NORM WASHBURN: A GENUINE AMERICAN HERO
By William S. Bailey
The poet, Paul Zweig, described a hero as “An example of right behavior; the sort of man who risks his life to protect a society's values, sacrificing his personal needs for those of the community.” However, in his 1976 book Heroes , Joe McGinniss came to the conclusion that human beings today are “myth-less, hero-less, forced beyond the limits of illusion . . . as an infinitesimal and appallingly fragile part of a universe . . .”
A gentle, soft-spoken farmer's son from Post, Texas proved to me that McGinniss is dead wrong, heroes are still alive and well in America . Norm Washburn risked his life to save others when a standby propane heating system blew up, turning an industrial office park into an inferno. Norm suffered third degree burns over 70 percent of his body that day. I represented him later against the companies whose negligence put Norm and hundreds of his co-workers at the Boeing Company in harm's way.
When Norm went to work on October 15, 1986 , a characteristic Pacific Northwest morning fog had descended over the area, with ice crystals in the air. It seemed like a typical day in his life as an electrician at Boeing's Kent , Washington industrial compound. Always eager to lend a hand, Norm was showing co-worker Scottie Holmes how to test the standby propane fuel system. Suddenly, without warning, the area exploded into a giant wall of flame. It was so intense, cars in the nearby parking area exploded spontaneously in a chain reaction of secondary blasts.
It was in the fire of this living hell that Norm Washburn, ordinary man, was transformed into a hero. Norm and Scottie were surrounded by flames, in the center of the fireball. Norm's Navy training of years ago served him well. From this, he knew instinctively to roll on the ground and put out the flames that had by then consumed most of his clothing and several layers of his skin. But Scottie was running around in circles, completely aflame, screaming, gripped by panic. Co-workers assembled on the perimeter of the fire area, paralyzed, watching in mute horror. With no thought for himself, Norm ran to Scottie, tackled him with a bear hug, smothering most of the flames, even though this was certain to cause great additional injury to himself. Then he forced Holmes to the ground, rolling him around to extinguish what was still burning.
With Holmes stabilized for the moment, Norm immediately called out to nearby forklift driver, Constantino Hardy, “Hardy, turn off the propane pump on the tank NOW or this whole place will blow!” It is a miracle that with all the panic, fear and confusion in this scene, Norm remembered that the main valve to the huge propane tank was still open, continuing to fuel the fireball. With the same principle as a fuse going to a dynamite keg in an old silent movie, this whole area, full of hundreds of Boeing workers, was seconds away from an explosion of unimaginable proportions. Constantino scrambled to the shut off valve as instructed by Norm and was able to narrowly avert this disaster. Once the valve was closed, the fire subsided.
The Trauma Center helicopter came quickly to assist Norm and Scottie. However, it could not take both men to Harborview Hospital . Norm didn't even give the medics a chance to consider what to do, “I'll be okay, take Scottie first, he's hurt real bad.” When told of Scottie's death a few days later, Norm's grief was profound. He would think in the weeks, months and years ahead, “Why couldn't I have saved him?”
The man I met in my office three years later sat quietly, listening apprehensively, holding hands with his wife of over 30 years, Sharon . He had a green baseball cap pulled down tight to hide all the scaring on his head and scalp. He downplayed any idea that he was a hero, insisting that he had done what anybody would have. I soon learned that his heroics had not ended on the day of the propane blast, but rather continued through multiple operations and extensive rehabilitation. The doctors told him that he would never work as an electrician again, given that all the skin was burned off both sides of his hands from the effort to save Scottie Holmes. However, with sheer determination and an unstoppable work ethic, he proved everyone wrong. Two years after the explosion, he returned to the Boeing Company as an electrician, having set the record for physical therapy appointments at Valley Medical Center . He was given a special award by the staff for the most astonishing rehabilitation effort any of them had ever seen, one they would never forget.
We had to go to trial on this case, as the company that was principally responsible for the shoddy work that led to the explosion refused to be accountable for its actions. Reliving all of the terror of the event and the suffering it caused was nearly unbearable for Norm. He had splitting migraine headaches every day and left the courthouse physically and emotionally spent. But he never wavered from his belief that the legal system would act justly.
After the Clerk read the jury verdict of $8,000,000, more than I had asked them for, the jury rushed over to hug Norm and shake his hand, many of them with tears in their eyes. But that wasn't the end of it. The defendant took the case all the way up to the Washington State Supreme Court. Two years later, this chapter in Norm's life was finally finished when the Court upheld the trial judge's rulings and the jury verdict in all regards, telling the defendant to pay up.
Norm and Sharon came to my office to get their check a few months after the mandate came down from the court. As he rose to leave, Norm fished into his jacket pocket to give me something. It was a white porcelain cutout of the state of Texas , with a cotton boll coming out of the middle of it. He said, “This is just so you won't forget a Texas farmer's son you once knew.” It's been there on my desk ever since, the symbol of the quiet heroism of a man who not only willingly risked his life to save others, but changed my life by his example.
