The Legacy Letters

by Janice Landry

  Dave spoke to the man. The caller was rational. “He said, ‘I need some help, I think. I’m worried my wife hasn’t come home from work yet.’”

  The communicator responded at first with some hesitation, “Sir, I don’t mean to be rude. Are you sure your wife hasn’t gone out with the girls?” he asked.

  The man told Dave his wife had called at 5:55 p.m., seven minutes before the accident, and said she would be home soon and would see him shortly. That was four hours earlier. They estimated it would have taken her two to three minutes to get to the subway station from work. She travelled the line where the wreck occurred. That would have placed her in the subway between 5:57 and 5:58 p.m. and just minutes before the crash. Their concern grew.

  Dave advised the husband to call police communicators where he had worked and even gave the man the phone number. He advised him to explain the exact timeline of both her call and the crash and that she was missing.

  About fifteen minutes passed.

  A second staffer asked Dave to pick up another emergency line. The communication centre was being flooded with calls about the subway crash, as well as all the other traumas that were simultaneously happening in Canada’s largest city. Dave picked up the phone and recognized the voice. It was the same man who had called earlier, now explaining that police would not help him.

  “Are you sure they understand?” Dave asked. This time he gave him the number for the man’s local police detachment.

  By the end of the second call, Dave now knew where the couple lived.

  The man called back a third time.

  He had received no help from local police.

  Dave said he became angry. He took the man’s name, phone number, address, date of birth, and other personal information so the police could run a background check on him to verify he was legitimate. “I’m working in a non-visual environment. I don’t know,” he said. Dave made the fourth call to police and asked to speak to the officer in charge.

  As he relayed this story to me, his voice rose, becoming urgent and impassioned, as he relived trying to help and do the right thing for the husband. He said to the senior officer who answered, “I’m going to get a commitment that something will be done and I will call you back.”

  The officer asked him, “Do you know we’ve had a subway crash?” Dave sounded exasperated as he recounted the conversation. It was four and a half hours after the crash, about 10:30 in the evening. Dave requested police send an officer to interview the husband.

  A few hours later, approximately one to two o’clock in the morning, a fifth call was made, this one to the communication centre where Dave was still working. The officer asked to speak with Dave. Call centre staff said to their boss, “Can you talk to an officer who is trying to help a man find his wife?”

  Dave had finally managed to get some initial help for the husband by being relentless in his pursuit of doing the right thing. “Thank Christ,” was his initial reaction. He now had a confirmed last name of the woman: Szabo. He knew they had not taken anyone to hospital via ambulance with that name. There were two people still unidentified in hospital who could be Mrs. Szabo.

  He was aware two or three people had been killed, one person was still trapped, and dozens and dozens of people had either self-reported or had evacuated. Finding Mrs. Szabo was proving to be difficult; the search for her continued.

  Dave eventually went home later that morning after many hours without any break. “I am thinking of this gentleman. I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

  The next day he was driving his children, in his Chevy Chevette, to an appointment. On the car radio, the media went live to a press conference about the subway crash.

  “Who do I hear who was killed? One of the three women [is] the guy’s wife …”

  At that admission, Dave Ralph breaks down crying.

  He had taken almost one hour to build to this point in the interview. He purposely took his time and told the story in detail so I could fully understand the ramifications of what had happened later – after it was confirmed that forty-three-year-old Kinga Szabo was one of three victims killed the previous night.

  JL: “You recognized the name.”

  Dave was still crying.

  There was a long pause before he continued.

  DR: “… and I lost it …”

  After hearing her name on the newscast, he pulled off on the side of the road, with his children in the car, and Dave wept for Mr. and Mrs. Szabo.

  Again, with me, he did the same.

  He became quiet.

  DR: “I don’t know when [Mr. Szabo] found out.”

  Since 1995, Dave has reflected about the conversations and interactions from that crash. He has come to a conclusion that has helped ease some of the pain stemming from the police line of duty death and the thousands of traumas he has heard.

  DR: “I felt I understood now I did a good job intervening for this man.”

  JL: “He knew, in your persistence, that someone cared.”

  DR: “That’s right.”

  JL: “You did the right thing; you did what you had to do.”

  DR: “You got it.”

  Twenty-two hours after the crash, approximately three o’clock in the afternoon on August 12, 1995, Dave heard Mrs. Szabo’s name on the radio.

  He was due back at work in three hours. While at work, he discovered there would be a Critical Incident Stress (CIS) debriefing the following day for people involved who wanted to attend. He had not slept in thirty hours but was adamant with his immediate superior that he needed to attend the CIS meeting. Upon attending, he was surprised to discover one of the participants was the police officer who spent eight hours guarding Mrs. Szabo’s body on the subway platform. What was discussed among the CIS group of about ten to twenty people remains confidential. Dave said the officer spoke about the deceased woman as if the two had known each another.

