"I Thought of My Ten"

At 8:30 a.m. on a school morning last week in Salt Lake City, the corner of Ninth South and Eleventh East Streets was as busy as usual: scores of cars rushing city workers downtown, busses carrying students to nearby grade schools, junior high schools, the East High school, the University of Utah. Sidewalks were thick with children.

Two blocks east, atop one of the city's steepest, best sledding hills, Dean Mason Solt, 39, street-department worker, drove his twelve-ton street-roller around the curve, headed down toward the busy intersection. As usual, he shoved the gearshift into reverse. But the gears failed to mesh. He set the brakes, but already the twelve tons of steel were rolling, gathering speed down the steep grade toward the jam of cars, busses, children.

Rollerman Solt, who has ten children of his own, from six months to 15 years, said later: "I stood on the brake. ... I could have jumped off if it hadn't been for all those cars and children. . . . The roller was headed for a busload of school kids coming up the hill. I thought of my ten. I wondered how they would look after that roller passed over them--and I knew then I wasn't going to jump. I couldn't see how I was going to get through that mess of cars and children at the bottom of the hill. ... I started praying. ... I didn't think much more but just prayed." The roller clanked downhill at 60 miles an hour. Somehow the stalled, tangled traffic jerked apart at the last split second; the juggernaut whistled through by a hair, pounded on down the street. "I missed the school bus ... I saw an opening on my right. Beyond . . . was a fire station, and my first thought was to crash into that and bring her to a stop. But the sidewalk was packed with kids.";) Still praying, Rollerman Solt headed the roller into a steel utility pole. The roller snapped the pole like a toothpick. Solt jerked the steering wheel all the way over and jumped.

The roller overturned, plowed up the pavement in a 9-ft. skid on its back, ground to a stop. Solt, his right leg bruised and his back sprained, crawled to the roller, closed the shut-off valve on the high-pressure fuel tank. Then he was carried home, to the six boys and four girls he had not forgotten.

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