Best of Luck
Luck of the Irish?
Some attribute this saying to the 19th century, when a handful of miners of Irish descent found wealth in the gold and silver rushes. Others point to Ireland’s survival through famine, war and mass emigration.
Still others dispute the claim altogether, attributing their luck to other things.
Katie Augustine is not even Irish, but the 10-year-old hockey fan has already caught six pucks while attending Pittsburgh Penguins games.“She’s about the luckiest person I know,” said her mother, Julie, of Clay Township, a longtime hockey fan along with her husband, Allen.Katie attended her first game last October with her parents. Since that time, they have lost count of the games attended as a family. One such game yielded three pucks for Katie. Two were practice pucks, and one was a game puck shot by Sidney Crosby — her favorite player.“You can see it’s got a chunk out of it,” Julie noted.With luck factoring into the mix, the Augustines say their seats also were a reason for Katie’s good fortune.“My husband happened to get tickets right behind the bench. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Julie said.“When he saw her get the Sidney Crosby puck, he said it was probably worth every penny he paid for the tickets.”Along with collecting Penguins pucks, Katie has had her face appear numerous times on the Mellon Arena jumbotron — showing up five times in one game alone, the Augustines said.“They go for the kids a lot,” Katie said, offering a practical explanation.
No one can dispute Doug Bollinger’s hand-eye coordination. But how much did luck influence the Butler man’s success in sports?Bollinger, 51, pitched a no-hitter baseball game at age 16 while playing in an American Legion league. About 10 years later, he used a 4-iron to shoot a hole-in-one on the second hole at Lake Arthur Country Club.Last month during a Thursday night league at Bon Aire Bowl in Butler Township, Bollinger bowled a perfect game.“I had just read an article in the newspaper the week before about choking under pressure,” Bollinger recalled, saying the article suggested “just doing it” instead of over-thinking in advance.“That’s what I did,” he said.Bowling in leagues since his teens, Bollinger carries a 206 average. So maybe his odds for a perfect game were increasing. He said bowling left-handed also might offer an edge, because the ball rolls down a part of the lane less worn by the league’s many right-handed bowlers.Although all three feats required some element of luck, he speculated the hole-in-one was the luckiest of the three.“It was a good shot, but that’s a pretty small hole,” he said.In the no-hitter, a good play by the third baseman also proved a lucky break.A swinging bunt came across the third base line, and the baseman scooped it up with his bare hand and threw it to first, Bollinger explained.“That was pretty lucky on my part that he made a really good play,” he said.Although Bollinger is of Dutch and German descent, he considers himself a lucky person.“Let’s say that I’ve been very fortunate in my life and the Lord has blessed me with a lot of gifts,” he said.
Candy McMurray is clearly Irish. But when describing her survival in an accident last summer, the Clinton Township woman credits God.McMurray was driving through Beckley, W.Va., along with her three children and a friend. She lost control of her friend’s 2007 Grand Prix, which broke through a guardrail at a landmark known as Dead Man’s Corner/Devil’s Drop.The car went airborne, soaring for moments, then crashed below.Though the treacherous terrain prevented responders from measuring the distance of the fall, the accident report estimates the distance at more than 100 feet.“I think it was anywhere from 100 to 150 feet,” said Ashley Whitmire, who was working at the registration desk at Raleigh General Hospital when McMurray arrived there on July 11. Afterward she visited the site, describing how the car’s wheels were bowed in and how its body had compressed upon impact.Whitmire said the distance of the drop and other information relayed to the emergency room led workers to label the incoming group as a “priority one” trauma. “The whole room was prepared for the worst,” Whitmire said. “The drop was so high.”Even though McMurray’s teenage daughter Paige unbelted herself in midair to help secure her younger brother, the worst injury fell to McMurray, who escaped with a slight concussion and subsequent neck and back issues.“You would expect them to be in a casket, to be completely honest,” Whitmire noted. “But fortunately they were fine. God was looking over them.”Already a devout Christian, McMurray described a vision of angel wings easing her car to the ground, where McMurray said responders were somewhat surprised to find it landed on all four wheels.“I was at total peace,” McMurray recalled. “I can’t explain it. I saw these huge, white wings (on either side of the car). We touched down like an airplane,” she said.“I said ‘God, we’re in your hands’ because I knew there was nothing I could do, so I took him with us,” she added.“The EMTs and the cops couldn’t understand how we didn’t flip over, but I knew.”
