More than 22 years after she saved his life, Fred Lupton met Eve Wachhaus in person for the first time Saturday.
Wachhaus, then 17 and a Boston-area resident, administered CPR to Lupton, then a 40-year-old Chattanooga engineer, when he fell at her feet with a cardiac arrest at Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 1988.
"It will be a treasured moment," Wachhaus, 40, said in an interview before the reunion.
Until Saturday, she had requested the near-anonymity of yearly phone calls before accepting an invitation to travel here to mark the 20th anniversary of Lupton's heart transplant.
"(It's) wonderful to be a part of this. It's a great honor," she said.
Before Aug. 14, the two had spoken only on New Year's Day - the anniversary of the day she first called him after learning he was searching for her in 1989 - and on other significant days in their lives.
Lupton, 78, who said he was looking "very forward" to meeting Wacchaus, said he "offered to give her something, to do something nice for her" after what she did, "but she turned down everything like that."
Now executive director of Habitat for Humanity in Harrisburg, Pa., Wachhaus said "thousands and thousands in the airport would have responded" the same way. "The real miracle and wonderful thing is what he did. He woke up alive and has been so generous and giving ever since," she said.
Lupton, who sold his engineering business and retired six months after the heart attack, got weaker and weaker and eventually required a transplant. Before the procedure, he was lucky to spend an hour of the day out of bed, he said. Since his transplant, he said, he rarely even takes a nap.
Since he sold his business, benevolence is now Lupton's work.
Bachman Academy, a Christian residential school in McDonald, Tenn., that offers remedial and academic programs for students with special learning challenges, is his favorite charity. He also has soft spots for the Morgan-Scott Project for Christian Concerns in Deerfield, Tenn., the Sunset Gap Community Center in Cosby, Tenn., and Room in the Inn and the Newton Child Development Center, both in Chattanooga.
"I've found that helping other people with the time and energy I have after the transplant has been a real joy to me," Lupton said. "The Lord has blessed with opportunities, but it's been a lot of fun."
GRADUATION REQUIREMENT
When Wacchaus, then Eve Gurian, arrived in Washington in 1988, she was a high school senior on a trip with her family to visit relatives. The week before the trip, she finished a CPR class as a graduation requirement.
Lupton, who had completed business in a nearby Virginia city, visited a friend and been foiled by traffic in an effort to get a close look at the blooming cherry blossoms near the city's Tidal Basin, had returned his rental car and arrived at the terminal on a shuttle bus.
"The last thing I remember," he said, "was looking down the terminal. There was almost nobody in it. I could walk in" and get the early flight he wanted back to Chattanooga.
When Lupton, who had had three separate bypass surgeries, crumpled to the ground and blacked out as he stepped off the shuttle bus, Wacchaus immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation as her family raced to call for emergency services.
"I stepped off and died," Lupton said, still emotional about it 22 years after the incident. "My heart had stopped. I wasn't breathing. I had no pulse."
Wacchaus said she performed CPR alone for several minutes and then persuaded an airport security officer who had arrived to help her. Around 10 minutes after he fell, an ambulance arrived.
"They said she had done a good job," Lupton said he was told. "My color was good."
After medical personnel took him to a hospital, Wacchaus and her family were required to come to an office and fill out paperwork on the situation. At that point, she made it known she didn't want to be identified.
When Lupton got back on his feet, he wanted to find the woman who saved him. A local television story, a subsequent CNN report, a mention by a national newspaper columnist, a check of airport passenger lists and phone calls to everyone in the Boston white pages with the last name of Gurian had no effect.
Eventually, he said, a letter to the Boston Red Cross was seen by the man who had taught Wacchaus, and he in turn recognized his student and called her to say the man she saved was looking for him. Ultimately, she called the Chattanoogan on Jan. 1, 1989.
INSPIRATION TO HER
Although Wacchaus and Lupton didn't meet face to face until Saturday, she said he was an influence on her to change careers.
She had worked for a number of years for Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Co., helping to open and close restaurants, but switched to the nonprofit field when she joined Habitat for Humanity four years ago.
Although Lupton has not been overly active with the local Habitat chapter, his church, Rivermont Presbyterian, has built nearly a dozen houses, he said.
Wacchaus said before she and her husband flew to Chattanooga last week she would be uncomfortable if the focus of Lupton's celebration was on the moment in which she happened to be at the right place at the right time.
"It's much more important to share with his closest friends and family the joy" that has occurred because of what he has done," she said. "I'm humbled by that. It seems to me what this man has done with his life" is an occasion to "praise and thank God for the beauty of life."