Psychology of Heroism

We toss around the word “hero” a little too freely, I believe, but that’s still OK.

I‘ve always reserved the accolade for a narrower group of people, as explained in this feature article I wrote for publication in the February 1986 edition of Southwest Airlines’ Spirit Magazine. In my research, I interviewed and profiled five different people who had won acclaim for the rescue of strangers at great risk to themselves. I also reviewed academic papers on what’s called “The Heroic Act” to provide some psychological context to their adventures.

In my research, I relied heavily on information from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, a group founded in 1904 for recognition of heroics from a coal mining disaster. For more information about the Carnegie Hero Fund and its awards, visit the website.

Although these exploits occurred more than three decades ago, I believe the psychology and motivations boast universal elements relevant today. I made a cursory effort to locate the five people profiled here, but found no clues for additional interview opportunities. If anyone reading this blog has updated information about any of them, I’d encourage you to provide that with a comment.

These Southwesterners risked their lives for strangers. Why? What makes a hero?

For eighteen-year-old Kim Carnes, the nightmare began with the bloodcurdling realization that might accompany any young urban female’s solitary late-night trek to a grocery. As she entered the store at about 1:30 a.m., she noticed a suspicious man sitting in his car on the lot, perched like an owl awaiting prey. Emerging moments later with a container of ice cream, she hustled past his car, which now sat empty where it had been parked. She climbed behind the wheel of her car, placed the key in the ignition and glanced from habit into the rearview mirror. Her heart stopped when she saw his face returning her glance.

He seized control, pushing her onto the passenger seat and crawling behind the wheel. Frozen in terror, she watched him start the car and felt it begin to race across the parking lot. Her mind slowly started playing out her fears, predicting the immediate future, and almost involuntarily she began to whimper like a pup being dragged to a whipping. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and wished for someone to help her.

Just then she was shaken back to the moment by the roar of a motorcycle pulling alongside her car. She heard a grinding crash as metal and rubber smashed to the blacktop. A man was actually climbing through her opened sunroof, clawing for a hold as the car picked up speed. Suddenly he dropped into the driver’s seat, wedging himself between the wheel and her assailant. The car swerved while fists rained down on the kidnapper’s face in a pounding so violent it would snap the seat from the hinges.

As quickly as the adventure began it had ended. Her car slammed to a stop in a ditch. Soon the parking lot filled with police cars, their lights flashing and their radios barking in the night. Her assailant lay on the blacktop, hands cuffed behind his back. Only later did she learn that he worked as a butcher. She could only imagine the horror that had been prevented by the hero who raced into her life on a Suzuki 750.

Kim Carnes’ adventure occurred four-and-a-half years ago one summer night in Houston, but it could have happened anytime, anywhere in metropolitan America. Indeed, on that same night—July 2, 1981—similar nightmares undoubtedly haunted many other young women who were wishing for their own hero. It would be hard to convince Kim Carnes that the term hero is an obsolete part of our vocabulary. For her, hero means a young man named Jim Dickson.

Later dubbed “Superman III” for his parking lot rescue, Dickson, then 25, won acclaim for his exploit. He recreated the acrobatics for That’s Incredible and the National Enquirer. He appeared on talk shows as a crime-fighting expert, accepted a call from Ronald Reagan and even tossed out the first pitch at an Astros game. And then he blended back into the ranks of the nameless, his moment in the spotlight coming to an end.

Dickson is hardly unique. Contrary to popular laments, the hero maintains a strong presence in American culture. In 1982 alone—the year after Dickson’s dramatic feat—the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission recognized 97 individuals for similarly daring acts of rescue. And Dickson was not even among them.

Sure, the Information Age has neutralized the hero’s impact. Picture Davy Crockett’s image if we’d had network television and Mike Wallace to dissect his financial dealings in the days of the Texas Revolution. Nonetheless, heroes continue to capture our hearts with their sacrifice and our imaginations with their adventures. But questions remain.