  Mrs. Szabo’s death and his interactions with her husband had rocked Dave Ralph. He sent flowers and a note to the Szabo family. Trying to decide what else to do, the communications manager consulted with ten to twenty of his peers and also met with a friend, who was a supervisor from the Employees Assistance Program (EAP) team. Then he made a decision which sparked an important chain of events.

  He called the coroner’s office, identified himself, and found out which funeral home was taking care of Mrs. Szabo. He called the funeral home and discovered which minister would be officiating at her service. He called the minister. “I have this inkling that I want to come to the visitation,” Dave said. The minister responded, “I think he [Mr. Szabo] would welcome that.”

  Dave’s voice broke again. “So I talked to my buddy and he said, ‘I’ll take you.’”

  JL: “You don’t have to talk about this, Dave. I don’t want you to have to go through this again. I don’t want to revictimize you.”

  DR: “I have told this story ten to fifteen times, so I can do it.”

  JL: “But it takes a lot out of you.”

  DR: “It takes a lot out.”

  His friend picked him up and drove him to the opposite end of Toronto where the funeral home was located. He wore his work blazer with an ambulance crest emblazoned on it. He started to walk into the funeral home but froze in the doorway and could not move forward or backward. “My buddy is behind me whispering, ‘Dave, you have to step in or step out. You are blocking the door.’”

  He found the courage to finally step inside.

  “I stepped over and standing there … was a gentleman I don’t know, and there’s this lineup of people to see him, and my buddy says, ‘There’s Mr. Szabo over there!’ And I said, ‘Shut up, I know!’”

  Dave’s outburst resulted from his trying to process what was happening. “I eventually get up the courage to get in line. I arrive at the front of the line. This is the end of the story. And I have my business card.”

  I notice Dave’s voice became shallow. He was straining for air and the words to describe a pivotal
moment in his life.

  He was standing directly in front of the man he relentlessly tried to help, on the worst night of Mr. Szabo’s life, and introduced himself.

  “‘Mr. Szabo.’ I hand him my business card. ‘My name is …’”

  Dave Ralph broke down.

  “[He] looks at my business card. Looks at my crest. Looks at my face.”

  Dave wept as he recounted exactly what the distraught husband said to him, the person who did not back down and who did everything he could to help the Szabo family.

  “He said, ‘You’re the gentleman I talked to the night my wife was killed.’”

  Dave continued to sob as he explained.

  “And I said, ‘Yes, sir, I am.’”

  “You know what he said?” Dave asked, voice breaking.

  As tears streamed down his face, Dave revealed Mr. Szabo thanked him, face to face, for never giving up on him or his wife – “ ’Thank you, so much. You gave me purpose and direction that night.’”

  At this revelation, and near the end of our interview, Dave sobbed uncontrollably, his shoulders heaving.

  “He knew exactly why I was there,” Dave managed to say. “… He knew exactly why the hell I was there – because I needed to close it.”

  Mr. Szabo has helped heal the first, first responder.

  Years after the police officer’s death, Dave Ralph made sure, in the immediate aftermath and hours following the subway crash, what needed to get done was done for the Szabo family.

  After the officer’s tragic death, and following years of listening to extensive trauma, finally, standing in that funeral home, Dave Ralph found some much-needed solace.

  JL: “You felt the first case [the police officer’s death] could have been handled better. In this second case, you wouldn’t give up on this one guy because you knew it needed to be done the right way.”

  DR: “That’s right.”

  For the record, Dave, still trying to do the right thing, never revealed Mr. or Mrs. Szabo’s full names during our interview. Finding information about them has proven difficult, except for a mention in a 2005 Globe and Mail article, written by journalist Peter Cheney.

  The story, TTC CRASH 10 YEARS LATER: ‘WE ALL HAVE OUR GHOSTS,’ A VETERAN SERGEANT REMEMBERS 14 HELLISH HOURS IN DUPONT STATION, sheds important light on why Mr. Szabo may have reacted the way he did with Dave Ralph.

  The excerpt reads: “… Also killed was Kinga Szabo, a former member of the Romanian women’s Olympic basketball team and the mother of a seven-year-old boy. (Mrs. Szabo’s husband, a psychologist whose practice includes counselling the bereaved, declined an interview, explaining that it would be inappropriate to detail his own loss, given his profession.)”

  The story, discovered during my research six months following the interview with Dave, has been a revelation. Mrs. Szabo, a celebrated athlete, was a mother who left behind a young child. Mr. Szabo, like Dave Ralph, has devoted his life to helping people. In this case, the two men, complete strangers, have profoundly impacted one another during a time of tragic loss, underlining the importance not just of Canada’s counsellors, mental health and support professionals, but also our emergency communicators: the first, first responders and their crucial roles in the chain of emergency response.

  Dave Ralph’s Legacy Letter

  “Would you do me the honour of writing a legacy letter for inclusion in my latest book?”

  What an interesting email to receive from Janice.

  Very easily written, I’m sure.

  And of course, silly me, I send back, ‘Sure, no worries.’

  Was that a mistake?

  I have struggled with this request for several months, and of course, the deadline kept creeping up and up.

