ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 7, 1995 TAG: 9512070105
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
THOSE who turned and ran the other way are not to be faulted. Most of us, facing the clear and terrible danger of an inferno about to break out, would make the same split-second decision: to get as far away as possible, as fast as possible.
But that so many of us would run for our lives makes it all the more remarkable that Barbara and Ed Stilling of Glen Burnie, Md., risked theirs on Interstate 81 this past Sunday.
They did so to get the seriously injured and bleeding David Morris to safety. Their courage, as well as that of a half-dozen others who responded to Barbara Stilling's pleas for help in rescuing Morris, gives dramatic testimony to the nobility of the human spirit.
It suggests not everyone has succumbed to the narrow ``me-first'' mind-set so prevalent nowadays. As William Thackeray observed, "Bravery never goes out of fashion."
Morris, a 53-year-old truck driver from Yadkin, N. C., would be dead today except for the valor of the Stillings and the other motorists who went to his assistance. With only seconds to spare, they pulled his limp 300-pound body out of the puddle of diesel fuel before the flames from his wrecked, overturned tractor-trailer could reach him.
And reach them.
Morris, as of Wednesday, was still in serious condition at a Roanoke hospital. His driving partner, Luke Slain - who was at the wheel at the time of the wreck - was able to walk away.
State troopers at the scene termed it a miracle that both had survived the fiery accident.
Yes, a miracle - and a reminder that everyday heroes and heroines live, and drive, among us.
"They helped every one his neighbor," it says in the book Isaiah, without explicitly prophesying that an interstate highway could be a neighborhood. "And every one said to his brother, Be of good courage." Sisters, too.
LENGTH: Short : 43 linesby CNB