Who are these people and what becomes of them? Do they share a common trait, a characteristic powerful enough to motivate them to action where others might cower in silence? How do they handle the fleeting fame, with its often blinding momentary glare and its unavoidably short span of attention? What message is stamped on their psyches, what changes wrought on the reflections they see in the mirror? And what can we learn about ourselves from understanding the answers those questions inspire?

We can find plenty of heroes right here in the Southwest to help find the answers. Too many times we’ve let them shrug their shoulders and retreat with the humble façade that ranks as one common mask among these folks who often react out of shyness itself. Before meeting a few of our regional heroes, however, academics can offer their results on the subject.

Who’s a hero? To a suffering cancer patient, the hospital volunteer is no less a hero than the firefighter who pulls a child from a burning building. But neither has performed what academics label “The Heroic Act.” The candy striper hasn’t risked her life and the firefighter gets paid to be a hero. For behavioral scientists, the heroic act has narrow boundaries. The person rescued must be a stranger. And the hero must risk the ultimate sacrifice, acting not for money but from some mysterious well of humanitarianism.

“What is it, we ask, which is missing or which has failed in most people that they seem to look on anesthetically—awake, possibly annoyed, but without agony—at the destruction done to others?” asked Jack Markowitz in his 1973 book A Walk on the Crust of Hell. Determined to find the answer, Markowitz tracked the personal stories of numerous Carnegie medalists and reviewed the research of scientists. He discovered some common traits and some plausible explanations.

One enlightening experiment from the sixties resulted in the term diffusion of responsibility and a formula for situations that might prompt a heroic act. Researchers placed 72 volunteer subjects in a laboratory of isolated offices with orders to await further instructions. Some subjects were gathered in groups of six, some were paired, and others sat alone. Suddenly a voice on the intercom begged for help—a researcher feigning crisis so the experimenters could observe their subjects’ reactions. Of the students seated alone, 85 percent moved in less than a minute to offer help. But volunteers in groups of six listened an average of 166 seconds while the alleged victim babbled for help—and then only 31 percent moved to the rescue.

The conclusions? The more bystanders there are to an emergency, the slower anyone will move to help. Witnesses who are standing alone realize they’ll later have only themselves to blame for inaction. As a group, however, they can share that guilt. The researchers noted that all their subjects suffered sweaty palms and asked anxious questions about the victim’s condition. The subjects who failed to help did not lack concern. They were merely undecided, locked between two alternatives and unable to act.

Decisiveness seems to play a key role, and the University of Pittsburgh’s Martin Greenburg has noted that the decision-making process involved a quick review of options with consequences. The hero is a quick thinker who can balance the cost of inaction against the risk of getting involved. The person with a high sense of self-esteem would instinctively realize that the guilt for inaction could prove a burden for life.

But decisiveness alone does not explain the personality traits that produce a hero. At the University of Southern California, researchers analyzed the personalities of 27 immigrants who had helped European Jews pursued by the Nazis during World War II. They pinpointed three specific characteristics displayed by all. Each had a spirit of adventure. Each admitted an intense identification with one or both parents as a model of moral conduct. And they all confessed a sense of being “socially marginal,” seeing themselves as people who had never really fit with their peers.

Records indicate that the so-called socially marginal account for a fair share of heroic acts. Immigrants, minorities, the very poor and even convicts have learned that a daring rescue can be one way to win acceptance or prove their loyalty. That image of the hero as a brooding loner appears to have much basis in fact.

Other studies have discovered a correlation between good deeds and good fortune. Researchers planted change in a public telephone booth, let a subject find it and then staged a “victim” dropping books on the sidewalk outside. Their subjects proved more willing to help after retrieving the coins than before.

There has also been evidence that rescuers experience great feelings of power. Some have reported feeling the strength of 10 during a heroic act. Perhaps it’s a motivating factor—some need to demonstrate pride and control.

