Believe it or not,
I’m walking on air.
I never thought I could feel so free-.
Flying away on a wing and a prayer.
Who could it be?
Believe it or not it’s just me
These are lyrics from the chorus of the theme song from the Greatest American Hero, an early 1980’s television show about a high school teacher who receives a special red suit from space aliens that when worn gives him superhero powers. He then teams up with a FBI agent to save the world time and time again. A story about the average man turned superhero. It’s not quite Batman or Superman but good enough to last 3 seasons on network television.
There are many types of people we hold up as heroes. There are legendary historical figure; for some there are political heroes, and for others sports heroes. While you could make the case that some of these are not worthy of hero status, they have that status nonetheless. We look up to them; we make movies about them; we idolize them and we place them on pedestals as these great humans that are somehow superior to the average person.
A little over 90 days ago, an explosion happened at a fertilizer facility in the small Texas town of West. The night of the explosion and the subsequent days and weeks exposed us to a different kind of hero – the average everyday person that found themselves faced with unimaginable challenges. The world heard about some of these heroes, mainly the first responders that lost their lives responding to the explosion, as there was extensive media coverage of the event.
We heard about the brave volunteer firefighters that perished at the scene. Each one not hesitating to rush into danger – not because it was their job, but because they were protecting their community, their friends and their neighbors. The nation and the world mourned the death of these first responders. Arenas filled with people from all over to memorialize these brave men. Reporters scurried about town to get the inside story. The names of these fallen heroes will certainly not be forgotten for years to come.
But the story of heroes in West goes much deeper. There were hundreds of people that carried out heroic actions that night and the subsequent days. There were staff members of a local nursing home that ushered elderly residents to a safer part of the building in the minutes prior to the explosion. There were teenagers that wheeled and carried injured victims to a nearby makeshift triage center. There were brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and parents that rushed to houses to pull out trapped family members in the darkness and chaos of the night. There were firefighters, medics and police officers for miles around that responded to the aftermath of the explosion. There were untold volunteers that flooded into town that night and the days following to offer aid and comfort to all those that were impacted by the explosion. We will never hear or see the names of most of these people, but it will not change the fact that they are indeed heroes.
One of those unknown heroes has a special place in my heart. She is my sister-in-law, Judy Knapek. Judy is a member of the West Volunteer Fire Department – one of the few females that have ever been a member. She was one of the numerous firefighters that responded to the emergency call about a fire at the fertilizer facility. She was there at the facility when the fire triggered the deadly explosion. By the Grace of God she was not physically injured by the explosion. But she saw fellow injured firefighters stagger towards her and carried several out of harms way and got them to paramedics. She spent endless days and nights at the fire station in the days and weeks after the explosion filling out the tons of paperwork that goes along with a disaster like this one, accepting donations from all over the world, and providing information to concerned citizens. She did all this while knowing that many of her firefighting brothers, including two of her cousins, did not get to walk away from that deadly explosion.
The things these everyday people did are amazing to me. But if you were to ask Judy or pretty much anyone else in West that responded in some way to the explosion, they would tell you that they were not heroes. She and others would just say that they did what anyone would do in that situation, but I disagree. I think Judy and many others in West fit the true definition of “Great American Hero.”
Robert Not Bob 