A 15-year-old girl “Clara Daly” was seated on an Alaska Airlines flight that was on its way from Boston to Los Angeles when a flight attendant announced something urgent over the loudspeaker: “Does anyone on-board know American Sign Language?” So, the teenager girl helps a blind and deaf person on the flight.
Clara pressed the call button. The flight attendant came by and explained the reason for the announcement. “We have a passenger on the plane who’s blind and deaf,” the flight attendant said. “It seems that the passenger wants something, but he is traveling alone and the plane crew couldn’t understand what he needs,” flight attendant further added.
A Teenager Girl Helps a Blind
Young Clara had been studying American Sign Language (ASL) for the past year to help with her reading disability “dyslexia” and knew she’d be able to fingerspell into the man’s palm. So she unfastened her seat belt, walked with the attendant toward the front of the plane, and bent towards the passage seat of Tim Cook, 64. Kindly taking his hand, she signed, “How are you? Are you OK?” Cook asked for some water.
When it came, Clara returned to her seat. She unfastened again a moment later because he desired to know the time. On her third call, she stayed with the old man for a while.
“He didn’t want anything. He was alone and wanted to talk,” Clara says.
So for the next hour, they learned about each other. She spoke about her family and her goals for the future (she wants to be a politician). Cook explained to Clara how he had slowly become blind over time and also told the stories of his days as a traveling salesman. Even though he couldn’t see her, she “looked eagerly at his face with such compassion,” a passenger stated.
“Clara was marvelous,” a flight attendant said to the management of Alaska Airlines in an interview. “You can say Cook was very delighted to have someone he could speak to, and she was such an angel.”