Of what are heroes made? Undoubtedly every hero has one of more the ingredients mentioned above. But it’s equally certain they boast some more intangible assets. After observing the heroic act in more than 2,300 documented cases, the late Thomas S. Arbuthnot, president of the Carnegie Hero Fund, threw up his arms in 1935 to offer his view: “The commission is forced to the conclusion that it is not the individual altogether but the inspired moment that accounts for the deed. Perhaps all of us are eligible for acts of heroism if the spark comes at the right time to set aglow the impulse. Heroism is not made; some tragedy finds it out. Like gold, it is uncovered.”

Here’s a look at five regional individuals who uncovered that spark and learned they had the ingredients to create a hero.

Jim Dickson: Superman on a Suzuki

Although he hasn’t received the Carnegie Medal, Jim Dickson is one of the most heralded Texas heroes of recent memory. His acrobatics in the rescue of Kim Carnes have been re-created on That’s Incredible and in the National Enquirer. A former all-state defensive end who can bench press 380 pounds, Dickson stands six-foot-two, weighs 205 pounds and ran the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds as a prep athlete. He’s hardly the kind of guy you’d want standing around when you decide to do something mean and violent.

While formidable, Dickson’s physical qualifications for a heroic act pale compared to the emotional background he brought to the moment. Born March 8, 1956, in Beaumont, Dickson developed a spirit of alienation at age 14 when his parents divorced. Recalling that event as the “end of the world,” Dickson ran away to live with a neighbor. Son of a wealthy architect, he never wanted for anything except a normal home. He vented his teen rage on the football field and later in bars where he became an accomplished fighter. With a tone of self-confidence rather than boastfulness, he says: “I’ve never started a fight and I’ve never lost one, either.”

Dickson graduated from a military academy in Bryan and attended college in Oklahoma on a football scholarship. He transferred to Lamar University in Beaumont, then dropped out to sell insurance, moving to Houston in 1979 as a salesman for elementary school fundraising projects.

“It was the main thing that ever happened to me,” recalls Dickson of his rescue. In recounting the event he speaks of himself in the third person, as if he were not really in control but were instead just watching. It was unusual for Dickson to have been on hand in the first place. Moonlighting as a nightclub bouncer, Dickson had left work early because his girlfriend became ill. Instead of visiting Denny’s for coffee—their normal routine—they decided to stop at the grocery and fix something at home: “Something else was controlling this thing.”

Anger played only a small role in his reaction. He recalls feeling great waves of sympathy for Carnes: “I always told myself I’d look out for Number One, but I could see something was going on. My sister was raped about eight years ago. It was pretty violent. And that was going through my mind. It helped me to focus on the girl.”

While the police told Dickson he’d hear no more about the incident, his phone started ringing the next day. Local news accounts catapulted him into the national limelight, and, he admits, the attention went to his head. He entertained dreams of a movie career. Then, about six months later, he realized his moment had passed.

“People just quit calling and they didn’t get excited about it. I felt like a has-been,” says Dickson, who compares the subsequent depression with his blues about totaling a car. But his case of postpartum didn’t last. Successfully running his own fund-raising projects business from a condo in Southwest Houston, Dickson today credits his adventure with a lasting impact.

"I read” stories about heroes and I feel like a comrade,” he says. “I know what they went through. I was able to do this because I had the athletic ability and wasn’t afraid of physical confrontation. But when I look in the mirror, I see a man who is now able to go through life with all the confidence in the world. I guess I’m just not able to be ashamed of anything I’ve ever done in my life. I feel like I’m good enough to be in anyone’s presence.”

Gary Lane Parker: The Texas Wild Man

To bystanders at Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir, the scene must have looked as if someone had stolen the script from an old silent film. It was Easter Sunday, 1978, and a bizarre tragedy was unfolding. About 250 yards off the lake’s northwest shore, a 16-foot fiberglass ski boat was spinning wildly in a clockwise circle, the steering wheel locked and its driver drowned beneath the water’s surface. Still aboard sat a 16-month-old child. His mother and infant brother had been pulled from the lake by onlookers who were trying to lasso the boat’s propellers and save the child. Realizing the futility of their attempts, they threw up their hands and began wondering aloud how long it would be before the boat would claim another victim. That’s when a 25-year-old Killeen auto mechanic stepped forward.

