one who does not need to kill or even draw their weapon. Whether or not Mary Dohey knew it she was a warrior and found the peaceful resolution to violence.
For that she should be respected and admired by those of us who have studied violence as a means of defense against violence... and I'm sure with many of us... she is.

Maybe meeting violence with peace isn't the right choice all the time... but in some cases it can be. I can't count how many times I've talked myself out of a fight with some guy wanting to kick my ***, rather than going ahead and meeting violence with violence. In the number of fights that I have been in through my life the use of violence by me was the last resort, and this is after all other options, including calmly trying to talk the guy out of it without pissing them off failed.

Bruce Lee said: The mind is the most powerful weapon of a Martial Artist

 

[Carol]

Fantastic Gordon

Thanks so much for sharing it :asian: