After days of attempting to reason with a madman through a PVC pipe, Ethan was finally rescued this week in time to celebrate his sixth birthday. The nightmare that began with Jimmy Lee Dykes storming an elementary school bus in Alabama with a loaded gun came to a dramatic and swift conclusion when FBI agents raided his homemade bunker earlier this week and freed his young hostage. The agents, adorned with bulletproof jackets, ammunition, and high-powered rifles, did there job as they have been trained to do. They are to be applauded, they did it well, but they are not the heroes of the story for me.
Instead, the man to be honored today is a 66 year-old bus driver named Charles Albert Poland Jr. When Dykes boarded the bus, it was Poland, without a bulletproof vest, without ammunition, without a weapon of any kind who swiftly stood to foil Dyke’s plan. There, in the center of the bus, Poland refused to move, staring into the eyes of an evil that wanted to harm the innocent children under his care. Poland didn’t move, and while students fled to safety through the back exit Dykes finally pulled the trigger and forced Poland to give his very life in defense of lives that will forever be indebted to him.
Poland’s bravery, and the image of his frame spread out, unmovable, across the center of the bus, immediately reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Catcher in the Rye. In it Holden Caulfield describes the central desire of his life this way:
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”
But Poland was not just protecting children that day, but also, his friend Jimmy. Earlier the same day Poland had actually delivered a pie to Dykes as a means to thank him for patching a pothole along the route Poland traveled as a driver. When FBI agents went searching for someone who might be able to communicate to Dkyes in his bunker, people in the community lamented the fact that the one man who could probably help the most had already been shot. When Poland starred down the barrel of Dyke’s gun last week, he did it as much for his friend, as he did for the children.
Last Sunday, more than 500 people gathered in the Ozark Civic Center to honor Poland and his bravery. Outside the funeral, school buses from surrounding counties joined the procession route with black ribbons tied to their side mirrors. Inside, letters written by the students Poland saved were read aloud. One said simply,
"You didn't deserve to die but you died knowing you kept everyone safe."
Alabama’s Catcher in the Rye helped me ponder anew this week what Jesus meant when he told the world
“There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.” As much for the children running to safety, Poland stood in the aisle of his bus and took a bullet because he cared enough for his friend Jimmy that he would risk it all to try to stop him from destroying his life.
Who do you love that much? For Jesus, who in your life today needs to be told with grace and truth, “I know it may cost me everything to say this, but you need to stop. I risk my reputation, our relationship, I give up my own life to tell you, this needs to end today.”