“You’re crazy,” yelled someone in the crowd as Gary Lane Parker explained his plan to a boat owner named John Runyan. Parker wanted Runyan to act as a “chauffeur,” roaring out to the ski boat in his craft, drawing close and allowing Parker to leap on board. One misstep could easily send Parker into the runaway propellers or wreck both boats. But Runyan agreed to try. After watching the runaway for several minutes to chart its circular course, they set out with Parker perched on the bow.

With both boats shooting across the water at 40 miles an hour, Parker leaped the eight-foot chasm that separated him from the bawling child. He grabbed hold, slipped for a moment, then hoisted himself on board to kill the ignition.

To those on shore watching this deep-water rodeo, Parker’s heroics must have seemed an incredible act of courage. Indeed, it proved impressive enough to bring Parker the coveted Carnegie Hero medal and a whole parade of local honors. But any review of Parker’s background will reveal a man ideally prepared for the death defiance at Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir.

Born June 8, 1952, in Temple, he was an only child who excelled at the high jump and pole vault as a junior high athlete. Parker practiced his leaping at home hurdling barbed-wire fences for fun until he discovered a more exciting outlet for those energies: the motocross. He spent two years racing professionally and once finished tenth in an event at the Astrodome. Parker says he earned his circuit nickname—“Wild Man from Texas”—with his motocross style: “I liked to ride fast and out of control.”

He recalls feeling so confident and powerful in his rescue attempt that his only concern centered on Runyan: “I didn’t even know him. But I knew I could get in that boat. There was just no doubt in my mind. I had the aggressiveness to go for it. It was like racing cycles or pole vaulting.”

Physical ability is one thing, motivation another. Parker had both. He recalled his grandfather in Central Texas teaching him about animals: “He was always catching some bobcat and putting it in a pen if it had been hurt. I was brought up to respect elders and open the door for ladies.”

Now divorced and employed as an electronics mechanic at Fort Hood, the six-foot-two Parker says the heroic act has left a positive mark on him, too.

“It made me more sure of myself,” says Parker. “I was given an opportunity and I proved myself. Not everyone gets that chance.”

Deborah Gloston: An American Tragedy

Of all recent tales of regional heroism, the most touching might belong to Galveston’s Deborah Gloston. She comes the closest in showing how far a person can go to rescue another.

In 1980 she prevented three small children from an ugly death beneath the grinding wheels of a runaway car, taking the blow herself. Disabled from the injuries, the 35-year-old woman lives with her own children down the block from the family that counts her as a savior. In 1982, she became a recipient of the Carnegie Medal for heroism.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of nobody (sic) getting hurt, especially my kids,” she says, apologizing for small gaps in her memory. “When they told me I got hit by a car keeping three kids from being killed, I felt good. I’m still thanking God for giving me my life back.”

Gloston’s ordeal began at about 3:00 p.m. December 2, 1980, when she reported for duty at the Galveston grade school where she earned $82.50 every two weeks as a crossing guard. Juan Cantu watched that afternoon as Gloston led his son and two other children across an intersection. A pickup truck collided with an auto and it zipped out of control.

“The crossing guard was standing on the corner of the sidewalk and had one of three children by the hand,” recalled Cantu. “When she saw that the car was going to hit them, she pushed the kids to one side and then she got hit by the car. I have no doubt if she wouldn’t have shoved the children out of the way, my son would have been killed. I’ll never forget what that woman did. Never.”

Her skull fractured and her power of speech temporarily lost, Gloston lay unconscious for three weeks. The school district admitted she had no coverage under its employee insurance plan, but the community rallied to her aid. Well-wishers established a relief fund to help pay the $70,000 medical bills, and the National Enquirer generated more donations. A lawsuit from the wreck failed to help because the driver at fault was employed by a company going bankrupt. A small settlement, donations and disability now pay her bills. On paper, she’s come out even. But physically it appears she’ll be burdened the rest of her life.

