"With city lights dotting the night behind her, Dr. Dee Gaines, a neuropsychologist, sat for good reason—she’s very pregnant. But when Capt. Elgen Long, the last surviving member of a commercial flight crew that saved nearly 2,000 Jewish refugees stranded in Yemen almost 70 years ago, finished his speech, she felt compelled to stand."
"Her voice shook with emotion behind a microphone handed to her."
"My great-grandmother and my grandmother were on those planes. In Yemen, they couldn’t read. They couldn’t receive an education. Now, here I am, a doctor who has pursued higher education. And, because of you,” she said, rubbing her belly, “a fifth generation lives on.”
"Snow-haired and perpetually misty-eyed, Long, who turns 91 in August, bowed his head graciously in reply from a podium. Nearly 100 guests seated at tables applauded roundly in the backyard of a private home in Beverly Hills, California."
Read the whole thing.
