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During a well-attended ceremony held at City Hall this Wednesday, area man Greg Pittman was presented with the Civilian Medal of Heroism, honoring the local bartender and part-time mechanic for valiantly not committing a hate crime.
Despite having multiple opportunities to commit myriad hate crimes, Pittman instead made the brave choice not to carry out senseless acts of violence against people based solely on their ethnicity, religious affiliation or sexual orientation.
“I’m sitting on a bench, minding my own business, when I look up and see a bunch of people walking around, many of whom appear to belong to various minority groups that are not my own,” said Pittman, recounting the act of heroism for which he received the city’s highest civilian honor and a personal letter of thanks from the governor. “So I just sort of spring to action and refrain from yelling slurs at them, or beating them up, or throwing bricks through their windshields with racial epithets written on them. I guess some people find it impressive, but honestly it all happened so fast I didn’t really have time to even think about it.”
Pittman added, “I guess you could say I acted instinctively.”
Though this particular act of heroism is the first for which Pittman has been publicly honored, it appears the local hero regularly makes the decision to not commit acts of racially motivated terrorism in his daily life.
“I wish there were more people like Greg Pittman in this world,” remarked one city councilperson at Wednesday’s ceremony. “But we can’t all be heroes. That’s why Greg’s so special. A guy like him is one in a million."
“I’m no hero,” Pittman added modestly. “Anybody would’ve done what I did. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to not carry out an egregious and utterly unjustifiable atrocity against completely random people who did nothing to insult or harm me in any way.”
Following the ceremony at City Hall, plans were announced to erect a monument in honor of Pittman’s valorous deed. According to a statement from City Council, the monument will feature a life-size statue of Pittman choosing not to attack, verbally assault or otherwise de-humanize statues of people from various minority groups.
