I am closing in on 50 years in journalism. What has kept me in the business, beyond all else, is the constant search for wonder.
That was my immediate thought when I learned this summer of the death of Jim Roach.
I first wrote about him in 2020, for Pearl Harbor Day. The long shot way that column came about – the sense that his extraordinary story almost willed itself to be told – serves, in its own way, as a eulogy.
Only if you press Ted Yochum will he describe how he swam toward a weakened man in deep water, a guy who had been clinging to an empty can of gasoline for at least 45 minutes.
This tale begins a few years ago, with this impetus: Elizabeth Swetland, a teacher in the Allegany-Limestone district, was moved by the courage of now-Lt. Col. Patrick Miller – an Allegany native who earned the Soldier’s Medal for the lives he saved in 2014, after being shot and critically wounded during a mass shooting at Fort Hood.
The Soldier’s Medal is a high military award for heroism involving civilian lives. Swetland, who knows Miller’s family, contacted me following a conversation with her father, Ted Yochum, an Amherst retiree. In a visit with her dad, she told him of Miller, and his prestigious medal.
“I have one of those,” said Yochum, 90, who…
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