What Makes a Hero

Kylie Pickrell

6th

What a Hero means to Me

My dad, Bob Pickrell was an airline pilot. He wasn’t in the CIA or the FBI no, he was just an airline pilot. But thats what makes him a hero. He wasn’t expected to save that Family in the Taj Mahal Hotel when it was under terrorist attack, he just did. No one expected him to make it out alive, he just knew he would.

November 26, 2008 was the day that got completely flipped upside down for my dad. He was in Mumbai, India on a layover for his job as an pilot for Delta Airlines.

He had just gotten back to the hotel from dinner with some other pilots when the hotel was initially attacked.

At first he thought there were fireworks going off because there was a wedding going on down by the pool deck. But when he pulled back the curtains what he saw was heart breaking. Over 200 people were dead on the pool deck from bomb explosions, not fireworks.

He knew something was wrong at this point and began to worry that there might be terrorists in the hotel. He threw open the door to his room, and looked down into the lobby to see people rushing into the every room they came across.

He quickly closed the door, turned off the lights and the television and grabbed the only thing he could use to fight them off...a lamp. “I didn’t have time to panic about anything because I knew that if they came in, I was going to have to do everything in power to keep them from killing me,” my dad said.

Laying on the floor of his room he thought to call the his family at home and tell them everything that is going on. He was able to get in contact with them and reassured them that he was okay and that nothing was going to happen to him.

A few hours had gone by and he was still alive in his room of the hotel. But suddenly there was a large boom again that shook the entire building for a good 5 seconds.

My dad carefully looked out his window again and saw