Never saw the light...

[SEATJERKER]

...saw this, and thought how it falls into my situation, the pendelum swings both ways....




WHEN THE HEROES GO HOME

From the darkness of the ruined mine, the men emerged into the searing light of a national media event. It had been a three-day long-shot rescue. At its jubilant end, the cameras framed the coal-blackened faces of nine new American heroes.


In many ways -- the marathon underground rescue, the setbacks, the joy of tragedy averted, the feverish coverage -- the drama of the trapped miners resembled another widely watched rescue. Although also successful, that one had a dark epilogue. In 1987, the nation watched as rescuers in Midland, Texas, struggled to pull 18-month-old Jessica McClure from a well shaft. After 58 hours and several failed attempts, a paramedic named Robert O'Donnell freed Baby Jessica. His became the face of the rescue effort. But after his star faded, O'Donnell faced the vacuum of a vanished fame. Within a decade of the rescue, he had killed himself.

The fireman. The policeman. The passerby whose impulsive actions save a life. When their bravery is captured, especially on television, they become instant heroes.

But what happens when the attention and adulation subside? How do heroes live their lives after the heroic act is long over? In the case of the miners, that's when the scars of a harrowing experience can surface, experts say. Just as real as post-traumatic stress disorder, they say, are the effects of slowly ebbing fame.

In Somerset County, Pa., a group of stress-management specialists has mobilized around the miners as everyday life resumes. These are the specialists who dealt with the aftermath from the nearby crash of Flight 93 on Sept. 11. They dealt with a deadly tornado in 1998. And as they prepare for the complications from this happy ending, they keep Robert O'Donnell in mind.

``When all the attention went away, he wasn't able to turn it off in his mind,'' says Vaughn Donaldson, a co-worker of O'Donnell's during the Baby Jessica episode.

As O'Donnell soaked up the limelight, envy festered in the Texas fire department, Donaldson says, culminating when O'Donnell made a deal for the TV movie ``Everybody's Baby.'' When the spotlight swung elsewhere, O'Donnell could not regain his footing in reality. His marriage deteriorated and allegations of drug abuse forced him out of the department.

``That's when he really needed his co-workers,'' says Donaldson, now district chief of the department. ``I hate to say it, but we weren't there for him.''

In 1995, four days after fresh images of heroism materialized out of the Oklahoma City bombing, O'Donnell, 37, shot himself.

His story is a case history for experts in post-traumatic stress management. To pre-empt the same high/low cycle for the miners, 30 counselors were assigned to their families from the start of the ordeal. That included the nine miners who escaped on their own and are rarely mentioned in the news.

``We're still in the hero phase at this point. Then we go into the honeymoon phase,'' says Randy Hay, a Somerset, Pa., mental health official coordinating the counseling team. ``After that, we need to start making phone calls. If we wait too long, we'll have an emergency on our hands.''

Fallout could include alcohol and drug problems, or abusive behavior toward spouses and children.

Hay's team will work through existing community networks, including churches and family doctors, to avoid advertising their services as therapy, which can carry a stigma.

Another Pennsylvania counselor, Richard Boland, is eager to get the miners talking -- talking about the hours spent underground when death was close, and talking about the blitz following their emergence, when, still blinking after they appeared all over television, they signed a $1.35 million book and movie deal with Disney and met the president.

``We have to get them into the present day,'' says Boland, because ``all this stuff is going to start to play on their minds when they're by themselves.''

The money can be the biggest flash point. To a man, the miners have tried to deflect the praise heaped on them. They humbly, and fruitlessly, point to the scores of men and women who saved them. Those unsung individuals aren't being paid $150,000 each for their version of the story. And this is one way that the glow of a miraculous event can tarnish.

As the dramatic moment dissipates, real life and its complexities converge.

Lenny Skutnik is all too familiar with this template of American heroism. It left him unscathed but somewhat cynical. Though they might not recall his name, Skutnik is remembered by millions as the man who leaped into the icy Potomac River in 1982 to help save a women from the sinking wreckage of Air Florida Flight 90. Caught on film, the scene was replayed repeatedly. Soon Skutnik found himself rising from his seat beside the first lady as President Reagan hailed Skutnik's bravery during the State of the Union address.

The rescue, Skutnik says now, ``took on a life all its own.''

He was reluctant to capitalize on a tragedy, and the competition for his story soured him on the media. When he hesitated to sign with a production company making a movie of the event, they used him anyway, inserting actual footage of his act into the dramatization.

Skutnik stepped back into his own life with ease. Twenty years later, he still works in the same government office. But he has regrets. He should have hired a lawyer or an agent, he says, someone who could have intervened with the media on his behalf, perhaps helped him take advantage of opportunities. That's the advice he'd give the miners.

``It's their story. It doesn't belong to anybody else,'' Skutnik said.

In that aspect, it seems the miners are ahead of the game. They quickly secured a Pittsburgh lawyer to represent them as a group rather than compete for the biggest deals.

Adjustment to life as the ``nine for nine'' won't come easy. But with their legal and psychological support teams in place and their feet on the ground, the miners may succeed in avoiding fame's fallout.

After all, it's mostly preparation that separates actors and other stardom seekers from those thrown into it cold, said Joshua Gramson, author of ``Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America.''

It takes preparation ``to manage the intrusion, the flattery, the new resources,'' Gramson said. ``People unprepared may not have thought about the fine print.''

Visit ctnow.com to see a photo gallery of the miners and their rescuers.

Caption: THE RESCUE of 18-month-old Jessica McClure from an abandoned well in Midland, Texas, created instant fame for one of her rescuers, a paramedic named Robert O'Donnell. He committed suicide in 1995.

... this was from the "Hartford Courant on Aug 13th, and was in the Albany Times union this morning, ...
...It's just part of the unexplained that I face,day to day, and have lived with since 12/79...

...never saw the spotlight, but didn't want to anyway...