Heroes

HEROES

By Chris Demarest


I had often joked that my hero worship began as a little kid when on Saturday mornings a little cartoon mouse who, with an operatic voice boomed: "Here I come to save the day". And with that, Mighty Mouse, momentarily suspended in mid-air, streaked downward, red cap flashing to deliver numerous knockout blows to the bad guys (in this case almost always mean black cats hitting on hapless mice ). Like the Superman character from the same era, at the show's end, both stood arms akimbo, cape flapping in the breeze -heroes reveling in their glory.

I wanted to be those characters. I envisioned myself in those roles and as I grew older, new television heroes took their places. With the flip of the dial, a different day, the roles changed. From doing battle with bad guys under water in Sea Hunt, to parachuting out of planes into remote regions in Ripcord, to the battles out west on horseback or down south in my coon skin cap, to WW II European scenarios, I saw myself as those men risking life and limb for the cause of righteousness.

I also had a gang of pals with similar visions which helped make the fantasy that much more real. Ricky, Robbie, Paul, Jimmy and I were inseparable. And fortunately for us, our parents encouraged the play by uniting in fulfilling our current wishes by buying, for Christmases and birthdays, the articles we needed. Christmas day was always about discovering if our wish lists had been met. In a mass of torn wrapping paper followed by phone calls, we'd later rendezvous to check out our presents and compare the costumes and arsenals. We marveled that our parents somehow always got it all right. Of course it helped that we were specific about each article, sometimes right down to the catalog page and item number.

For me, it was also more than being a hero, it was the adventure, the danger I found attractive. Like all kids, our fantasies took us around the world and beyond. A family pet was any number of things in our imaginations: the enemy, a sick patient, an alien creature or like another television hero of the time, a smart dog like the collie Lassie on the like-named show, who somehow was always in the right place at the right time to save some desperate soul. And yet, in the real world, all around me were the men and women taking risks daily as firefighters, police, ambulance personnel (pre-EMTs) and the like that somehow escaped my attention. Why I wasn't aware of them or drawn to their careers, I have no inkling. Only years later did that surface and surface big time.


It took moving to a small Vermont town as an adult and joining their volunteer fire department for me to start to see a different picture. I was by this time, an established author and illustrator of children's books. My life of fantasy continued. Joining the fire department was a fluke. My wife and I were out for a Sunday drive with our toddler son when we happened upon an open house at our town's volunteer fire department. Someone dressed in a dalmation suit, wearing a fire helmet stood waving at passersby and we decided to make the detour. We thought our son would love this. How could he resist the sight of big, shiny red trucks? By the time we left, it was me who was the most excited. Three days later I signed on as their latest member and two weeks after that was onto an intensive three month course for my level one certification.

Two years into service, a few structure fires, several car accidents and numerous brush fires under my belt, it occurred to me to do a children's book on what it was like to really fight fires. It wasn't about the bright red, shiny trucks. It was about the smoke and the flames and the sound of one's own breathing from the air pack strapped to one's back as we sometimes moved about in total blackness unsure of what lay ahead. "Scary" was the word I used to describe it. "Fear" was another one which helped keep me focused on what I needed to do. A year later, Firefighters A to Z was chosen as a New York Times Best Book. When my editor had first seen the finish art, her only comment to me was:"Add more fire, add more smoke." I knew she got what I was trying to do.

Two more books on fire fighting followed and then from my editor, came a simple request: "What can you do with water?" With that, a book about the U.S. Coast Guard and then one on the hurricane hunters were published.

For every one of what I called 'adventure books', the research was done first hand. For the Coast Guard book, I spent a year visiting Air Station Cape Cod flying in their Falcon jets and the Jayhawk helicopter, watching the crews perform. For the Hurricane Hunter book, I flew with the Biloxi-base crew of the USAF Reserve into Hurricane Ivan, then a Category 4 storm with winds over 165 miles an hour. I remember my first flight with the Coast Guard, not five minutes after taking off in the rescue helicopter, smiling to myself, thinking what a cool job I had. I was getting to experience life around some amazing people. Heroes in my eyes.

Two years later, now an official Coast Guard artist, I was sent to the Persian Gulf to live aboard their boats and document their lives. Upon returning I spent a year flying with the local trauma hospital's air medical evacuation team in their two helicopters covering patient transport all over New England, also to document in visual terms, their work.

Getting inside the worlds of these people was eye-opening for me. It was not about being heroes at all. None of them ever sought the spotlight. "Just doing my job." was the oft-muttered line for something you and I would think of as super-human. One of the rescue swimmers for the USCG Air Station, almost drowned rescuing sailors off a rapidly sinking sailboat. "Just doing my job," Brian said. Eventually I could see why they all said this. It was their job. As I would explain to school children when talking about these people, they are ordinary people doing extra-ordinary jobs. Simple as that.

And then I met some real heroes. I was asked by the same hospital I'd done the medevac work with to spend time in the children's unit. I wasn't given an assignment. It was entirely up to me. And for the first time, in spite of now all the years of flying and being in a war zone, I was scared and nervous. I didn't know what to expect or necessarily what to do.

How does an outsider break the barrier to talk to what were in most cases, very sick or injured kids and their parents? I had decided that by slipping on a pair of hospital scrub pants I might seem less intrusive. On my first day I walked through the unit a couple of times, casually peeking into the rooms unsure of myself. Tentatively I committed myself and knocked on an open door. Just inside the privacy curtain, a young woman sat near the bed of her young son, a boy clearly suffering from some sort of nervous system disorder. She greeted me with a warm smile. The boy remained frozen in position while his eyes moved from her to my face. That look was almost too unnerving. I pulled up a chair and introduced myself and told her of my idea: a pencil portrait of her son to be given as a gift, something the unit was doing for all the families, I expected her to shut me off to stop me from any further invasion into her privacy. Instead what I got was an even bigger smile and approval. I'd had my camera clearly visible so asking if I could take a photo of her and her son, she crawled onto the bed, cradled him and looking into his face, told him to smile. His face remained frozen but his eyes moved from her face to mine and back. And then back at me. I clicked off several shots which I then shared with her.
"Could you get rid of those lines on my neck," this attractive woman jokingly asked. When I told her it was all pro bono work, I added; "For fifty bucks a line, I'll do it." She laughed. I walked out of that room amazed by her strength. As a parent of a healthy child I could only begin to imagine what super hero strength she had.

And so it went with the other patients and their families. It was a special privilege meeting these families who often openly talked about what was happening with them, their ill child. They wanted to share their situations with me. In one case, a family of eight had a young girl with leukemia. One of the nurses one day told me that he'd spoken with them about my work. He told me of their extreme sense of privacy but that he'd talk to them and ask if I could do a portrait of their daughter.

Two months later I was told by one the unit nurses, the young girl had died. Attending the funeral, she was told the drawing I'd done was hanging in their dining room. I'd remembered going home the day I met them to look at the photos. I'd already had in my mind's eye which photo I wanted to work from. And then, staring back at me was this nine year old, her mother's face buried in the girl's close-cropped blonde hair. When I heard of her death, I thought of her face and the strength it held those three months prior. Her mother's pose was any parent's pose: fear of loss. The daughter's face was all about acceptance.

There were so many stories in the six months I spent in that unit. But what came to me later was that for all the years I'd thought about heroes, wanting to be one ion some level, hanging out with ones I put in that category, this one was not about rank or uniform or medals. It was all about the human spirit and the willingness to accept what life had dealt them. There are, to me, no bigger heroes than these people.