Image of the Week: Kenny Cranmer in Flight
Last week, the community of offshoreonly.com—the best-known website in the high-performance powerboat world—raised more than $26,000 for Kenny “Toes” Cranmer, a Jersey Outlaw class boat racer who was paralyzed from the shoulders down during a crash in 2011. Cranmer needed a piece of physical therapy equipment that his insurance company wouldn’t cover, and led by Alec Cloke and Jimmy Winters, a couple of well-known figures in go-fast boat circles, the offshoreonly.com family raised the money Cranmer needed—and even a little more.
Like most of the people who got behind Cranmer’s cause, Jason Johnson and I at speedonthewater.com have never met the man, much less seen him run while he was still racing in his classic Garvey speedboat. So I called my friend Tim Sharkey, an excellent New Jersey-based photographer who shoots all kinds of powerboat racing, to see if he had any photos of Cranmer in action.
Sharkey had dozens.
Kenny Cranmer in action in 2010. Photo courtesy/copyright Tim Sharkey/Sharkey Images.
“This one is my favorite,” he said of the image above. “It was taken during a race in Beachwood, New Jersey, in 2010.”
Thank you Tim Sharkey for this amazing photograph. Thank you Alec Cloke, Jimmy Winters and the “unnamed West Coast donor” who donated the lion’s share of the money. And thank you, the community of offshoreonly.com community for reaching out and giving to a stranger.
Helping our own friends and family is instinctive. For most of us, it’s a reflex.
Helping a stranger is noble.
and then