Little boys saves his dying father by reciting his ABCs
By Black Blue Dogs
Nathaniel Dancy, Jr. was with his father, out shopping for shoes for school. The little boy then endured the kind of nightmare that no child should have to experience. His father suffered a stroke and aneurysm while driving the car. His father got the car pulled over, but he was incapacitated at that point.
The five-year old boy didn’t know what to do, so he called his grandmother for help.
“It was very confusing and it was scary,’’ said the boy’s grandmother, Susan Hardy-Blackman.
“I was on the other side of town, and I was just trying to figure out where they were so I could get to them.’’
At first, the boy hung up, but then he called back. His grandmother connected him to his mother, Janel Blackman. That’s when the boy needed to use his knowledge of the alphabet to get help for his dad. When he was asked to give the name of the store they were near, the boy spelled out the letters, “F-U-R-N-I-T-U-R-E. He then recognized the number 22 and identified and overpass they’d just driven by.
His mother took the information, went to another furniture store nearby and found out the name of the place that her son might be. She then called 911. The boy and his dad were in the parking lot for the 22 Furniture Gallery on Route 22 in Hillside, N.J.
“My wheels were churning, and I didn’t know what to think,’’ Blackman told TODAY.com. “I’m trying to put a mental picture in my brain of where Furniture 22 is. I jumped on the highway, and while I was going past Furniture 22, I saw my husband laid out in the parking lot. Minutes after I arrived on the scene, the ambulance came.”
The boy’s father is in the intensive care unit at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. He had high blood pressure before the incident and is currently on a feeding tube.
“He is still in the hospital, still trying to survive,’’ Blackman said. “They did in fact save him just in time. I congratulated Nathaniel for being so heroic and helping his dad, and at the same time, his dad was a hero, too. To be in the midst of a stroke and know to get off the highway and get yourself and your child to safety is amazing, especially when you’ve lost feeling in half of your body.”
Nathaniel is the youngest of five brothers and sisters. His mother gives him credit for being a very bright child.
“Nathaniel is a very smart guy,’’ Coleman said. “He has great diction, and when you hear him talk, you would never think he’s only five. He’s on a third-grade level. He already spells words like ‘decipher’ and understands concepts that the average elementary school student at his age does not.”
“Nothing Nathaniel does is a surprise to me because he does such a tremendous job in everything he does,’’ his grandmother said. “He’ll read something like, ‘The boy slammed the door,’ and say, ‘Grandma that’s onomatopoeia because the word sounds like the sound effect.’ He is tremendous.”
