a small dose of reality

A New Yorker dubbed "Subway Superman" received the city's highest civic award on Thursday after pinning down a stricken stranger on subway tracks just enough to allow an oncoming train to run over the top of them.

Wesley Autrey, 50, jumped onto the subway tracks at a station in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood on Tuesday to help Cameron Hollopeter, who had suffered a seizure and fallen.

Autrey held down Hollopeter's convulsing body in the track bed as the train passed just centimeters above them.

While Bloomberg called Autrey a "true hero" and the New York Post newspaper dubbed him the "Subway Superman," the construction worker -- who went to work as normal after the incident -- said the real heroes were U.S. troops in Iraq.

Along with the civic award, Autrey was also given a year's worth of free rides on New York's subway and buses, then met with real-estate mogul Donald Trump, who gave him a $10,000 check, along with two other checks from undisclosed donors.

"Mr. Autry is not a fat jackass like Rosie O'Donnell"

Copywrite 2007  -  Barry G.