  I am not sure where this letter will be placed in the book; perhaps at the end of the chapter that tells a little of my story, or maybe at the end of the book.

  I sure hope this is not at the front of the book.

  Anyway, here goes.

  Working in an emergency call centre is both exhilarating, and [it] can also be depressing.

  I do not care if you work in 911 in North America, 112 in Europe, or 000 in Australia …

  The citizens we serve will call you “… when they have reached the end of their skill set and are ready to give the situation to someone else to deal with.” This quote is from me, after having spent thirty-seven-plus years in the public safety communications industry.

  So to the hundreds of thousands of people around the world, plugged into a call receiving or dispatch console, thank you, for your care, compassion, and willingness to help in someone else’s emergency.

  Thank you.

  You are all truly the first, first responders.

  Keep your heads up high [and] strive to learn new industry-related advances.

  Share your experiences with the rookies.

  Be a mentor to someone.

  Question things that don’t seem to be correct and make suggestions for improvement.

  Secondly, I have a message to all of our first responders: the police officers, paramedics, firefighters, peace officers, corrections services officers, and military personnel: I could never do what you do.

  I taught myself [to try to understand] what you do and how you are highly trained and specialized in what you do.

  Many years ago, I thought that a career in police services was where I wanted to be. Nope, I couldn’t do it.

  So to you [all] I say: Thank you for allowing me to be your lifeline via that piece of technology we call a two-way radio.

  Thank you for your radio messages with words of encouragement, your phone calls of thanks.

  For allowing me [to] ride along with you, to better understand what happens on the streets, and also for sharing some of your stories.

  Thank you.

  I learned something from every one of you, and in closing, to use a quote from Michael Conrad, the actor who played Sergeant Phil Esterhaus on the television drama Hill Street Blues: “Let’s be careful out there.”

  Lastly, and this is the tough one, to the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who called 911 and got me on the phone, thanks for choosing me to answer your call for help. Yes, I know it is random and you had no control who answered, but somehow, we got connected.

  Thanks to you, as well.

  Regardless of your emergency, I hope that I was able to instill a sense of calm, perhaps a sense of “Oh boy, I am glad I got this fellow on the phone. He knows what he’s doing.”

  If your emergency was an injured limb, perhaps your new baby was being delivered, maybe you were a victim of a robbery, [or] I may have even have given you CPR instructions for you to administer to your loved one, whatever your emergency was, I hope I was able to help.

  Heartache and pain may still be present with you.

  I know I have several of your emergencies which will never leave my memory. However, I can tell you that they do diminish.

  If you have never called 911, if you do not work as a public safety communications professional, and you are not a first responder, but you are reading this book: thanks to you.

  I hope that you have learned something about those of us who are as close to public safety as we can get.

  I hope I have shared with you some of the passion, and compassion, that drives us to work in and around public safety.

  Thanks for reading.

  13

  John Bredin: Pushing Boundaries to Effect Change

  Who immediately responds when there is an emergency or traumatic incident inside of a prison or correctional facility? Sometimes outside help is required if the situation escalates, but it is correctional staff who deal with an instantaneous situation within the institution.

  There are approximately 19,000 Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) employees in Canada, according to John Bredin, who is one of them. He has been employed by CSC for twenty years. Currently a federal parole officer in Ontario, John is also the Critical Incident Stress Ma
nagement (CISM) trainer for all CSC institutions within the Ontario region.

  A former crisis worker, he currently leads training and educational sessions and speaks provincially, nationally, and internationally about the environments within our prisons and what work and home life is like for Corrections officers and other staff, including mental health challenges and initiatives.

  “None of the models are static. It’s not like you can get the training and twenty years later, you’re good,” John said, of the lifelong learning approach and mantra to his work, profession, and philosophy.

  John spoke at the Common Threads conference in Vaughn, Ontario, in February 2016. I met him the day following his talk. We spoke about material from his slides, a presentation painstakingly approved by several levels of hierarchy within the CSC prior to John and his colleague Kathleen Roberge-Ward’s appearance at the Tema Conter Memorial Trust national conference.

  John asked that we remain within the boundaries of the material he had presented the previous day, so he could carefully comply with the requirements of his employer. I agreed.

  I had not been present for his talk because his was a concurrent session to another presentation. He brought his laptop to the lobby of the conference hotel and painstakingly took me through his presentation slide by slide. The hint of this patience level was revealing, as I later learned.

  John began by explaining the 19,000-member CSC staff and employees include those who work at institutions as correctional officers, parole officers, parole program officers, community parole officers, food-service staff, administrative and office staff, security and intelligence officers, support staff, at aboriginal healing lodges, in community correctional centres, halfway houses run by the CSC, as well as five regional headquarters and one national headquarters located in Ottawa.

  “One of the things the government hasn’t really realized, but groups like Tema … and other trauma-response organizations [do, is] recognize correctional officers as first responders,” John said, as we started our interview. “If it’s a major incident, you may have outside help … you will have ambulances come in, but before any of that happens, it’s the correctional officers and staff that responds.”