We all had the feeling of impending death the night the Iceman was found half-frozen in the snow.

It was the last big storm of the year and it was fierce. No one knew how long the man had lain there, a stiffening heap in a gathering drift near the railroad tracks.

Were it not for the stranger who stopped to help, the Iceman would surely have perished.

We stood and watched as the frozen man was loaded into an ambulance and we shared doubts about his fate. But the Iceman was saved that night and the man who did the saving went on his way. Their paths would meet again just once before strange destiny stepped in with a lesson not easy to decipher.

The Iceman was a 50-year-old alcoholic mourning the anniversary of his mother’s death the night of the storm. I spoke with one of his relatives and it was a sad story. For many years, the Iceman had battled drunkenness and it appeared to be a fight he would lose. His family tried to coax him from the brink of oblivion, but try tempting a tiger out of the jungle.

Frequent attempts at recovery had failed. The man was on medication and often ran into health problems. He was increasingly depressed and that sadness was soaked in booze.

A gloomy story and a familiar one. The life of an alcoholic is fraught with calamity and heartbreak. So weeks later, when I heard that death had come at last after the drama on the railroad tracks, it was not a shock.

I should have known better. Few things in a world of human drama are as predictable as that.

It was not the Iceman who was taken after a long and difficult winter. It was the humble Samaritan who had saved him.

His name was Dan Getchell and he was 49 years old. On April 2, he dropped dead in his driveway, less than a month after he had saved the life of a stranger in the snow.

“It’s so incredibly sad,” said Bonnie Moore, one of Dan’s friends. “It’s almost as though he did what he was meant to do – he saved that other man’s life – and then it was time for him to go.”

Death is inexplicable and arbitrary. We all understand that, yet it surprises us over and over. Dan Getchell was not a sick man. He was fit and happy, with a warm home and a family who loved him. It appears it was a brain aneurysm that struck him down, without warning or drama. The drama came later, as those who knew him grappled with the suddenness of his passing.

“Dan was a true friend to so many,” said Lori Dresser, another friend. “He made everyone feel like they were special and had a purpose.”

There are many people mourning the death of Dan Getchell, the unassuming man who didn’t want to take credit for his good deed. Among them is the Iceman himself.

The last I heard, he was doing well. He spent days in the hospital following his brush with icy death and then more time in an alcohol rehabilitation center. Among the first things he did when he got on his feet was to go looking for the stranger who had come to his rescue.

“He came to our house,” said Tina Desrosiers, Getchell’s girlfriend of 13 years. “Dan thought he was a very nice man.”

The night of the storm, Getchell was bewildered that I wanted to write a story about the ordeal. He had been taking a shortcut across the trestle on his way home from work when he found the Iceman. All he had done was stop to help a man in obvious peril, he said. Where was the news?

The news was that the frozen man would almost surely have died if Getchell had not wandered by that night. At the very least, he might have lost his legs, which were stretched over the tracks in an area of frequent train crossings. The news was that not everyone would have stopped to lend a hand on the bitter cold night.

Getchell’s bewilderment was that much greater weeks later when the man he had saved came around to thank him.

“Dan was taken aback by this man’s need to know who he was,” Dresser said. “Dan never meant for recognition of his good deed. He told the Iceman that he should use this chance to change his life for the better.”

So far, so good. The Iceman perseveres, no doubt wondering at the strange twist of fate that left him alive with hypothermia and yet struck down the man who had stopped to help him.

Strange twists of fate are all over the place. The cop who investigated the case meant to visit Getchell and award him with a Police Department coin reserved for those who do remarkably good things. He meant to deliver that coin this week. I meant to look Getchell up myself, to see what the humble hero was up to these days.

I never got around to it. The cop never got around to it. But the Iceman, with all his woes and miseries, dug himself out from under in time to track down his savior and to shake his hand.

Just one handshake, one conversation, and then strange destiny stepped in with a lesson that might make sense over time.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.