A Point of View © 1996
Baptism under fire. A girl named…
By Paul V. Montesino, PhD, MBA, ICCP
A young first-time mother and her three-week-old baby girl and an unrelated dealer in high-priced diamonds from South Africa were flying to their home city in a two-engine private plane.
The long flight had been uneventful most of the time, but as they approached the ground to land, one of the engines sputtered noisily and caught fire.
The plane’s nose pointed downward, and the aircraft touched the branches of some tall trees near the runway until it crashed violently.
The young mother hit her head against the side of the cabin and perished, while the crying baby was thrown from the plane and unto the nearby ground surrounded by fire and smoke, with the valuable gems spread around her,
The surviving gem dealer, noticing that the plane’s crew was unconscious, perhaps even dead, realized that the plane might explode any second now and was feeling so incapacitated that he could only reach for the baby or leave the baby behind and escape with his valuable diamonds. He knew that no one would ever be able to know the difference between the choices he confronted, but he didn’t think it twice. He knew what had to be done.
He grabbed the girl and carried her to security in a hurry ran away from the plane as fast as he could. When the aircraft finally exploded a few moments later, the fortune in diamonds melted and became worthless dust.
As he handed the baby to one of the emergency rescue workers that had approached the scene, one of them asked him:
“Do you know the name of the baby?”
“Yes,” he said, “Her name is Diamond.”
Be the first to comment