Remembering Why We Celebrate

Floyd Collins, a legendary spelunker from Kentucky, crawled into a dark, wet, cavern known as Sand Cave on a cold January morning in 1925. As the entrepreneur who had put the Mammoth Cave system on the tourist map, he was after his next commercial conquest.

Equipped with nothing more than a kerosene lamp and a canteen of black coffee, Collins slithered deep into the earth until a single stone, no bigger than a football, dislodged from the wall and wedged against Collins’ foot. He was trapped. Floyd Collins, “America’s Greatest Cave Explorer,” was caught, literally, between a rock and a hard place.

A massive rescue effort began, capturing the nation’s attention in a genuine media frenzy. Fifty-thousand spectators arrived at the scene, some to assist, most to observe, and others only because the food and drink were flowing. There were carnivals, medicine men, jugglers, street preachers, and news reporters –…