Dramatic Courage

A young man stum­bles from a sub­way plat­form and falls onto the train tracks, dazed and dis­ori­ented. As hor­ri­fied bystanders look on, lights flicker nearby in the dark tun­nel, sig­nal­ing that a train is rapidly bar­rel­ing closer. The man is in immi­nent dan­ger.
There is only a split sec­ond to decide whether or not to take action:
What would you do?
Would you stand there, wish­ing des­per­ately that some­one else would stop the train, or would your risk your own life by jump­ing to the dis­ori­ented rider’s aid?
Here’s what one per­son did. A few weeks ago, a man named Wes­ley Autrey was enter­ing a sub­way sta­tion in New York with his two small daugh­ters. Autrey is a 50-​​year old African-​​American con­struc­tion worker who was drop­ping his daugh­ters off at their school.
It was the noon rush hour and the sta­tion was busy with peo­ple going from one part of New York City to another. As Autrey approached the plat­form to wait for a train, he noticed a young man had fallen down and seemed to be hav­ing a seizure.

Of all the peo­ple in the crowd, only Autrey and two women came over to the man, who was chok­ing and shak­ing vio­lently. They tried to sit him up, clear his throat, and wipe his face. After a moment, the man seemed bet­ter. He stood up and walked a few steps. Then, to everyone’s hor­ror, the seizure seemed to return, caus­ing the man to fall over the edge of the plat­form back­wards onto the train tracks between the two rails a few feet below.
Autrey real­ized that all the other men on the plat­form had just left moments before on a train. He saw the man lying on his back and kick­ing again. He thought to him­self, “I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to help this guy.”
At first, he tried to pull the man back up to the plat­form but his hands were wet and he kept slip­ping back down on the tracks. Autrey knew that if the man stayed on the tracks, a com­ing train would kill or seri­ously injure him in the next few min­utes.
After ask­ing the two women to watch his daugh­ters, Autrey next jumped off the plat­form and tried to help the man climb back up but he was too heavy. Then Autrey saw the light of an oncom­ing train just a minute or so away from them. He made a very fast judg­ment call.

A Happy End­ing to a Scary Moment
As the train came within a few hun­dred feet of them into the sta­tion lights, Autrey could see that if they lay as flat as pos­si­ble in the mid­dle of the tracks, the train should pass over them with a few inches’ clear­ance. He pushed the man down and cov­ered him with his own body, hold­ing the man’s arms and legs in close, away from the train tracks on either side. He said to the man, “Please don’t move!”
The train engi­neer saw the men on the tracks, pulled his whis­tle and hit the brakes as hard as pos­si­ble but the train could not be stopped soon enough. As Autrey and the man lay there, five sub­way cars passed directly over their heads with a clear­ance of about two inches. Nei­ther man was harmed.
The cars emp­tied and then sub­way employ­ees began shout­ing to the men below. Autrey called out, “Every­body up there! Tell the chil­dren that their daddy is OK!”
After a wait of twenty min­utes in order to shut off the elec­tri­cal power to the “third rail” (which would have elec­tro­cuted any­one on the tracks who touched it), it was finally safe for the men to get out from under the train.
The ill man was sent in an ambu­lance to a hos­pi­tal. An admir­ing crowd was wait­ing for Autrey, cheer­ing when he finally got back up on the plat­form. Cheers or not, Autrey then went on to drop his daugh­ters off at school and sim­ply went back to work!
Since that day, Wes­ley Autrey has become a national hero and his life has changed. He won an award from the Mayor of New York City, he’s been on numer­ous national TV shows to talk about his actions, and he’s received trips to Dis­ney­land for his fam­ily, cash awards, and much more.
Autrey doesn’t have any sec­ond thoughts about the risks he took. “It’s a great way to start the New Year,” he said with a smile, “sav­ing somebody’s life.”

