Samaritan offers signs of hope
Teen helps passenger on flight from Hub
A girl on her way out of Boston was eager to put her American Sign Language skills to the test when a blind and deaf man required assistance aboard a flight to Oregon.
“About 30 minutes into the flight the speaker-com goes off and they ask if anyone knows sign language,” 15-year-old sophomore Clara Daly of Calabasas, Calif., said last night about her flight last week out of Logan International Airport. “I took a year of sign language, so I look at my mom before I press the button for a flight attendant.”
Clara, who visits her grandmother in Marshfield every summer, said she was told to sign letters into the hands of a passenger who is deaf and blind. Little did she know that exchange would be caught on camera. Her exchange with the man, Tim Cook, has since gone viral.
“I think it showed people not everything has to be focused on the negative,” Clara said. “It’s crazy that something like this blew up the way it did.”
Though Clara has been studying ASL for the past school year, she felt comfortable enough to give it a go-ahead in order to help the other passenger out.
The man she spoke with said he was in town visiting his sister in the Boston area and asked for her to help periodically on their flight to the West Coast.
“I asked if he needed anything and he told me a water, and then they said he was asking for me again,” Daly recalled. “The flight attendant then said, ‘He’s been asking for you. I think he just wants someone to talk to,’ so we talked for the remaining hour . ... He told me when he was growing up he became hard of hearing and as he got older he got worse and his vision narrowed until he couldn’t see anymore.”
The man told Clara that he worked as a salesman and she told him that she aspired to be a politician one day, and the two became friends.
“When we landed I signed him bye and he asked if he could give me a hug bye, so we hugged and then we parted ways,” Daly said. Daly said her goal of becoming a politician is so she can help others, including those who are living with disabilities — and it looks like she already has a supporter.
“He said he would vote for me if he was still alive by then,” Daly said.
“I hope to be able to build off this (experience) and help people more . ... I could tell he was very touched by someone being able to communicate with him.”