The Jackson River Bridge

Elliott Light grew up outside Washington, D.C. in McLean, Virginia before the beltway encircled the capital city, before farms were turned into housing developments, and before open fields became mega-malls.Light attended the University of Virginia, receiving degrees in Electrical Engineering and Law. He has several patents to his name.After stints as an environmental lawyer and a high tech in-house counsel, he practiced patent law in a private law firm.Now retired, he resides in Naples, FL with his wife, Sonya.

Alone on a bridge staring into the dark water...He was not born Noah Waters, but constant rejection often has a way of encouraging one to walk away from everything they have known while giving birth to the person they are meant to be. This is Noah's story...I was a sixteen-year-old runaway when I worked my way to the edge of the Jackson River Bridge and peered at the moonlit water swirling below. To be fair, I wasn't an ordinary sixteen-year-old. I had an affliction akin to autism that left me with fragmented memories of my childhood, memories that inspired nightmares filled with demons that tormented me while I slept and awoke me screaming in the dark void of my room. Even I understood that I had few choices, and all were bad. There was nothing for me on the side of the river I had come from, and I had no reason to believe that the other side of the river offered anything better. Logically, jumping seemed a way to break the tie. The stalemate only broke when I heard a voice emanating from the darkness. The voice belonged to a man wearing a hooded garment that shadowed his face, a man who chose to live on the grounds of an old monastery with a dozen cats. The moment he stepped from the darkness my life began to pivot. I first learned to trust him, then love him. He put me on a path toward a future I never imagined possible that night as I stood on...The Jackson River Bridge.