Courage Plus Cool Judg­ment
The first thing we’re struck by in this real-​​life drama is the sheer courage of Wes­ley Autrey. Only a few of us are ever likely to be in a posi­tion to res­cue, unaided, some­one from drown­ing, not to men­tion some­one who has fallen on sub­way tracks. But we can all imag­ine such a moment. What would we do? (Most peo­ple inter­viewed after this event said they would not have the courage to do what Autrey did.)
One aspect of courage is phys­i­cal brav­ery, of course. We can only act bravely when we con­quer our fear, includ­ing fear of death. Autrey knew very well that he and the man might be killed, but he took action any­way.
In fact, his abil­ity to keep down his fear allowed him to use the sev­eral sec­onds he had to make a quick visual guess as to whether the clear­ance under­neath the train would be enough to keep the two men from being hurt. He guessed right.
It prob­a­bly helped that Autrey had been in the Navy, where his train­ing may have pre­pared him for this kind of emer­gency sit­u­a­tion.
And, as a New Yorker who works in the con­struc­tion busi­ness, Autrey prob­a­bly remem­bered the kinds of risks many of his fel­low New York­ers took for each other on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, dur­ing the ter­ror­ist attacks on their city.
Judg­ing from just these fac­tors, we could also say that Autrey used another impor­tant virtue, along with his courage: that of pru­dence or good judg­ment. He took a risk, but it was not just a crazy gam­ble. He later said that he was famil­iar with track con­fig­u­ra­tion. He took the risk after he made a judg­ment that he and the man had a chance of sur­viv­ing under­neath the train.
Courage and good judg­ment are both described in our Catholic Cat­e­chism, where they are defined using the terms “for­ti­tude” and “pru­dence.” They are two of the four car­di­nal virtues—key virtues that open the door to a whole host of good actions.

Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
Autrey risked his life to save a total stranger. He cred­its his mother with instill­ing in him a sense of con­cern for oth­ers with­out expect­ing any­thing in return. His hero­ism in char­ity for another per­son is the likely result of child­hood habits, the kind of small daily actions that lead us to act quickly when we are needed.
For exam­ple, Autrey was afraid that his chil­dren might be about to wit­ness their own father’s death, so he asked the women nearby to watch the chil­dren. From under the train, his first con­cern after sur­viv­ing was to make sure his chil­dren knew he was all right.
This abil­ity to show care or con­cern for oth­ers is part of our Catholic faith also. It’s the virtue of char­ity, which we’ve dis­cussed before in this series.
We usu­ally think of a hero as some­one unusual for his or her virtues, espe­cially courage and per­sonal integrity. Autrey says he doesn’t see him­self as a hero or as hav­ing done some­thing unusual. “I don’t want peo­ple to blow this out of pro­por­tion,” Autrey told the media sev­eral times. “I believe all New York­ers ought to get into this mode. You should do the right thing.”
It’s a good point. In today’s world, peo­ple are often reluc­tant to take risks to help each other, usu­ally through fears of one kind or another. Even if it’s the right thing.
But Autrey is also say­ing some­thing else that reveals his good char­ac­ter and out­look. He is refus­ing to sound pride­ful about what he did, which is evi­dence of his sense of humil­ity and modesty.

It’s Not About Me (or You)
Our Catholic faith teaches us that we should develop what are called the human virtues-​​-​​courage, good judg­ment, self-​​control and fairness—perhaps all of which Autrey demon­strated in the sub­way res­cue. Out of each of these four “car­di­nal” (or key) virtues come lots of other human virtues.
For exam­ple, the virtue of humil­ity is one dimen­sion of self-​​control. Instead of allow­ing our tal­ents and suc­cesses to dis­tract us from the truth that we need God in all things, humil­ity teaches us to remem­ber our human weak­ness and, for exam­ple, our need to turn to God in prayer.
A sense of duty as a cit­i­zen also inspired Autrey to act. In his State of the Union Address on Jan­u­ary 23rd, Pres­i­dent Bush recounted how Autrey (who attended as the President’s guest) told him, “We got guys and girls over­seas dying for us to have our free­doms. We have got to show each other some love.” The pres­i­dent went on to say, “There is some­thing won­der­ful about a coun­try that pro­duces a brave and hum­ble man like Wes­ley Autrey.”
Being coura­geous in mak­ing this world a place where every human life is val­ued and pro­tected is part of our mis­sion as well. By build­ing up the habit of gen­er­ous char­ity and exer­cis­ing the other virtues we will become the heroes who are needed in the lives of those around us. Like Wes­ley Autrey, we won’t be look­ing for atten­tion, but just doing the right thing. At the end of our lives Christ will let us see the fruit of our efforts and sac­ri­fices, and we will be able to join our Lord in the heroes’ wel­come that we do seek: life with him forever.