Champions . . . Plus

August 3, 2003. A summer thunderstorm pursued Mark Thallander as he drove from Massachusetts to Maine after playing the organ for a morning church service in Worcester. Dinner awaited him, but Mark never arrived. The car hydroplaned at the exit from the turnpike, just minutes from his destination.

A deafening silence followed the explosion of the accident. Then an unseen woman's voice spoke to Mark. Turn off the engine. Keep talking. Hold on. Later, in a hospital forty miles away, surgeons had Mark sign an amputation release form as he pleaded with them to save his arm . . .