…I was going to call it “Kyle Reese one person…”, but that might have been a bit obscure.
Well, [del]ripped off[/del] inspired by The Second Stone’s Terminator One person born within the last 100 years? thread, I’ve got a new scenario: you can send someone back in time to save one person who was born in the last 100 years from death, who would you pick?
The rule? You can’t save them from the ravages of old age. Treatable medical conditions, yes. I’ll tenatively allow at least some kinds of cancer as “treatable,” as it’s conceivable (and somewhat entertaining) that you could save someone’s life by having a naked cyborg supersoldier appear out of thin air and carefully tear out the target’s lung. (Hey, it can’t develop a tumor if it’s not there, right?)
For starters, I’ll try…Robert Lawrence Jr.
JFK. On a day I’m taking my meds, I could just wait with a silenced 45 near Oswalds sniper nest and take him out as he settles in. On my bad meds day I don’t have time to do anything about the grassy knoll or sewer snipers. When in my best frame of mind I just drop a dime and call all three locations in saying I heard Oswald say he and some guys were gonna cover it from three locations. Then call it in to the local media too.
Yeah, my first thought was JFK. My understanding has always been that he was ready to pull troops out of Vietnam and if we could have avoided that nightmare…
I think I’d probably go more local on this one, and choose someone whose death directly affected people in my life. The highest profile ones would be to go back and save Sylvia Likens, who was a classmate/schoolmate of several of my family members, or Shanda Renee Sharer, the daughter of a woman with whom I worked a few years ago. Others would be less known, or even unknown; friends who were killed in car accidents, that kind of thing.
The second coming of Jesus. He comes back every generation, but if the amount of evil in the world is too great, he gets aborted/infanticide/mugged as a child or whatever. Let Jesus come back for real and save us all. ;p
George Gershwin. I often wonder how his music would have evolved if he hadn’t died so young.
I thought of Anne Frank, but her diary has been so inspirational specifically because she didn’t survive. But I might save her anyway, given the chance.