By Sheila Ahern
The Chicago Daily Herald
CHICAGO — Thirteen years ago, Jim Walsh saw a little boy drown at a suburban picnic because no one knew how to perform CPR.
“It was a horrible, horrible feeling,” said Walsh who was with his kids, ages 2 and 3 years old, at the time. “I thought, God, what if it had been my kids?”
He hosted a CPR class at his workplace a few days later.
Then, on Aug. 13, 2009, that “horrible feeling” returned, when Walsh and some other golfing buddies saw Greg Rose lying face down near the ninth hole of the Mount Prospect Golf Course.
Rose, 50, had suffered a major heart attack and by the time Walsh got to him, he had no heartbeat or pulse. His eyes were glazed over and the color was drained from his face.
A member of Rose’s golfing group, which was playing ahead of Walsh’s, had called 911, but none knew CPR.
“I knew we had to do something, but really, I thought he was dead,” said Dave Fairburn, who learned CPR as a lifeguard in the 1970s and was one of the golfers with Walsh.
Fairburn, of Mount Prospect; Walsh, of Des Plaines; and Tom Stahl, of Mount Prospect worked together to perform CPR on Rose. They stayed at it for 10 minutes until paramedics arrived.
Rose didn’t regain consciousness, but as they worked on him color came back into his face and they found his pulse.
Word about the rescue has spread. As Fairburn and Walsh recounted their story Thursday afternoon at the golf course, a crowd of about 10 other golfers stopped what they were doing to listen.
“It shows you how delicate life is,” Fairburn said. “We were just playing a stupid round of golf and all the sudden this happens.”
Copyright 2009 Paddock Publications, Inc.