HERO STOCK FOUND CLOSE TO HOME
I didn’t really need to drive to the Butler Farm Show ground to have a personal look. The pictures have been all over the news. A speaker’s platform draped in red, white, and blue bunting. Rows of folding chairs, disturbed only a little.
Even without the TV images, I could have painted the scene in my dreams. As a 17-year old I did campaign advance work for a very nice man who ran for governor in 1966. Prior to an an event my adult partner and I would visit the site of an upcoming county fair, party picnic, or other gathering. We would check that the necessary arrangements were in place. Where to park or land a helicopter, how to get to the podium, the locations of bathrooms for the benefit of the candidate. Security wasn’t much of a concern. The race was not as fraught as a presidential campaign and, well, it was different times. I would ask our hosts if we could expect our guy to be buttonholed by a local crank or a disappointed job-seeker. If so, our plan was for a social interaction and distraction to defuse the situation. No counter-sniper teams.
It was a wonderful summer and fall in 1966 from the Hookstown Fair to the Washington County Fair to the McClure Bean Soup Festival and points in between. I think I made it to Butler that summer, but through the mist of 56 years I can’t remember if it was the Butler Farm Show or the Big Butler Fair. It doesn’t matter because I didn’t go back to Butler to recover lost memories. I went back to Butler, to that now-empty field, to see where heroes come from. This is a quest for me.
The Hero Fund has awarded 10,440 Carnegie Medals for heroism over its 120 years. In the most recent 18 Carnegie Medals awarded, six of them — 33% — went to individuals who died in the rescue. Year after year, decade after decade, these heroes step up when we need them. But from where?
Throughout my 30 years on the Commission, I have read thousands of case reports and developed two theories. One, the willingness to undertake a rescue that might kill you is an innate character trait that many, but maybe not all of us, have. For most of us it shows up as a wonderful, but less dramatic tendency to go out of our way to help others. Then, one day, one in a million of us faces the challenge of a lifetime and responds heroically.
My other theory is that this tendency is not innate, but something we build as a good habit. In daily life we make minor sacrifices to help those around us and in the process, we strengthen the habit and become better at it.
For all of my thinking about this, I still don’t know if the potential for heroism is innate or learned. My best guess is that it is some mixture of both. Either way, we should all be grateful for whatever it is that gives us these Carnegie Heroes.
But back to that field in Butler, Pennsylvania. On July 13, 2024, thousands gathered for a political rally that combined a typical campaign event and a social gathering. Things soon happened that would test the people there. First, the crowd began to notice what seemed to be an armed man on a rooftop. In some circumstances you could imagine this touching off a stampede for the exits and safety, but not here. In fact, many of these folks began to point and shout loudly to law enforcement, calling out the risk. It had to occur to these spectators that the gunman, frustrated at being discovered, would open fire on the people ruining his plan. But the people continued to raise the alarm.
Then the gunman fired eight shots. It had to be a scary scene. One man was dead with a gunshot to the head. Two others were bleeding, grievously wounded. And the speaker, the man they came to see, was shot in the ear with blood visible on his head, face, and hand. Still, the crowd did not break and run. They crouched, looked around for the source of the gunfire, and tried to protect their family members. What they did not do was run away en masse.
The nature of these events and the tight rules around the Carnegie Medal make it unlikely that any formal medal awards will come out of that day. Either way, the people on the field that day showed a huge willingness to take risks for their fellow citizens. I hope for their sake that not one of them ever again faces challenges and risks dire enough to earn a Carnegie Hero Medal. But if they do, I am confident that among them we would find the heroes we need. That is where Carnegie Heroes come from.