This item was first printed here on October 9, 2003.
U.S. Army
Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, Chief, Army Reserve, will present the Soldier’s Medal, the highest peacetime award for heroism, to Captain John Chovanes, an Army Reservist with the Army Medical Corps. The ceremony will be held today, 1 December 2003, at the Pentagon in Room 2B548 at 2 pm.
In the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, Captain Chovanes at risk to his own life, voluntarily rendered medical aid, and assisted in the rescue of a New York Port Authority officer. The officer was buried well below the surface of the collapsed buildings. Rescue efforts involved slowly digging free the buried officer due to debris being above and around the rescue site. Captain Chovanes administered lifesaving medical treatment throughout the night to the buried officer, under the constant risk that the overhead debris, including girders, and masonry, would collapse on him, the buried officer and the rescuers. The officer was freed on the morning of 12 September 2001.
The following item was printed here on August 17, 2006.
The right-o-sphere has been agog about Oliver Stone’s new movie, World Trade Center. From all reports, it’s not a hatchet job.
There is a pair of Marines featured in a part of the movie. Their names are now known, though one had been a mystery. That’s nice. God bless them!
But I wrote about another military hero from Ground Zero on October 9, 2003.
U.S. Army
Chief of the Army Reserve Lt. Gen. James Helmly pinned Chovanes with the Soldier’s Medal for his deeds that fateful September day during a Pentagon ceremony Dec. 1.
“Once again, we see heroes rise to the occasion,†Helmly said, explaining the meaning of the medal to 22 family members who came to watch the ceremony. It’s the highest award a soldier can get for putting his life on the line to save someone else in a non-combat situation, he said.
“That’s what John did, he placed his life at risk to stay with his patient. I tell you, this speaks volumes of the courage and steadfastness of the Army Medical Corps,†Helmly said.
The rescued officer was John McLoughlin, played by Nicholas Cage in the movie.
Captain John Chovanes
Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, Chief, Army Reserve, will present the Soldier’s Medal, the highest peacetime award for heroism, to Captain John Chovanes, an Army Reservist with the Army Medical Corps. The ceremony will be held today, 1 December 2003, at the Pentagon in Room 2B548 at 2 pm.
In the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, Captain Chovanes at risk to his own life, voluntarily rendered medical aid, and assisted in the rescue of a New York Port Authority officer. The officer was buried well below the surface of the collapsed buildings. Rescue efforts involved slowly digging free the buried officer due to debris being above and around the rescue site. Captain Chovanes administered lifesaving medical treatment throughout the night to the buried officer, under the constant risk that the overhead debris, including girders, and masonry, would collapse on him, the buried officer and the rescuers. The officer was freed on the morning of 12 September 2001.
Health State
Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001? It’s a question people will ask each other over the years to come. Everyone remembers exactly where they were on days when history is made.
The morning of September 11, John Chovanes, DO, of Narberth, PA, was packing his car, getting ready to go on vacation, when a friend called to tell him a jetliner had crashed into the World Trade Center. Chovanes is a second-year resident in emergency medicine at UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM). He’s also a former paramedic. “Something told me to throw my rescue gear into the trunk, too,” he recalls.
On the road, he almost turned off at Allentown, PA, where one of his brothers lives. But on the car radio, he heard New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeal for medical personnel to come immediately to the site and help. Chovanes didn’t hesitate. “I wasn’t about to sit and watch CNN when there’s a disaster happening,” says the physician. He headed straight for New York City. [snip]
Here and there, amid the horror and destruction, are a few bright spots: the stories of a small number of survivors and the heroes who saved them. One of those heroes was John Chovanes. He arrived at the Holland Tunnel late that morning, so unfamiliar with the area that he’d had to buy a New York road map at a New Jersey rest stop. After identifying himself to police as a physician, he was waved through the tunnel and directed to an aid station near ground zero. Full-scale rescue efforts were underway, and the scene was chaos. Massive piles of rubble and twisted metal were everywhere, and the air was filled with smoke and fire.
Chovanes was not out of place at a disaster site. As a teenager, he’d lied about his age, claiming to be 16 when he was only 13 so he could join a volunteer ambulance company. He’d been an emergency room nurse and then head of a helicopter medical evacuation crew in northern Pennsylvania before going to medical school.
At first, there wasn’t much for him to do. True to his paramedic roots, he listened in on the conversations coming over the emergency workers’ radios. At 7:00 p.m., he heard that two Port Authority officers had been found alive, buried in the rubble. One had been freed, but the other would have to be dug out. Chovanes was asked if he could help. As he began assembling medical supplies, he realized he did not have enough morphine to treat a trauma patient.
“I saw a line of guys marching into the rubble like ants,” Chovanes says. “So I got in line with them, and we went into a huge crater.” A police officer pointed to the mouth of a tunnel where the officer was trapped. Looking at the piles of broken concrete underfoot, he suddenly spotted three boxes of morphine. “To find the one thing I desperately needed was incredible,” he says. “It was a good omen.”
Inside the tunnel, there was barely enough room to move. He and rescue workers crawled along a fallen girder to reach the officer, who was pinned face-down and buried up to his arms. All night long, Chovanes and a NYPD paramedic crawled in and out of the hole, administering intravenous fluids, anti-nausea and pain medication, and oxygen to the trapped officer, who had severe crushing injuries to both legs.
At one point, there seemed a very real chance that he would have to amputate the officer’s lower legs to get him out of the wreckage. “He said he had four kids, and begged me not to,” said Chovanes, who had even obtained a battery-powered saw, but hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.
At 7 a.m., nearly 12 hours later, the rescue efforts began to yield results. A cheer went up when diggers called for “spoons,” the smallest shovels used for rescues. A half hour later, the seriously wounded officer was pulled from the wreckage and transported to New York’s Bellevue Hospital.
Dr. Chovanes pictures from that day are here.
