A Push Saved My Life

Survivor of accident recounts fateful day

“I was going to ask him why he pushed me.” The push was a quick, forceful blow, Chris Grays recalled. Strong enough to make Grays, 24, stumble backward. It was like those typical, initial shoves to the chest men give just before they clench the fists and swing for the face. But this push was imbued with heroism, not violence. Grays never got a chance to ask his question.

Robinson gave his life to save Grays the morning of Dec. 14. Grays has spent sleepless nights thinking about it, "knowing my best friend died for me."

The two men were deck workers at the Port of West Memphis on the Mississippi River. They worked for Global Materials a contractor that operates the port.  A barge filled with gypsum, for making sheetrock, arrived early last week.  An ice storm had prevented workers from unloading it., Grays gave this account of what happened that frigid Thursday morning:

“I was kind of worried that morn­ing.” Ice still coated the barge, the crane and its cables. “Anything can happen.” Workers were knocking ice off the crane when he arrived at 7 a.m. The crew cranked up the crane. However, at first the boom would not go up and down. “They did something to it and it started to go up and down then.”

A red basket was hooked to the crane's cable. Into the basket went Robinson, Grays and some Oil-Dri floor absorbent. They were to be the first of four deck workers lowered to the barge. But the other two employees would never make it down that morning, and the routine work would never start.

It was about 8:50 a.m. The temper­ature was 32 degrees. Robinson and Grays got out of the basket and stepped onto the barge. Before they did anything else, they were to take out the Oil-Dri and spread it around.

“We had Oil-Dri to put on top of the barge so we wouldn't slip on the ice.” The basket rested on the barge. About 40 feet above it was the 75 ft. steel boom of the crane. As the two men reached into the basket for the absorbent, “my friend Robert heard crane collapsing.” Grays didn’t hear it.

He pushed me out of the way and found himself in the area of the falling boom. When I looked up, he was pinned under the boom. I said, “Robert.” He looked up at me and dropped his head. He died almost instantly.

He died for my life. I will make his death worth it.

/Jesus gave His perfect, sinless life in order that we might live. We should give our lives to him, and die to self.

SOURCE: Tom Bailey Jr. The Commercial Appeal