Nevertheless, she voices no anger and very little fear. Her voice reflects a certain air of confidence that could be born only of the knowledge that she had passed a special kind of test.

“I guess,” she says in explanation, “it was just my love for people. Especially kids. They’re so innocent. I’d do it again.”

Tommie McClure: No Mercy for the Bullies

When Dallas wrecker driver Tommie McClure was growing up in Marshall, an uncle devised a way to make him tougher than the other kids.

“I always had to fight back,” recalls the 38-year-old McClure. “I don’t guess I ever had any fear. But I lived with my grandparents and I had an uncle who was kind of crazy. He’d get other kids to jump on me when I was little just to make me fight back. I didn’t like to hurt anybody. He was just doing it to make me tough.”

That the strategy worked became apparent in October 1981 when McClure and his partner paused at a service station during a night of repossessing autos. A woman in her fifties leaped from another car, hysterically crying for help. The man in the car pulled her back inside and roared off.

“Angry?” asks McClure in puzzlement about his emotion at the moment. “You bet I was angry. I was mad about someone who would take advantage of a person like that. I just wanted to tear his head off. It reminded me of the time some bullies started throwing rocks at me and some other kids. I met one of them halfway down the hill and whipped him good.”

This time he tore down the highway in his wrecker, joining a chase that reached speeds beyond 100 miles per hour. He curbed the fleeing car and watched the driver lock the doors. Grabbing a hydraulic jack, McClure pounded on the windows until the man agreed to surrender. He wired the man’s hands with electric cord, loaded him onto the wrecker and hoisted the car for a tow. He learned that the woman had been raped and the car belonged to her.

It should come as no surprise that McClure has been making his own way for quite some time. He dropped out of school and left home at age 15, landing work as a laborer.

“I’ve had lots of fights,” says McClure. “But I’ve never been a bully. I always took up for the little ones. I just don’t like bigger people jumping on the little ones.”

Melody Richardson: Mom to the Rescue

When two men staged a traffic accident last February, intentionally ramming a car on a street in Houston’s West University Place, they expected to have an easy time robbing and beating the 70-year-old woman who was driving it. Under the guise of exchanging insurance information, they grabbed her and pulled her into their car to drive away. But they hadn’t counted on a neighborhood homemaker foiling their plans. In fact, Melody Richardson would have seemed to anyone an unlikely candidate for the heroic act that afternoon, burdened as she was with the presence of her 11-year-old son and three-year-old daughter.

“I felt morally obligated,” says the 36-year-old banker’s wife of her reaction upon witnessing the incident. She figured the assailants had guns. While her son, Bryan, urged her forward, Richardson stepped on the gas and began honking her horn. She trailed the fleeing auto as it sped through the affluent residential suburbs south of Houston’s bustling downtown.

“I guess I’m just a fast thinker,” she says. “One of them kept looking back at me. But I thought, if I just keep chasing them and honking, someone will have to come.”

Someone finally did—a Southside Place police officer, who was forced to shoot one of the men in the head after he tried hitting the officer with the door of the car. The pair were stripped on their pistols and taken to jail. The victim offered a tearful thanks to her rescuer.

Richardson, like her heroic counterparts, admits a strong moral identification with a parent, in this case, her father: “I thought he was perfect.” An Oklahoma native, she was the only daughter among four children born to the factory manager. She describes herself as an independent thinker who often sets herself apart from any one particular group. And she acknowledges an adventuresome spirit, saying, “I like adventures at lot. I’m really curious about a lot of things.”

She maintains a relationship with the woman she saved. And she enjoys being part of a subculture that will continue to offer for many of us an example by which to live. How could she place herself and her children in danger to save a stranger? Her simple answer is an explanation for them all:

“Something horrible might have happened if I hadn’t.”