A Hero In Real Life

You are all aware of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis the other day. This is the story of one of the heroes that emerged in the heat of the moment that was this tragedy. Jeremy Hernandez (pictured above) described as a whip-thin 20 year old is the gym coordinator for the summer program at the Waite House a center for youth activities in the Phillips neighborhood on the south side of Minneapolis. The neighborhood is low income and is comprised of American Indians, Hispanic immigrants, and East African refugees. On the day of the collapse, 60 children were returning from a field trip to a water park when as they were crossing the Mississippi River when the bridge collapsed and they were dropped into the river with the bus jammed against a guard rail blocking the doors. Jermy, after a moment of stunned silence where time stood still, said his heart started pounding. He then jumped across two rows of seats and kicked open the back door, proceeding to pass the children out to strangers outside the bus lined up like a bucket brigade. “I just acted,” Mr. Hernandez said Thursday. “I just moved. My feet were just moving. My body was following.” Thanks to his quick thinking and action all the passengers on the bus, children and counselors survived the crash into the river, only 14 were hopitalized and 10 of those were released from the quickly. No one on the bus died, instead they all gathered, some battered and bruised, at the Waite House where they sept each other up in their arms. “It’s one of those things,” said Anthony Wagner, president of Pillsbury United Communities, a nonprofit organization that operates the Waite House. “Five seconds, 10 seconds earlier, they would’ve been in the river. I think a miracle happened.”

In the moments after the bus came to a rest, the children “were all thinking they were going to die, and they wanted their parents,” Mr. Hernandez said. Once, when he was fishing in the Mississippi, he had plunged into the river to retrieve a pole, and the memory of the current rushed back to him in his seat at the back of the bus. “I’ve been in that river,” he said. “I don’t want to go out that way.

Is it not wonderful how people step up to the plate in the most trying of circumstances when you least expect them to. Jeremy for what seemed like “forever,” he said, he was “grabbing kids and putting them out, grabbing kids and putting them out.” He sat in the center self consciously in his tank top and jeans as those rescued recounted his heroics. But he knew how he felt, he said. Lucky. I think the passengers on that bus were the lucky ones to have someone like Jeremy Hernandez around when the world seemed like it was going to end. You can read the complete story from the New York Times here.

That's it for today, so until next time as always, Enjoy!

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