MFA employees Kelly Wilmes and Danny Lightle receive 'Life Savers' awards for quick action at the scene of an vehicle accident.

Through the fog of the morning, it happened too quickly--first a diffuse view of the rural blacktop road, a car across the center line. Then impact. From there, Kelly Wilmes careened into the road ditch, the 1-ton MFA flatbed he drove crushed at the front quarter panel.

Kelly emerged from his truck, but the driver of the other vehicle didn't. She couldn't. Damage to the her vehicle's doors left 16-year-old Cassie Sue Wilson trapped inside the vehicle. And it had caught fire.

Wilmes knew he had to do something.

Fortunately, fellow MFA employee Danny Lightle was traveling the same road on the way to work that morning.

Lightle first saw Wilmes' truck in the ditch and then the rest of the accident. Together, Wilmes and Lightle attached a log chain to Wilson's door, and pulling with Lightle's truck, unjammed the door.

By the time they had extracted Wilson, fire had reached her leg. They put it out and waited for emergency crews. As we publish, a half-year later, she's OK.

Ask either Wilmes or Lightle about the accident and they will say what they did wasn't heroic.

"It's just something you see and you know you have to do something," said Lightle. "Kelly deserves most of the credit. He climbed out of his wrecked truck and out of the ditch. He was already trying to help when I got there."

Wilmes, who suffered a broken foot from the accident, says simply that it is a day he will never forget. And in the rush of the moment, the will to act was paramount.

"I didn't know my foot was broken until we got her out of the car. When she fell back on me, then I could tell."

Wilmes, who works at MFA's Conception Jct., Mo., Agri Services Center, and Lightle of the Agri Services Center at Guilford, Mo., were honored by Liberty Mutual, MFA's workman's compensation insurance carrier.

While both men are humble about their actions, David Everding, the account executive from Liberty Mutual who presented them with that company's Life Saver's award, spoke to the significance of their action.

"I've been an employee of Liberty Mutual for 24 years. This is the first Life Saver's award I've given."

In fact, the award goes only to Liberty Mutual employees or employees of their customers. To receive the award, according to Everding, "Clear, reasonable evidence must show that imminent danger existed and a human life would have been lost if the action had not been taken."

The inscription on the awards Wilmes and Lightle received says, "To act is life."

Everding said that on that morning, the meaning of the award was clear: "These men speak by action."