A Hero is Made

For my lack of creativity. I will just copy this article from MAY 2008 FUSION Magazine page 03. Enjoy your reading.

On a cold February morning, just before 8 a.m., Andre Nash went to the neighborhood deli, purchased his usual breakfast of two cans of beer, and headed back "home" to his park bench. Suddenly he was confronted by a panicked little boy who was crying hysterically. The boy began to frantically point to smoke and flames shooting out of a nearby window. He begged Nash for help.

Eleven stories up, the fire was moving quickly. The boy's mother was screaming and dangling her 14 month old baby out of the window, thinking that she would have to drop the child over 120 feet to safety.

9-1-1 had been called and the FDNY's Ladder Company 102 was already on the way, but there was no way to know if help would arrive in time. Andre Nash didn't think about his won well-being. He ran up the 11 flights of stairs, through the acrid black smoke and started leading people out of their apartments and down to safety.

Terence Taylor and his two young sons were the first to be rescued by Andre, but many more were trapped and screaming for help. Andre rushed back in.

On his second trip, Andre now faced even hotter flames and thicker clouds of smoke. Without blinking, he pulled the cans of beer that he had purchased moments earlier and poured the beer on a rag, making a crude air filtration system that bought him a few more precious seconds and allowed him to charge back through the flames. "I wasn't worried about my life," Nash later told reporters, "I just reacted."

The fire department arrived on the scene a few minutes later and managed to save all but one of the people trapped in the burning building. But virtually everyone agrees that, had it not been for the quick actions and unusual bravery of this total stranger, move lives would have undoubtedly been lost.

Andre Nash did something very rare in today's world: he put the well-being of others above himself. By doing so, he was no longer an Invisible Man. Instead, he became an example of the potential for greatness that lives within us all.