Heroism and a culture of caring
The Carnegie Medal for Heroism, by design, recognizes a very special kind of heroism: a person who risks life and limb to save the life of another person, without any obligation to take such a serious risk.
This excludes professional rescuers obligated by their jobs. Andrew Carnegie also excluded military members. He reasoned that they were always on duty and carried a general obligation to defend their community, and that the military had its own system of recognition of heroism. He wanted his award to be distinctively civilian in nature.
But still,we can learn something about heroism from acts outside the Hero Fund’s definition. I think we all just saw such an act in the rescue of the Air Force weapons systems officer downed in Iran, which I personally found breathtaking.
Even more, the surprising negative reaction in some quarters in the U.S. and abroad pushed me to think carefully about this military rescue, compare it to our Carnegie heroes’ rescues, and learn what I could from the juxtaposition of the two.
I set aside the Hero Fund’s “no active-duty military” rule and just applied our other criteria to what happened here.
I immediately ran into the Carnegie requirement that the rescuers have no obligation to act. Our military rescuers in Iran had every obligation to act…They were under direct, binding orders from their chain of command.
But ask yourself this: if this had been a volunteer-only operation, can you imagine that anyone involved would not volunteer? Most of them would act out of personal virtue and character, but all of them are immersed in a culture of “mutual care.” This is the powerful ethos of “No man left behind” which permeates our military. I think that ethos and sense of community would have moved our armed forces to perform this complex rescue as volunteers with the same aggressiveness displayed by those acting under orders.
I have seen this same community ethos in action in some of my favorite Carnegie hero rescues, especially within small communities that face isolation and share hardships or risks. For example, we awarded a harrowingly dangerous rescue by two Canadian fishermen in a small boat who saved two fellow fishermen caught in a storm. I just can’t imagine those two men going back to their coastal village and telling everyone that they had not attempted a rescue.
If I am right, that in certain situations there is a “social obligation to rescue,” does that mean that we can’t award a medal because of our rule? Not at all. One of Carnegie’s objectives was to shape our culture to support and celebrate heroic acts. While we do not want to encourage individuals to willy-nilly undertake specific risky rescues, we do want to encourage a culture of mutual care and support, a culture in which we try to take care of each other. That kind of culture exists, but we hope that telling the stories of our Carnegie heroes will spread it still wider.
My best and worst moment as president of the Hero Fund was in the rotunda of the Alabama capitol where we presented the Hero Medal to the families of 12 miners who died in a mine disaster. The men were making their way out of the mine toward safety when they realized that one of their numbers was missing back in the mine. So, they turned away from safety and went back to get him. We presented the Carnegie Hero Medal to their parents, wives, and children, but none of the miners had survived to be there. “No man left behind” indeed. There was a strong culture of care and rescue among miners, but in the moment each individual had to make the personal decision to answer the call and turn back toward danger.
To those 12 miners, to all Carnegie heroes, and to our rescue team in Iran, “Thank you.”