Human kindness runs deep

Frank Cerabino

Thursday, April 18, 2013 | 2:01 a.m.

It’s one of the photos of the Boston Marathon aftermath that comes with a warning.

Graphic image. You might not want to look.

There’s a bloodied young man in a wheelchair. He’s got a long crimson bone where the bottom half of his left leg should be. And he’s being wheeled down the street by a guy in a cowboy hat who has his mouth open and his eyes looking ahead, perhaps for an ambulance they’re racing to find.

But you should look at this photo. Because it’s a window into human goodness, courage and nobility, which are important qualities to be reminded of while human depravity is so fresh at hand.

The young man in the wheelchair is Jeffrey Bauman, 24, from Chelmsford, Mass. He was standing near the finish line of the marathon to cheer on his running girlfriend. By the end of the night, Bauman would have both his legs amputated.

“I just can’t explain what’s wrong with people today to do this to people,” his father would write on Facebook. “I’m really starting to lose faith in our country.”

But there’s faith to be had here. You just have to focus on that guy in the cowboy hat, Carlos Arredondo.

The long journey that Arredondo took to reach the finish line of the Boston Marathon at the moment it mattered to Bauman’s life was remarkable and horrific, one that none of us would want to endure.

On Arredondo’s 44th birthday, a contingent of U.S. Marines visited his house in Hollywood, Fla., while he was painting his fence. They were there on that day in 2004 to tell Arredondo that his oldest son, Alex, age 20, had been killed in action while fighting in Iraq.

Grief stricken and unwilling to believe them, Arredondo asked the Marines to leave. When they didn’t out of fear for his safety, he smashed their vehicle with a hammer, then got inside the van with a five-gallon can of gasoline and a propane torch and started a fire.

It left him with 26 percent of his body burned. And a new cause. He and his wife joined the Gold Star Parents for Peace. He marched with other parents who lost children to war. But his suffering was not over.

Two years ago, his other son, Brian, 24, committed suicide. Another casualty of war, Arredondo thought. So since then, he has been supporting military families dealing with suicide.

Arredondo was at the finish line on Monday to hand out hundreds of little American flags and to wait for a group of 30 soldiers who had marched the 26.2-mile marathon route in uniform, including their heavy ruck sacks. The Tough Ruck 2013 march benefited the Military Friends Foundation, a charity that supports the families of fallen soldiers.

The soldiers began their march at 5 a.m. at the start of the marathon and ended nearly 10 hours later when they crossed the finish line, a few minutes before the blasts.

While others ran for safety, Arredondo, an American flag still in his hand, climbed over the snow fencing to get to the wounded across the street from him.

He spotted the legless Bauman on the ground and went toward him.

“I just concentrate on that young man,” Arredondo said in his broken English.

The man who lost two sons in their 20s was about to help save the life of some other man’s son of about the same age.

“There were so many people,” Arredondo later said in a sidewalk interview as his whole body convulsed in shivers. “A young lady next to me was begging me for help, begging me for help. But I can only help one at a time. So I just helped that young man.”

Arredondo found some clothing and made tourniquets for Bauman’s legs, something he learned through Red Cross training, and he kept reassuring Bauman, telling him that help was on the way, even though it wasn’t.

“I said, ‘You, OK.’ ”

Then he got a wheelchair that was at the finish line for exhausted runners. And with help, he lifted Bauman in the chair and ran down the street with two other helpers in search of an ambulance.

By the time he was done, this immigrant of Costa Rica, who came to America illegally as a young man, still had that now-blood-soaked American flag with him.

“Thank God I have the heart to go across and help people out,” he said.

Lucky for us, people like Arredondo materialize in our darkest moments to remind us not to lose faith in our shared humanity.

Frank Cerabino writes for the Palm Beach Post in Florida.