Heroes are everyday people
In the wee hours of May 13, 2009, first responders from the City of McMinnville, Tennessee responded to a second story apartment fire. Two police officers were the first on the scene. They sprinted up a flight of stairs, opened an unlocked door, and discovered a raging kitchen fire just feet from the doorway. The smoke billowed out the door and hovered about two feet above the apartment floor.
From a growing crowd, someone yelled, “My children are in there.” With their adrenaline in high gear, the two everyday police officers dropped to their knees and entered the apartment. As the intense flames baked their left side, they crawled down a hallway and located a motionless 3-year-old girl on the floor next to a bedroom door. One officer grabbed the child and rushed her down the stairs to his waiting supervisor who had just arrived. He then returned to the inferno and found his partner and a 2-year-old girl on the floor beside a bed. As the partner gasped for breath, both officers worked in concert to bring the 2-year-old to safety. The two officers would later say that it was evident that the 3-year-old was overcome by smoke while trying to rescue her younger sister.
Without retrieving his issued protective barrier that was recommended by the American Medical Association, the supervisor administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the 3-year-old. He risked his own welfare knowing that seconds were precious to the child.
When the fire department arrived, both little girls were immediately loaded onto an ambulance. The scene was later described as gripping and intense as the paramedics and one of the police officer provided continuous CPR until they arrived at the hospital. Tragically, neither child survived.
The fire started after two parents left food cooking on the stove when they went to another apartment to socialize at 2 o’clock that morning. It is foreign to me that parental nurturing is not always innate.
A week later, at a meeting of the mayor and council, I read aloud three “Meritorious Service Awards” that I wrote for the three police officers. Everyone cheered, save one. After the meeting, an unhappy council member said to me, “Those police officers should have waited and let the fire department do their job.” I was stunned that he was suggesting that the officers should have ignored their moral compass. Despite the lack of special training and breathing apparatuses, they did what most citizen would expect of them. They crawled into the unknown without knowing the outcome. For all three, it was a matter of instinct, drive and desire. The spine of any police department is their officer’s inborn integrity and desire to do the right thing.
It was not the authority given to them by the city that made these police officers heroes, but rather their wisdom and responsibility to use that authority wisely. While writing this column, I relived the tears and emotions that I experienced immediately after the fire, during the council meeting and frequently for the next nine years. To this day, I keep a small picture of the sisters next to my desk. That image is a constant reminder that the words nurturing and caring have different meanings to different people. Both parents were ultimately put in prison.
Being a hero can be difficult, because there are always plenty of dissenters. Most heroes simply trod ahead doing what they believe should be done despite being ridiculed for their action.
It is easy to think of comic book characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-man or Wonder Woman as being heroes. But, a hero could be a Habitat for Humanity volunteer or a person who has demonstrated actions that are moral and worthy of our respect and admiration.
Heroes are noted for courageous acts or decency in their character. They come in all shapes, sizes, genders, colors, ethnicities and religions. Most everyone has known at least one person who made a clear-cut impact in their life. It may have been a teacher, a parent, a grandparent or even a clerk at the local dry cleaners, but they are regular people doing surprising things. Simply put, heroes are everyday people.
The most important thing about our life is the influence we have on other people. Unbeknown to any one of us, someone could have already called us a hero, therefore, we should never underestimate our ability to be a positive influence on others. Heroes sometimes lose, and sometimes they win, but what they never do is give up.
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