"HE IS HALF ASLEEP when he feels his dad slam the brakes of his van. Larry Pickett Jr.'s head darts up from the back seat, and he squints his eyes to try to understand the mayhem on the road in front of him. Smoke rising. Cars stopped. Wires down. People standing around. A man stuck in a car -- is he alive?"
"All six people in the van -- Pickett, his mom, dad, two sisters and his girlfriend -- are racing to synthesize what happened before they arrived. This is one of those rare moments in life that people stumble into, where they have to decide whether to run toward danger or stay safe on the perimeter. Why isn't anybody helping the driver? Why are they just standing there?"
Larry Pickett Jr. wakes as his family’s van slams to a stop at a nighttime crash near West Point, New York. He observes smoke, stopped cars, downed wires and a man trapped in a car, and he senses bystanders doing nothing. All six people in the van race to understand the scene and weigh whether to move toward danger or stay back. Pickett wanted to be in the Army since preschool, wore camo for Halloween and watched Saving Private Ryan with his mom. He values the military’s structure and its insistence on thinking of others before oneself. He chose Army despite offers from Duke, NC State and South Carolina.
Read at ESPN.com
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