Tag: love mankind

How a ‘Kiss of Life’ could help save a man from certain death?

This photo won a Pulitzer in 1968. Rocco Morabito of Florida was the photographer. 

On a dull, boring day in the office, Mr. Morabito heard a group of workers from Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA) shouting. He saw a lineman hanging unconscious on the top of an electric high-tension power pole. 

Mr. Morabito quickly reached the spot and dialled for an ambulance. Before he could get a grip of what was going on, he took out his camera and started taking pictures. A poignant scene which he couldn’t afford to miss, as a photographer.

This linesman, Mr. Randall Champion fell unconscious after touching a 4000-volt electric wire. There was a commotion on the ground and everyone was shouting “help”. 

Mr. Thompson, who just saw the whole incident from about 400 ft away on the power pole, had quickly jumped to his colleague’s rescue. 

He grabbed him, pulled him off the smoking wire and gave him mouth-to-mouth CPR. At once.

CPR is short for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, by which a person can breathe air into the lungs of an unconscious person through mouth-to-mouth. That is to keep the injured person conscious before paramedics arrive at the spot. 

Mr. Thomson pumped air into his colleague’s lungs and checked if he started breathing. 

He indeed survived. Thank god!

Morabito stood shocked. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He knew he was doing one of the best assignments yet.

This picture was suitably titled ‘Kiss of Life’ and it went viral the next day. The world spoke about the picture. People spoke about what CPR was and how it could help bring a man’s life back. 

This picture is still revered as one of the best in photography.

All ended on a happy note as Mr. Champion survived, and you won’t believe he went on to live another 35 years. 

His colleague, Mr. Thomson, when asked about the heroic day he said he just did his job. He helped his friend and colleague.

In fact, this incident and the photo helped popularize what CPR was.

A ‘Kiss of Life’ is not just a guarantee of someone’s dear life, but a tiny act of kindness can save life and unite complete strangers into a life-long friendship. 

The linesmen and the award-winning photographer were friends for a long time after this incident. 

Save the World from Egotists.

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

Robert Oppenheimer for a day.

For sure. But for a cause completely opposite to what he lived and stood for.

I would have nothing to do with the Manhattan Project in 1942. Nor would there be a director appointed at Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico.

Why?

No nuclear weapons could have been invented. At all.

No one would have known there was a Trinity test on July 16, 1945.

And life in two Japanese cities will be like ‘business as usual’. The world would not have seen egotists showing off in a conflict.

Bombs would have spared both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Many million people from the ill-fated cities would live to see a ChatGPT answering their questions about planets, the Goldilocks-zone and hope of life on distant planets.

And lastly, they would have laughed their hearts out listening to a Google-AI, Gemini calling current leaders of the world ‘incompetent’.