In interview after interview, Wesley Autrey insisted he’d done nothing special. Yes, he’d jumped in front of a 370-ton train to save the life of a convulsing stranger. Yes, it later occurred to the father of three that he’d done “something pretty stupid.” But who wouldn’t?
“Someone’s in need,” Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker and Navy veteran, told the thousandth reporter he spoke to this week. “What would you do?”
Stand on the platform and scream, most likely. That’s what everyone else at the Manhattan subway stop did Tuesday, when a 20-year-old film student suffering a seizure tumbled onto the tracks at 137th Street and Broadway. Autrey jumped down, threw the writhing man to the ground, rolled him into a trough between the rails and lay on top of him until the train screeched to a halt above them.
By the end of the week he’d made appearances on the morning shows and on Letterman. He’d gotten calls from Trump’s people, the mayor’s people and ordinary people who wanted to pay to send his family to Disney World. The newspapers were calling him “the Subway Superman.”
Again and again, he protested: I’m not a hero. I don’t want people to blow this out of proportion. I just saw someone who needed help. You’re supposed to come to people’s rescue. The real heroes are fighting overseas. What would you do?
What would you do?
Does Autrey’s brand of courage and selflessness truly live in all of us, as he insists? Few are ever tested, so we’ll never know for sure. But most of us have a pretty good idea that he’s giving us way too much credit. A midday crowd was standing on the subway platform when Cameron Hollopeter fell onto the tracks. Only one person jumped in after him.
