Thanks to the heroism of an Israel army veteran, a nine-year-old boy is recovering today at Wilson Hospital, here, following his immersion in the icy waters of the Susquehanna River. His rescuer, Yitzhak Hadari, 30, former principal of the Hillel Academy, a Hebrew day school in this city, is now engaged in private business and plans to return to Israel.
The boy, Charles E. Wasloy, fell in the water while fishing, when the ice along the bank on which he was standing broke beneath his feet. Mr. Hadari was walking home with Rabbi J. Bernard Merzel, spiritual leader of Temple Beth David, when the accident occurred. They were apprised of the boy’s danger by the shouting of an onlooker.
Mr. Hadari scaled a five-foot-high concrete wall and dropped to the river bank, waded waist-deep into the water and pulled the boy to safety just as the rushing stream was sweeping him away. Two policemen who then arrived on the scene had to be boosted bodily over the wall, a fact that led Mr. Hadari to comment: “They didn’t have Israeli Army training.” As he brought the boy to shore, Mr, Hadari said the child, blue from the cold, told him, “Thank you, sir, I love you, ” and lost consciousness.
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