The Accidental Hero

In the summer of 1967, Rocco Morabito, a photographer for the Jacksonville Journal, had finished a photo shoot of striking train workers.  He had some film to use up and headed downtown to see if there was anything else of interest worth shooting.  Driving around, he saw a group of agitated people who were yelling and pointing at something above.  Morabito parked his car and saw that there were some linemen working on electrical lines.  One of them, a young man of 29, was hanging upside-down, apparently unconscious. Randall Champion had been performing routine repair work and had been shocked by over 4,000 volts, enough to stop his heart. Morabito returned to his car, radioed for an ambulance, and then ran back to take some shots.

Meanwhile, another lineman, J.D. Thompson, heard the commotion and raced to the pole where his colleague dangled from above.  Thompson immediately shimmied up the pole and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He couldn't seem to manage to get any air into the other man's lungs.  So he moved Champion's body slightly, cradled his head in his arms, and finally got some air into Champion. At that moment, Morabito returned and snapped some frames.  Champion jerked, hiccuped, and then began to breathe again.

The ambulance Morabito called arrived, Champion was taken to the hospital and Thompson quietly returned to work.  Morabito radioed into the newspaper to proverbially hold the press, processed the film himself and took it to his editor.  The editor ran the picture on the front page with the caption, "The Kiss of Life."  It was picked up by papers around the country and then the world.  The term, "kiss of life" stuck to this CPR method and the following year Morabito won a Pulitzer Prize for his photo.

The Kiss of Life

Champion fully recovered from the shock and Thompson was hailed as a hero and presented with several awards.  Thompson seemed perplexed by the attention, however, and insisted that he was just doing his job, just following the training he received, no big deal.

I used to wonder about the sincerity of persons such as Thompson who displayed such dramatic acts of heroism and downplayed their role afterwards.  Did they really think that their acts were "no big deal." I understand now, that their sincerity is real.  Not to compare myself with people such as Thompson, I didn't try to save another's life, just my own.  Many people have called my act of fighting cancer "heroic."  I appreciate their kindness and sincerity, but I just don't see it.  Never once in the past four months did I feel anything remotely close to heroism.  I just did what I had to do and tried to make the best of a crappy situation.  

If anything, the heroism I saw came from those around me.  From far-away nieces who drew get-well cards, neighbors who brought food, co-workers who dimmed the office lights so I could rest better during my daily naps, family and friends who would visit with me in the chemo spa and chat to pass the time or call or email at random times to check in and show their support. Therein seems to lie the source of heroism.  It is a quality that resides within and shows itself instantly, without thought, in the moment of crisis.  The moments I got emotional were not when I received the diagnosis, nor after the surgery or even thinking about the implications of chemotherapy.  It was when someone would come up and offer me a hug of support with tears of sympathy in their eyes.  That to me was heroism and my kiss of life.