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Hero in the Dawn’s Early Light
1994 Goodyear Highway Hero Todd ForeBush,
Sr.
By Tim Brady
It
was just before dawn, August 31, 1994. Todd Forebush, Sr., was
driving his daily dedicated run for United Parcel Service between
Middleburg Heights, Ohio, Elyria and Columbus. He still drives the
same route on which he became a Goodyear Highway Hero. “You go up
and down the road, greeting friends, talking to people on the CB,
meeting other people, and I enjoy it very much.”
He’d
been driving for UPS since 1968, spending 17 years delivering
packages, moving to doubles in January, 1986. …I’m going toward
three million miles now.” Forebush has stopped many times to help
other drivers, whether with a breakdown or with directions. “Very
minor things,” he adds.
The
weather that early morning was a little cool, starting to drizzle,
with a very light fog. Forebush was in farming country, near the
intersection of a county road and the 2-lane state highway he was
traveling. He noticed a mature cornfield on the road’s left side,
corn stalks 6 - 7 feet tall, and the flicker of lights between the
stalks told him there was another vehicle also traveling towards the
intersection. Then -
“This
vehicle shot right out into the intersection. It was a Chevy S-10
pickup. It hit my first trailer just behind the landing gear. [The
driver, Michelle Kithcart] buried that pickup truck right up to the
windshield, underneath the first trailer.”
“At that
point, I looked into my left mirrors and her vehicle burst into
flames.”
To hear how Todd
Forebush saved Michelle Kithcart’s life, go to
americanrigradio.com and click
on “Hero
in the Dawn’s Early Light.”
You can Read an Excerpt in the
April 2008 edition of
Driving Force Magazine
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