Service Leadership

Jack Logan and Bert Alexander, two Conway men that had just completed a week of missionary work in Nicaragua, drowned in a boating accident on Lake Nicaragua, April 3, 2006.

Logan and Alexander had stayed behind for a few days of fishing after other members of their missionary team returned home. They were part of a 10-memeber fishing group whose boat capsized on the 100-mile-long and 45-mile wide Lake Nicaragua. As the 10 people tried to hold onto a boat being pulled downward by an anchor, two members were not able to stay afloat and drowned while the other 8 attempted to hold onto the tip of the boat, the only part that remained above water.

At this time, two of the younger men decided they would swim to get help. They grabbed a cooler that was floating by and while using it to stay afloat, they began to swim to a volcanic island that they could see in the distance. The boys immediately began to have trouble. Realizing they were best swimers of the group, the Conway men took an oar from the boat and swam out to save the two boys from the rough water.

They slipped the oar through the handles of the cooler and then Jack and Bert got on each end of the oar with the boys still holding onto the cooler, and began swimming and pushing toward the island. The four of them floated holding onto the cooler throughout the night and into the next day. It became apparent to Logan and Alexander that the cooler was not going to be able to support the four people and get them to safety. These two men gave personal messages to the younger men to take to their families, and then pushed off the cooler and sacrificed their own lives to save the lives of the young men.

Logan and Alexander told the boys, “you need to live, we’re older and you need to live.” The two boys told their rescuers that the men saved their lives, for they would not have made it except for the sacrifice made by Jack Logan and Bert Alexander.