And the Little Boy Cried

Years ago while wandering the beach one day, I came across a phrase carved into the railing of a wooden pier. It said, “Save yourself.”

At first, the words seemed to characterize an attitude that had become the mantra of that era, a smug, chest-pounding glorification of self that left no room for others.

But as I thought about it, I could visualize someone being swept out to sea and waving off rescuers in a final act of transcendent courage. His final words might have been: “Save yourself.”

The phrase has lingered in a corner of my memory for years, and I’ve tried occasionally to apply it to events that have swirled around me like twigs of history in a maelstrom of time.

But the acts of courage I’ve witnessed seemed always accompanied by grand public notice. The conditions I sought were quieter. “Courage,” as the writer Frances Rodman once observed, “is not always woven from the fabric that ostentation wears.”

Passing years have refined my interpretation of the words on the pier to the extent that I have come to see them now as the ultimate divinity of the human spirit, a giving so great that it defies death itself.

By word and picture, we were all witness to such an incident Saturday in the surf off Catalina, where Linda Seals ennobled the small and vulnerable creatures we are with a towering act of selflessness.

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What she did was dive into a surf turned suddenly dangerous with riptides to help save a group of children being swept to sea.

Anyone who has ever been caught in a riptide--and I have--must respect and fear its terrible power to seize its victims and toss them helplessly into the depths of the ocean.

It was only by fighting the tide’s pull with all my strength that I managed to escape.

Linda Seals, who had lived all of her 45 years on Catalina, knew its power, but challenged it nonetheless when she and others dove into the surf to save the children. But that wasn’t enough.

We are ultimately defined by the extra steps we take in life, the efforts beyond necessity that tell us who we are. Frances Rodman knew that when she wrote of courage beyond bugles. Linda Seals took the extra step.

Exhausted after rescuing the children, barely making it ashore, she was on the beach when she saw her husband, Randy--still in the surf from the rescue attempt--being pulled to sea.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she dove in after the man she had loved dearly since she was 17, a man with whom she had borne three children, and began swimming toward him.

The tide was too strong and her strength was gone. Randy Seals was swept to safety on rocks that lined the shore, but Linda, in a final glorification of moral evolution, died in the surf. The ocean, its fury spent, embraced her like a child.

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I wondered as I read about the incident what kind of person would trade her life so willingly for the sake of others.

Connie Lopez, who has lived on the island for half a century and who knew Linda all her life, tried to define for me the qualities that would have motivated that glowing act of bravery at a place called Shark Harbor.

She spoke of a woman so caring that at the beach she would put sunscreen on the faces of children she didn’t even know, a person whose life seemed inexorably aimed at fulfilling a destiny that could not be avoided.

Lopez groped for a way to describe Seals, but words like generous and giving seemed insufficient. A grander description was required.

It came, as it so often does, in a quiet manner, when I asked Lopez if Seals’ final act of courage surprised her. She replied simply, “No.”

Then she told me that one of the children Seals had rescued was her 8-year-old godson, Quillan Lopez, who loved her dearly and was so devastated by her death he could not attend school on Monday.

The grief of children does not come easily, but the boy cried and continues to cry for a person whose charity of spirit he always seemed to sense. In a way, the tears of children who love us may be our true reward.

I hope, too, however, Quillan will someday realize that at the critical moment of decision, his godmother chose not to save herself but to save others. That act of human generosity will last long after the tears are dried and the pain of a furious day forgotten.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com