Owner, Sally T's -- St. Peters
"Well, in my place I've seen Billy Coma from the Billy Coma Band spontaneously fly off the stage, land on a Formica drop-leaf table, break it in half and land on his feet, guitar still playing, not missing a note. He's kind of wild on stage, but I don't think he's ever jumped off it. And the guy sitting at that table, he picked up his beer right before Billy landed there."
Thomas Jersig Griesedieck
Designer/Installer, Griesedieck Brothers Landscape Design & Installation
"January '96, on a sea-kayaking expedition in Mexico. Launching off from the eastern shore of the Sea of Cortez, we paddled into the sunrise. Out there your connection with the water is very intimate, and we glided through a school of one-celled phosphorescent sea creatures. Every stroke of the paddle set off a light show like a pasture of fireflies on a Missouri summer evening."
Kandis L. Hendrix
Bartender, Club Isis
"I was in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, in a taxi, and we noticed cars pulling over and people running somewhere just off the road. I asked the driver to stop to see what it was, and there was a man on the riverbank, shot in the head. I saw him bleeding and moaning, and then he died. Come to find out, he'd been shot by police; [he was] on the run from robbing people. I'd never been that close to anything so dramatic. I saw that and it changed my life forever."
Ari Zelmanow
Former Paramedic, St. Louis Fire Department
"I saw a surgeon wipe a guy's ass once [at] Saint Louis University Hospital. The guy came in on a backboard, life signs negligible, about to die. The trauma team was all over him, everybody busy doing something, and this doc did it without a second thought and it was over. But he took that moment to do what someone else could've done. It was a humbling and noble gesture, and that kind of hit me."
Amanda Davis
Graduate Student, Saint Louis University
School of Public Health
"I haven't seen a lot in my 24 years, and I hesitate to use 9/11 as an example, but for me the most remarkable thing was the compassion and unity that people displayed after 9/11. It was touching that something hopeful could come out of something so terrible, even if it was only temporary."
Danny Shepherd
Author, How I Converted $1,000,000 of Choice Real Estate to $50 Cash
"There was a woman in Tijuana who would take three different-colored Ping-Pong balls and put them in her...you know. And she would let you pick a color, and that's the one she would shoot out on the table. Something like that takes a lot of practice; not everybody can do it. As far as remarkable sights, that was right up there -- that and the Pope coming to town."
