Closet Extremist

Here's to Everitt Harris.

He's a guy. An ordinary fella. He showed up for work yesterday morning (Like he's done for twenty-five or thirty years before) and went right to it. He's an "Elevator Man".

Here's a quote from the local paper about him:

A construction worker for a subcontractor involved in work at Blount Memorial Hospital was fatally injured Tuesday morning in a fall down an elevator shaft.

The paper would go into little more detail, but the Elevator Community tends to be "tightly knit", so I have more. The man's name was Everitt Harris. He was around Fifty years of age, and he'd been an Elevator Man for most of his life. He was working for KONE (Pronounced Conay) at the time of the accident, but it is really immaterial.

He was mounting a Deflection sheave at the top of the hoistway, when it came loose. It knocked the scaffold that he was standiing on down, and sent him 40+ feet to the pit floor. The sheave (4 to 700 pounds worth of it) landed on him at the bottom of the hoistway.

He died.

I never met him, but I miss him.

I raise a glass to him.

Us elevator guys gotta stick together.

Posted by Johnny - Oh at August 25, 2005 12:01 AM | TrackBack