The miracle of a perfect landing for US Airways Flight 1549 by hero pilot, Charles "Sully" Sullenberger wasn't the only miracle on the Hudson River. Here's a wonderful love story written by Jeanne Sager featured in Aol.com on December 15, 2009. It is true that sometimes God wants us to become acquainted with different people in the course of our life, so that when we meet the right one, we would be grateful for the gift.

A month after the plane met geese mid-air and was forced into an emergency landing in the middle of the river bordering New York City, passengers Ben Bostic and Laura Zych met, thanks to 60 Minutes. The TV news magazine staged a reunion of the crew and the people saved when the flight to Charlotte, N.C., dropped down into the water.

Ben Bostic recalled that he saw Laura on the day of the flight in the airport. "I'm single, so I just noticed her," Bostic told Lemondrop. "She was attractive. She stood out. I boarded my plane, sat in 20A, took out a book, noticed her coming down the aisle. I thought, I might be lucky and have her as a 'seat mate.'  As you would expect, she sat in 17D, instead. In any other flight that would have been the end of it."

Then came the emergency landing, and photos of Zych were everywhere -- especially on Facebook where the survivors quickly connected. Bostic kept an eye on her via the Internet, and six months after the crash, they met again, this time for real at a survivors-get-together.

"We've been dating ever since, and it's been amazing," Bostic says. "We've lived, laughed, danced and loved like two people who know tomorrow isn't guaranteed."

The holiday time is special for the newly minted couple, but Bostic says they got their gift back in January. "We treat every day as a gift," he says. "Being around those we love during special times is obviously important . . . family/friends/holidays . . . but we don't even take Monday mornings for granted."

And they're not the "second miracle," Bostic says, they're each just one of 155 survivors.

With a book about their story, "Miracle on the Hudson," now out, the couple went out on an FDNY boat to visit where their love began for New York magazine's "Reasons to Love New York" issue. Watching them wrapped in a blanket with the sun setting behind them warms the heart despite knowing how cold a New York winter is.

By Tim Pedrosa

 
 

One finds love not by being loved, but by loving. We can never know love if we try to draw others to ourselves; nor can we find it by centering our love in them. For love is infinite; it is never ours to create. We can only channel it from its source in infinity to all whom we meet. - J. Donald Walters

 

 

Tim