Jumper has an uplifting 'trip'

When she fell down at the airport in Dallas-Forth Worth, when Ruth Willis tripped for no good reason right there on the jetway, when she felt her left ankle bend "this way" after 55 years of bending "that way," she wanted to ball herself up and cry.

What was this all about? And why now? She'd put one foot in front of the other countless times in her life, and not once had she caught a seam and keeled over in so clumsy a fashion. But there she was, just a couple of days removed from the Bayer Select American Quarter Horse Association's World Championship, on the ramp and hurting.

"I was in trouble," Ruth recalled the other day. "Your whole weight is in your feet when you're on a horse. You get up on your legs and you balance yourself over your horse. You can't do that if you don't have your feet."

And right then, last month in Texas, Ruth Willis a wife, a mother and a horse-jumper out of Brewerton had only one of hers.

This was bad. As Ruth had trained for so long, as she'd jumped on all those frigid mornings through all those frigid winter months that she'd so detested, this was very bad. And so, with teary eyes she limped onto the airplane bound for Amarillo, the site of the competition, packed her left ankle in ice provided by a kindly flight attendant and wondered what she'd done in a previous life to merit such treatment.

And then . . . well, then Ruth who was traveling with her husband, Bo; and her daughter, Rebecca; and her grandchild, Rhea was all but tapped on the shoulder by God, himself.

"I looked up," she remembered, "and I saw this beautiful young Marine, and he asked me,

'What happened?' So, I told him the whole story."

He made for a rapt audience. That's what Master Sgt. Ishmael Castillo had become. Which means he sat and listened to each of Ruth Willis' words and did all he could to comfort her with words of his own.

Things will be fine, Ishmael told her. You'll do just great, he said. Your horse is gonna fly in Amarillo, he promised.

"He was," Ruth declared, "just awesome."

And, it turned out, the beautiful young Marine who was traveling with his wife, Erika; and his two daughters, Vanessa and Mia had a tale of his own because he was bound for a second tour of duty as a tank commander in Iraq, a hellish place where he'd nearly been killed during his first tour. And if he survived the seven-month shift that would begin in a week or so, Ishmael vowed as he blessed himself, there would be no third tour.

No, should he return safely to the States come springtime, he'd forthwith retire from the Corps and get about the happy business of being a husband and father.

Ruth, of course, nearly shivered. Until that moment, until the beautiful young Marine asked about her ankle that didn't seem to hurt quite so much anymore, she hadn't known anybody directly involved in the war. But now, she did . . . and now, there would be just one more reason each day to whisper a quiet prayer.

Still, there must have been something more that she could do, but what? How could she return the random act of kindness that had been offered, in the form of open ears and gentle voice, by this uniformed stranger who'd so soon be en route to such a terrible place?

And then, Ruth reached into her purse, grabbed a $100 bill, pressed it into the hand of Master Sgt. Ishmael Castillo and asked him to do her the great favor of taking Erika out to a romantic dinner before he headed back to Iraq.

"It was the one thing I could do for him," said Ruth, who engaged in a courteous argument with Ishmael before he finally accepted the gift. "It was the one thing I could do for all of them. Maybe some day the guys will be down in the dumps over there and they'll say, 'Nobody even appreciates what we're doing.' And Ishmael can say, 'Yes, they do. You just don't realize it.'

"You know something? If I hadn't tripped on that jetway, I might have talked to him . . . but I might not have. I'll never really know. It was the ankle. That's what definitely got the conversation going. The ankle."

Oh, yes. The ankle. The sprained one that had caused Ruth Willis to fret about how she'd do in that world championship in Amarillo. The left one that was sitting in ice high across that Texas sky.

Well, she shoved it into her boot, that's what the 55-year-old Ruth Willis did with it. She shoved the bad ankle into her boot . . . she climbed aboard her horse, CJ's Last Scotch . . . and she gritted her way through the Hunter Hack competition down there at the Amarillo National Fairgrounds.

And she finished second, which was wonderful. But it wasn't as wonderful as what she saw upon gazing into the grandstands, where a group of some two dozen cheering folks were waving a sign that read: "Welcome To Texas, Ruth. Go, Syracuse, N.Y."

It was Master Sgt. Ishmael Castillo and his wife and daughters and parents and in-laws and assorted other family members, some of whom had driven up from Veracruz, Mexico, four hours away. They'd come to root for the lady with the injured ankle. Which explains why that lady, the one from Brewerton, once again found herself with teary eyes.

"I know this sounds really silly, but that whole experience turned an ordinary life into an extraordinary life," Ruth Willis said. "I mean, winning the silver medal was something I never thought I could do. But the most amazing part, by far, was meeting Ishmael, and then meeting his family."

She is awaiting delivery of a silver bracelet bearing the name of the beautiful young Marine who now drives a tank in Iraq. When it arrives, Ruth will wear it every day until Master Sgt. Ishmael Castillo returns, come springtime, to Erika and Vanessa and Mia. It was her promise to him, made in Amarillo. And she intends to keep it.