Hero pilot Sully who saved 155 lives says he's been diagnosed with heartbreaking condition



Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger is facing another harrowing battle, this time one having to do with his health.

The man known for heroically piloting a damaged passenger plane into the Hudson River and saving 155 lives 17 years ago is now fighting Alzheimer's disease.

'I am in the beginning of this long journey.'

"I recently found out I have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It is early stage," said the 75-year-old in a statement. "For now, this means a name may not come easily to me, I forget a story I have recently told, or I don’t sleep as well, but I am in the beginning of this long journey."

He said he was speaking out in hopes of encouraging other families dealing with the disease.

"This new phase of my life has challenged what it means to be of service. And the answer is to speak up," he continued. "It is my hope that by sharing this, other families living in the shadows with this disease will feel they too can step forward."

Sullenberger's story was dramatized in the 2016 hit movie "Sully," which was directed by Clint Eastwood and starred Tom Hanks as the hero.

The Jan. 2009 incident that stemmed from a plane hitting numerous birds on takeoff and losing both of its engines has since been dubbed the "Miracle on the Hudson."

Sullenberger has spoken many times about his actions on that fateful day.

"I think about not only what we did but what everybody else did," he said to ABC News on the 10th anniversary of the water landing. "All the pieces had to come together. This group of strangers had to rise to the occasion and make sure that they saved every life."

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Sullenberger had been described by the passengers as very calm as he helped them exit the plane, but he has since revealed otherwise.

"I think people with certain temperament gravitate toward certain jobs and flying is certainly one of those, and I think the training and the experience we develop tends to make us more that way," he explained.

"It develops in you an ability to summon up from somewhere within this ability to create a sense of calm, a professional calm," he added. "But we weren't calm. We couldn't be calm. The stress was too intense, but we had that focus ... to be able to do the job in spite of how stressful it was."

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Biden told the story of why he ran for president at a fundraiser. Then just minutes later, he told the exact same story again, 'nearly word for word,' prompting concerns about his decrepitude.



President Joe Biden has once against prompted concern over whether he is fit to perform the duties of his office. Unlike his various falls and myriad gaffes, the latest signal of the 80-year-old Democrat's decrepitude was too much even for a reporter with a friendly, liberal network to ignore.

Biden, who indicated last October that he "could drop dead tomorrow," attended a Manhattan gathering Wednesday hosted by Amy Goldman Fowler, a billionaire real estate heiress who has dumped millions of dollars into the war chests of Democrats and other pro-abortion groups.

In his remarks at Fowler's campaign reception benefiting the Biden Victory Fund, the geriatric president explained that after his time in the Obama administration, he "had no intention of running for office again, and that’s a fact. This was an — anyway, I had no intention of running again," read the official White House transcript.

"But then along came, in August of 2017, Charlottesville, Virginia. You remember those folks walking out of the fields literally carrying torches, with Nazi swastikas, holding them forward, singing the same vicious, anti-Semitic bile — the same exact bile — bile that was sung in — in Germany in the early ‘30s," continued Biden. "And a young woman was killed. A young woman was killed."

As goes his oft-repeated story, Biden recycled the false claim that former President Donald Trump suggested there were "fine people on both sides" as if to include the white identitarians in Virginia at the time.

Trump, who was referencing those on either side of the iconoclasm debate, made a point of clarifying, "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally."

With the debunked interpretation in mind, Biden continued, saying, "And I mean this sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, that's when I decided I — I was going to run again."

Minutes after telling the story about how the events of Charlottesville and Trump's remarks prompted him to campaign for president, Biden "told the story again, nearly word for word," according to the pool report from Jonathan Lemire, White House bureau chief for Politico and political analyst for MSNBC.

The White House transcript similarly indicates the 80-year-old repeated the story nearly verbatim.

"You know, you may remember that, you know, those folks from Charlottesville, as they came out of the fields and carrying those swastikas, and remember the ones with the torches and the Ku — accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan. And in addition to that, they had — there were white supremacists. Anyway, they were making the big case about how terrible this was. And a young woman was killed in the process," Biden said the second time around.

"And my predecessor, as I said, was asked what he thought. He said, 'There are some very fine people on both sides.' Well, that kept ringing in my head," added Biden.

Republican National Committee Rapid Response Director Jake Schneider shared Lemire's pool report, writing, "This is completely fine."

When asked about Biden's instant replay, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said America's oldest president in history "was speaking from his heart."

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with dementia have problems with memory; attention; communication; reasoning, judgment, and problem-solving; and visual perception beyond typical age-related changes in vision.

People with Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia, may repeat statements and questions over and over, eventually forget the names of family members and everyday objects, and/or have trouble finding the right words for objects or expressing thoughts, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Biden, who has spent well over a year of his presidency on vacation and can't bother to stand through a whole Medal of Honor ceremony, routinely exhibits signs of cognitive breakdown and dementia — tripping over nothing; mistaking his sister for his wife; repeatedly confusing the names of disparate nations; calling on a dead congresswoman to stand and be recognized despite having just eulogized her; and relying upon cue cards for instructions on how to execute basic functions.

TheBlaze recently detailed the findings of a Pentagon-funded study concluding that "an increasing number of cleared personnel — that is, personnel who hold or have held security clearances — have or will have dementia."

"The risk that an individual becomes a national security threat because of dementia symptoms depends on many factors, such as the nature of the classified information they hold, for how long the unauthorized disclosure of that information could cause damage (including serious or exceptionally grave damage), and whether the individual is targeted by an adversary," said the report.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 73% of voters reckon Biden, who is already exceeding the average American life expectancy by several years, is too old to seek a second term. Two-thirds of Democrats indicated they felt the same way.

The hugely unpopular vice president indicated in a recent interview that Biden "is going to be fine" but that she would take over "if necessary."

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Donald Trump Jr. on Joe Biden's Mental Decline: He's Had Two Brain Aneurysms Requiring Surgery

Former Vice President Joe Biden's brain aneurysms and related brain surgeries are linked to his visibly impaired cognition, said Donald Trump Jr., author of Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden And The Democrats' Defense Of The Indefensible, offering his remarks on Thursday's edition of SiriusXM's Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.