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Dick Gower Canal Story <br /> This is a true story that may seem stranger than fiction. You know, they say there are no <br /> coincidences. Were there only one or two coincidences in this story, I might have thought, "Well, THAT <br /> certainly was lucky". But in this story there are multiple "coincidences." In fact, so many that it is clear <br /> that God in Heaven was choreographing the movements of quite a number of people, in order to have <br /> them coalesce in the same place at the same time, in the proper order, so that together they could <br /> perform what clearly was a miracle <br /> It started at around 3:35 pm on Monday, May 4th, 2015. Here in Vero Beach, FL, Mr. Gower was <br /> taking his daily 2-mile, pick-up-the-trash walk with my trusty hand-hewn cane, when deliberately he <br /> ended up off of Indian River Estates senior community's campus, at the southwest corner of 74th Ave. <br /> and 26th Street Rounding the corner and heading west onto the grassy area (good trash pickings <br /> there) next to the 26th Street canal, he spotted his next piece of trash. What he didn't spot was, that in <br /> going for it, he was putting himself precipitously close to the 15' drop, down a 50 degree embankment, <br /> to the water below. <br /> Mr. Gower set his trusty cane into what turned out to be the very upper, untrusty, portion of the <br /> embankment. It sank in more deeply than he anticipated, he lost his balance, and from that second <br /> on, Mr. Gower has no recollection of what happened. <br /> Now more than two weeks later, Mr. Gower came to understand, from five of the caring citizens, <br /> who were there to help, that there actually were quite a number of people (maybe 15), who stopped to <br /> help. Here's the story as they have pieced it together. <br /> Coincidence #1: My head-first fall down the embankment caught the peripheral vision of a <br /> young woman, Tori Cotton, who was about to make a right hand turn from 74th Ave. northbound to 26th <br /> St. east-bound. Approaching the intersection, she had slowed, looking for 26th St. traffic, first right, then <br /> left. Catching movement to her far left, she propelled her head around to really SEE it, and watched for <br /> just long enough (2 seconds?)to see Mr. Gower stumble and disappear. Only minutes before, knowing <br /> she needed to stop for gas, she had made the decision NOT to fuel up. Had she NOT made that <br /> decision, she would have rounded that corner later, having missed witnessing his fall. Without her <br /> seeing Mr. Gower stumble and take a dive down that embankment, NO ONE would have known he <br /> was there in time to save him. She sprang from her car(leaving it right there in middle of the northbound <br /> 74th Ave.) to RUN to the embankment's edge, where seconds before Mr. Gower had stood. Seeing <br /> 6 <br />