Braving the Elements

When a small plane crashes into a frozen creek, kayaker must navigate the ice to save the pilot

- Bill Hangley Jr

IMAGINE SITTING IN your breakfast nook having a cup of coffee when all of a sudden you see someone about to die. What would you do? Last Christmas, John Gelinne found out.

On Dec. 26, Gelinne, 60, was gazing out the back windows of his home in Edgewater, Maryland, at frozen Beards Creek. Children and grandchildren bustled around the house. That's when Gelinne's daughter, Aimee DeMayo, spotted the Piper Cherokee.

"Look!" she cried. Gelinne looked up just in time to see a small aircraft a few hundred yards away, losing altitude.

As the plane disappeared behind the trees, Gelinne, a former Navy commander and current cybersecurity expert, realized it was going to land in the creek. He flashed on a moment from more than 20 years earlier: Sept. 11, 2001. Gelinne was at work in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., when terrorists crashed a jumbo jet into the building. He fled the chaos but has always wondered if he could have stayed inside and helped.