What is a hero?
According to vocabulary.com a hero is:
Definitions of hero
(noun) someone who fights for a cause.
synonyms: champion, fighter, paladin
(noun) a person distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength.
“RAF pilots were the heroes of the Battle of Britain.”
(noun) (classical mythology) a being of great strength and courage celebrated for bold exploits; often the offspring of a mortal and a god.
(noun) the principal character in a play or movie or novel or poem.
(noun) a large sandwich made of a long crusty roll split lengthwise and filled with meats and cheese (and tomato and onion and lettuce and condiments); different names are used in different sections of the United States.
None of these versions of hero really applies to two Calhoun students who became real life heroes recently when their actions went well above and beyond the action of normal.
The version of hero I ascribe to is when normal people put in abnormal circumstances perform extraordinarily.
And that’s exactly what two young Calhouners did when they were hit with abnormal circumstances.
Back on March 4, people were settling in for what was supposed to be an ordinary evening. Folks were cooking dinner and heading home. Some people, me included, had settled in to witness a contentious town council meeting here in Grantsville.
Out Mount Zion students were filing onto school buses to head home.
All was normal.
Moments later things were no longer normal.
While heading south on West Virginia 16 the bus rounded a turn and ran into a ditch striking a culvert and, in an effort, to correct things the bus over corrected and rolled onto its side dumping the children from their seats injuring all – some slightly and some greatly.
Two of the children on the bus then did extra ordinary things in extra ordinary circumstances.
Meanwhile the rest of the people were just finding out about the horrendous accident.
Where I was at the town council meeting Shari Johnson of the Ridgeview news stood up and excused herself saying there had been a school bus accident on Mount Zion and she was going to have to leave.
A hush fell over the town council meeting crowd, and I mumbled to Roger Propst who I was sitting beside “well that puts all this is perspective doesn’t it?”
And it did.
Following that the meeting became much less contentious with people, frankly I think, just wanting to get everything over and to get the heck out of there. The meeting was no longer that important.
Meanwhile on the school bus panic reigned except for a couple of students who were performing extra ordinary things in extra ordinary circumstances.
One was freshman Charter Cottrell who was trying to get people safely out of the bus. The other was junior Lauren Lovejoy who was tending to the injured students who were unable to leave the bus going so far as literally taking the shirt off her back to use to quell the bleeding of others.
By definition in those minutes following the tragic bus accident both of those students became heroes and were justifiably honored by the state and the folks in Calhoun.
The two were rightfully presented Distinguished West Virginian Awards by Governor Jim Justice at an assembly before the school about a week later.
It was a well-deserved honor.
I have talked with both students through our basketball ties as Charter played varsity basketball for the Red Devils this year while Lauren was on the girls’ team.
My conversation with Charter was mostly me telling him not to hang on the rim when he dunked the basketball because the referees would give him a technical foul. That was joking advice I gave to all the shorter players as they sat in front of the scorer’s table getting ready to go into the game.
On the other hand, I talked with Lauren about her grandfather, who after some thought about the bus accident and things, was also a hero way back when.
Lauren’s grandfather is Roger Chenoweth and when she told me that I said, “man he was ornery back then” and he was. Not malicious but ornery. There is a difference.
After Lauren did her heroic things, I remembered back to a night up on the West Fork when I had been pulled over by a couple of cars who wanted to beat the he** out of one of the people in my car and they were doing it as I stood there with a pistol being held under my nose. That’s when a car with Roger and a few other people showed up and Roger got out and was able to break up the fight.
In that instant he was a hero.
And I was happy to see him.
Calhoun County superintendent of schools Michael Fitzwater has been thrown into the middle of the school bus accident and the surrounding controversy involved with it. Thus far he has done an admirable job of handling things despite this being his first year at the helm of the school system.
But this does not surprise me a bit because I knew him way back when when he did extra ordinary things in an extra ordinary circumstance.
He and his brother Ryan (Goob) were at a distant field cutting grass when his brother rolled a tractor over on himself causing serious if not fatal injuries.
That’s when Michael sprang into action running two or three miles to get help since this was the time before wall-to-wall cellphones. Personal contact was all there was and to have personal contact Michael had to run and get help.
Help arrived in time and Goob was rushed to a hospital in Charleston where they basically said not only would he probably not ever walk again he may not survive.
Michael’s heroism saved his brother no doubt but in the long run his brother Goob displayed great heroism too.
Not only did he survive he worked so very hard that at the Calhoun-Wirt football game in Grantsville Goob was able to walk onto the field as fans cheered and cried overcome with emotion.
It went on and Goob played some basketball on the Calhoun team that went to the state tournament and later played a little football at Glenville State as a long snapper showing another kind of courage and heroism. The willingness to keep fighting when all odds say it won’t matter.
We are lucky here in Calhoun and all central West Virginia that we have heroes among us. We had two such heroes on March 4, 2024, and I thank God we did.
Until next time stay safe but don’t live life in a bottle.
