In early January 2007 on a New York City subway platform, a man convulsed and fell on the tracks. As others watched, a 50-year-old construction worker, in a split-second decision, leapt from the platform and lay on top of the man as four subway cars passed them overhead.
I live with concern that in such a situation, I will be the onlooker, not the one to take action to possibly save a life. Last Friday night that concern was realized and I was sadly an onlooker.
I was returning on the Green Line from a Grant Park concert around 9:30 p.m.
At a stop on the West Side, a male passenger was agitated because he missed getting off the car at his stop. As the train was pulling out of the station and gaining speed, the passenger pulled, desperately, on the emergency cord overhead. The train did not stop but continued gaining speed. Then, in a sort of panic, the man pushed his hands into the doors’ middle and began opening them in an attempt to jump out onto the platform.
With the doors now halfway open and the train speeding, a young man nearby suddenly got up and, respectfully but firmly, pulled the distressed passenger away. Seemingly confused, the man relaxed and moved to another car. The young man sat back down. He may have saved that passenger’s life. But I watched. I only watched. The agitated passenger could have become violent.
I then went over to the young man to thank him and praise him for what he did. He listened to me and thanked me. But he seemed surprised that I was making so much about what he had done. Perhaps he thought he acted as anyone else would. His humility was striking.
What is it that drives some people to spontaneously act in dangerous situations to save others’ lives? What is missing in the rest of us who become onlookers?
The construction worker in New York, an African American on his way to his night shift, said, “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right.” Wow! He just did what was right.
I feel that young man on the Green Line was thinking the same as I tried to praise him: “Nothing spectacular; someone in danger; I just did what I felt was right.” Except that someone who might have been crushed and killed under the train’s wheels wasn’t because of his split-second action. He got off at the Ridgeland stop and is now, for me, an unacknowledged Oak Park hero.
Maybe there is nothing missing in us onlookers. Maybe there is just something special about some otherwise ordinary people. We don’t know who they are, but we all hope we will be one of them if the time comes. Otherwise, we are left to chronicle their generous acts.
For anyone interested in reading about the New York incident, see “Man is Rescued by Stranger on Subway Tracks,” New York Times, Jan. 3, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/nyregion/03life.html.
James Dickert is an Oak Park resident.
