As an eighteen-year-old boy Don Crompton got a summer job working for the U.S. Forest Service outside Buhl, Idaho.  The following summer his supervisor made him the crew boss over two other young men.

The three young men lived in a cabin nestled in a deep, V-shaped valley.  Each morning by the time the sun came up over the ridge and bathed the cabin in sunshine, the three men were already out of the cabin and hard at work.

One morning, however, Don awoke to find the sun shining in his face through the window.  His mind said, “Oh, no, we’ve slept in!  I’ve got to get up.”  His body, however, wouldn’t respond.  Try as he might he could move neither his arms nor legs.  A wave of panic swept over him which provided just enough adrenaline to enable him to roll out of bed.  Hitting the floor provided enough additional adrenaline to give him the strength to crawl and pull himself to the door.

As he laid outside recovering in the fresh air he realized that his friends were still inside the cabin and in the same condition he’d been in.  He crawled back inside and drug both young men out into the open.

A gas leak had occurred.  All three young men had been just minutes away from succumbing.  But for the timely arrival of the sun and for Don’s mental and physical exertions, they would have perished.  Don said that his head throbbed all that day.

A few years later Don was working on a construction crew.  His coworkers were rough, crude, and unpleasant to be around.  The job was tough to endure.

One day during the lunch break Don went to a nearby park to eat alone, and to find a reprieve from his coarse companions.  With purpose he chose to sit at an unoccupied picnic table with no one else nearby.  A few minutes later, however, he found himself feeling irritated as his solitude was invaded by a man who seated himself at the other end of the table and began eating his own lunch.  His irritation only grew as the man began making unpleasant sounds.

Don was ashamed of his own inhumanity and lack of friendliness; but his need to be alone was paramount, so he rose to leave.  As he did so he glanced at the man.  The man was clutching at his throat and looking desperate.  It suddenly became obvious that the awful sounds the man was making were because he was choking and turning purple.  Don sprang to the man’s aid and administered the Heimlich maneuver.  The offending piece of meat popped out of the man’s throat with a sound like a cork being removed from a bottle.

That being accomplished, Don picked up his lunch and was leaving when the man uttered a heartfelt thank you.  “It was nothing,” Don said, and left.

Years later, as an official with the U.S. Forest Service, Don was in a room awaiting the arrival of the executives from the power company with whom he and his associates were to meet.  As they entered, one of them loudly and excitedly exclaimed, “You’re the man!  This is the man!  This is the man who saved my life!”

Don would never have recognized the man he had saved from choking; but contrariwise, Don’s features had been indelibly impressed upon the man’s mind.

A similar thing happened as Don was serving as an emergency medical technician in the little town of Heppner, Oregon.  He received a notice on his radio about an emergency just two doors from his own house.  Rather than reporting to the appointed gathering spot, Don ran straight to the house.  A screaming woman emerged, followed by a staggering man holding his chest.  As Don reached him the man collapsed in his arms.  He was bleeding from a gunshot wound.  Don applied compression to stop the bleeding.  Other help arrived, and the man was sent off to the hospital.

Don asked a doctor how the man would be.  The answer was, “He doesn’t have a chance.”

Don forgot about the incident.

Several years later his tires needed attention.  The technician at the tire shop took one look at Don and said, “You’re the guy who saved my life!”

The last thing a person sees as he’s about to leave this world must make a lasting impression.