Act of Kindness: Travelers aboard flight come together to help blind and deaf man

Passengers and crew on an Alaska Airlines flight came together earlier this week to help a fellow traveler, who is both deaf and blind, traveling alone from Boston to Portland.

Lynette Scribner was waiting to board her flight to Portland, at Boston’s Logan Airport, when she noticed Tim Cook sitting with a woman; waiting to board the same flight. The woman, later identified by an Alaska Airlines blog as Cook’s sister, was signing into Cook’s hand, and that’s when Scribner realized that Cook was both deaf and blind.

Cook boarded the flight alone and immediately the people around him started to take care of him. Scribner was seated in the same row as Cook, with another gentleman sitting on the aisle. When the man realized Cook was to be seated in the middle seat between he and Scribner, he gave up his aisle seat to Cook so he would be more comfortable.

The flight attendants were trying to help Cook as best they could, graciously allowing him to touch their faces and arms, and taking Cook’s hand trying to talk to him. The man sitting next to Cook was also doing all he could to help. He put creamer in Cook’s coffee, and helped him find the restroom but, it was clear, nobody could really talk with him.

That’s when the flight attendants decided to reach out on the intercom to ask if anyone on board knew sign language. Clara Daly, a teenager girl on the flight, who had been studying American Sign Language for the last year, jumped right in to help.

Daly started spelling words into Cook’s hand with sign language and Cook was able to read her signing. Daly helped Cook through the rest of the flight, answering his questions and sometimes just talking with him.

“I don’t know when I’ve ever seen so many people rally to take care of another human being,” said Scribner. “It was a beautiful reminder, in all this time of too much awfulness, that there are still good, good people who are willing to look out for each other.”

Scribner’s post on Facebook has gone viral with more than 300,000 likes and 177,000 shares.