By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” -Mr. Rogers
As the rain poured down and Central Texas’ Guadalupe River overflowed in the early morning hours of July 4, a team of Coast Guard rescue swimmers flew through the storm toward Camp Mystic. When they arrived at the Christian girls’ camp, they left only one crew member on the ground: 26-year-old Scott Ruskan. His job was to help bring campers to another location to be airlifted to safety. He was the only first responder there. That day, Ruskan helped close to 200 campers, counselors and staff evacuate the flooding campgrounds and reach safety.
This was Ruskan’s first mission with the Coast Guard. He had only fully finished his training six months prior. “I just remembered that when I got on scene, there [were] 200 kids looking to someone for some sort of comfort and safety,” Ruskan told Good Morning America. “They don’t really know what my experience is or my rank or my age, they just know, Hey, this guy is a professional, and he’s here to help us. And I kind of had to live up to that standard.”
At least 135 people in total were killed in that devastating flood, including 25 of Camp Mystic’s youngest campers, two counselors and the camp’s co-owner and executive director, Dick Eastland, who was swept away trying to save his girls.
I watched this unfold, day by day, as the death toll climbed higher and the stories of tragedy and loss spread across social media. But alongside the stories of death and destruction, I saw others. I saw the stories of Scott Ruskan and Dick Eastland. I saw stories of teenage counselors who crawled through cabin windows in the middle of the night to evacuate their campers and lifted children on their shoulders when the water got too high, all while keeping the girls calm as they waited for help to arrive. I saw the story of Julian Ryan, who died saving his family from the floodwaters.
I’ve always found inspiration from the people who run toward danger, who risk their lives for others, Mr. Rogers’ “helpers” in the news. They are a stabilizing force, a reminder of the good and the selflessness that still exists in the world. But they also motivate us to be like them, to take some lesson from their lives and apply it to our own.
The question is: what is it that we are emulating? What is a courageous person, a helper, like in ordinary times? What does the bravery of those in the most extreme of circumstances teach us about how to act in our own lives, as mundane and monotonous as they may be?
When I was little, I had this audiobook called ValueTales that told the stories of famous people from history who had accomplished great things. I’d listen to it almost every night, moved by the stories I heard as I fell asleep. I was inspired by the lives of people like Louis Pasteur, whose bold experimentation and risk taking saved countless lives from infectious disease, and Harriet Tubman, who helped people escape from slavery. One day, perhaps, I could be like them. One day I could do something extraordinary.
On the surface, I had nothing in common with these “helpers” of history. I wasn’t rescuing slaves or saving the lives of people with rabies. But these people pushed me, in my own ten-year-old way, to be more like them. I thought about ways I could make a difference in the lives of others, and this impacted my career dreams and my interests.
When I think back on ValueTales, I credit it as one of the earliest sources of inspiration in my life. Over the years, I’ve found more sources of inspiration in the stories of the helpers on the news. Yet I haven’t had the opportunity to do the great things these people have. I don’t know how I would react under such circumstances. I don’t know if I’m brave or courageous. I’m not a hero.
But these people still push me to act, to be a helper in my everyday life. I cannot dissect the collection of forces that shaped the courageous individuals of the past and present, but what I can do is interpret the values they live or lived by. ValueTales taught me Chinese philosopher Confucius’ Golden Rule (the Torah said it first, I now know): “Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself.” The rule was then simplified for the child audience of the audiobook: “Today we say, ‘Do to others what you want them to do to you.’”
Lessons like this still stick in my head, ethics gleaned from the lives of history’s heroes and helpers. Today’s heroes are the same. Go to Israel and you will find every available surface plastered with dozens of stickers memorializing the fallen, often with quotes or phrases that seek to encapsulate the values by which they lived.
Those who knew Dick Eastland remember him saying, “A bell is not a bell until you ring it, a song is not a song until you sing it, the love in your heart was not put there to stay, love is not love until you give it away.” Eastland gave away his love and his life for the sake of his campers.
Adversity and disaster bring out the very best in humanity. They pushed Harriet Tubman and Louis Pasteur, Scott Ruskan and Dick Eastland and teenage camp counselors to be brave. But they cannot bring out things that do not exist inside a person already. We cannot wait for calamity to strike to bring out the best in ourselves. We can’t know how we might react under extreme circumstances, but we can strive every day to be the kind of person who would react courageously if the situation called for it. We can inculcate ourselves with the values that adversity brings out in those who possess them.
At Yeshiva University, we are lucky enough to be part of a community of diverse people with diverse strengths and abilities. We each have the opportunity to act on our own convictions, to think about how we can be active players on campus. We can take initiative and become the kind of people who can be counted on. We can become the helpers that may, if the need ever arises, be courageous.
Just like any character-building exercise, this isn’t easy. Selflessness and helpfulness are skills. They are built. Don’t miss the opportunity to build those muscles, the muscles we each have that give us the strength to act on our values, and, most importantly, to be a helper.
Photo Credit: Unsplash