COE gives out first humanitarian award
LaMyra Dorsey, a pre-med student, was recognized as a humanitarian by the College of Engineering at the 2010 Honors Convocation last April. It was a bittersweet moment, as Dorsey will never forget the day she tried to save a life. On Dec. 7, 2009, Ralph H. Kummler suffered what would be a fatal heart attack driving to his office at Wayne State. The 69-year-old had stepped down as dean of the college, a position he held for eight years, just a few months prior. Dorsey, coincidentally a WSU student, was also driving to campus.
It was a typical Monday morning for Dorsey, then eight months pregnant, who takes the John C. Lodge (M-10) freeway to school. Traffic was a bit jammed when she noticed a slow-moving vehicle veering off and sliding against the median. She figured the driver was asleep or in need of help.
A former military Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), she slowed see if she could help. When she saw a man slumped over the steering wheel, she pulled over and called police. Dorsey says she would have performed CPR but the driver's side door was pressed against the median. She wasn't worried for her safety, just concerned for another human being. "The only reason I wasn't scared is because I had been an EMT for four years," she says.
Dorsey grew up in some of the toughest neighborhoods on Detroit's west side. Born when her mother was 16, Dorsey and her younger sister were raised in a single-parent home after her father, who was involved in gangs and selling drugs, was slain when she was a toddler.
"Life is all about choices," says Dorsey. "Choices dictate where you are and where you go." It was Dorsey's choice to help Kummler that won her the Humanitarian Award.
Reflecting on that fateful day, she can't believe so many people drove by Kummler's car without helping. "I know we all have somewhere to go, things to do," she says, noting that she had a microbiology final to take that morning. "I know I would want somebody to help me if I was in that situation. It's just interesting how people do not help others in their time of need. It bothers me. But, it encourages me to do more and help as much as I can."
Dorsey's 3-month-old daughter was in the audience when she accepted the college's first Humanitarian Award. When Dorsey learned she would be receiving the award at an engineering event, she was astonished by the gesture, especially considering she isn't an engineering student. "It's quite humbling," she says. "I really didn't expect anything at all. I'm basically just thankful and grateful for the award. What's most important is helping others. I just felt it was my duty."
She plans to pursue a career in the medical field. But first, she wants to finish her last year of undergraduate studies, make it into nursing school, get her master's degree and become a practitioner.