People: LaSalle student has a new title
Last Updated on Monday, 17 August 2015 12:58 Monday, 17 August 2015 12:58
Newspaper article about the ice rescue (dated February 24, 1989)
When LaSalle Senior High student Mark Kiecker arrived home on the night of Feb. 5, he was tired and went to bed.
He later mentioned something to his father about helping some people who were trapped on a pond in Buffalo.
It was two weeks later when Rodney Rhodes, his gym teacher, heard of his student’s heroism.
Mark Kiecker, 18, didn’t expect any acknowledgement of what he did. That is what makes his story so extraordinary.
Surely he must have saved some self-satisfaction after falling into the State University of Buffalo pond when the ice gave way. He fell in when a hockey stick he borrowed to help four stranded skaters was out of reach. But Kiecker managed to get the four student to solid ice, pulling one of them up by the seat of his pants.
Kieker said what he did “makes him feel good” now that it’s over, but that kind of feeling wasn’t there on that cold Sunday night.
Kiecker’s reaction to the plight of the four skaters in trouble wasn’t to earn a medal or become a campus here at his school.
He did what he did because people were in trouble.
Kiecker describes best the aftermath of what happened on that frightening Sunday night:
“It makes me feel so good now about what I did, but at the time, I wasn’t thinking of that. I just wanted to get the people out of the water. My friends now call me Captain America to razz me.”
If that’s the way Mark Kiecker’s classmates want to celebrate this episode, we’ll go along with it.
He is now among the many other “Captain Americas” who have successfully flirted with danger while saving the lives of others.
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