Note: The following speech was delivered to a standing room only crowd in the municipal room of Walden’s Village Hall, at Walden’s 10th Annual Leadership Day Awards Night, January 9th, 2020.

I have nearly drowned four times in my life. These short paragraphs are about the second time I almost drowned. Each time, I was within moments of going under for good. Each time, someone saved my life. Two of those times, I was saved by perfect strangers.

I was an average swimmer for that age. As kids, we spent the occasional day at the beach at Far Rockaway. At the beach I would be in the water all day, body surfing to shore, hour by hour, the sand ripping off skin as I crashed ashore on a strong wave. We were in the ocean so long our bodies would sway ourselves to sleep at night, the action still within. Salt water is very buoyant.
But pond water, fresh water, relatively, for humans, at least for this human, is not buoyant.

Many of you remember Hecht’s Pond. Hecht’s Pond was across the Kill, out South Montgomery Street, behind Hecht’s Hatchery. It was a noted landmark because of the thick woods of pine trees and evergreens into which, during the late summer and fall, tens of thousands of black birds, grackles, and starlings swooped down to roost, disturbing the whole neighborhood with their cackling racket.

On adventures, I’d been to Hecht’s Pond maybe three or four times. The visit in question happened when I was nine or ten. I can’t recall the friends I went there with, but I decided to go swimming. It was a hot summer day. I said to myself, “I can swim across this.” And so, I set off, overconfident with the body memory of the buoyancy of salt water.

I got about half way. The water seemed heavy, slippery, like it was weighing me down. I couldn’t seem to get any traction. Just the tiny oval of my face was above the surface of the pond. I might have shouted a couple times as I came up a bit higher. I heard someone on the shore behind me shout, “He can’t swim!” Within a few seconds I felt someone grab my shoulder and begin dragging me to shore.

That person may not even remember this episode, but I am sure of its authenticity, as every time thereafter over the intervening years, whenever I saw this person, I would say to myself, “He’s the one who saved my life that day at Hecht’s Pond.” We never spoke of it. He was older than I. We moved in different circles. When I saw him, it was just “Hello, how are you?” But for over fifty-five, sixty years, whenever I saw this person, that day would flash across my mind, so I am sure it was he.

I have never told this story to anyone, not even my parents, especially not my parents, as I did not want my life restricted out of the sense of exaggerated caution I knew knowledge of this story would have triggered.

The person who saved me from drowning as a young boy, at the time still just a boy himself, is tonight’s Sam B. Phelps Jr. Service Award recipient -- not for his actions that day, but for everything he has done since -- Dave Penney. Thank you Dave.