Editor’s Notebook: Surviving Bear Mountain

One of the most memorable stories I have read in The New Yorker was published in 2003. It was called “Jumpers.” The author, Tad Friend, interviewed people who had survived plunges off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Ken Baldwin was 28 and depressed. He said: “I still see my hands coming off the railing. I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable — except for having just jumped.”

Kevin Hines was 19. His first thought was, “What the hell did I just do? I don’t want to die.” He later told The New York Times: “I know that almost everyone else who’s gone off that bridge, they had that exact same thought at that moment. All of a sudden, they didn’t want to die, but it was too late. Somehow I made it; they didn’t; and now I feel it’s my responsibility to speak for them.”

I wondered if anyone had survived a fall from the Bear Mountain Bridge and found two: a 20-year-old West Point cadet in 2005 and a 16-year-old girl from Mohegan Lake in 2014.

I also found two who survived the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge: a 20-year-old man in 1998 and another man in 2022 who was rescued by a police officer on a jet ski.

I wanted to ask them if they had thoughts similar to Hines’ but only the cadet was identified. He did not reply to an email, which is understandable.

The fact is, scientists have researched whether bridge barriers save lives, and the conclusion is that they can be effective. An argument leveled against them, besides the cost, is that people intent on killing themselves will find another way. 

But mental health professionals believe that bridges and firearms (which 25,000 people use to kill themselves annually) empower impulsive decisions, and that if the person encounters an obstacle, the cloud often passes. One study in the 1970s tracked people who had been prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate; it found that just 10 percent went on to kill themselves.

Pleas Grow for Bridge Fencing

In other words, “90 percent got past it,” Richard Seiden, who conducted the study, told The New York Times. “They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out the other side, they got on with their lives.

“At the risk of stating the obvious,” he added, “people who attempt suicide aren’t thinking clearly. They might have a Plan A, but there’s no Plan B. They get fixated. They don’t say, ‘Well, I can’t jump, so now I’m going to go shoot myself.’ And that fixation extends to whatever method they’ve chosen. They decide they’re going to jump off a particular spot on a particular bridge, or maybe they decide that when they get there, but if they discover the bridge is closed for renovations or the railing is higher than they thought, most of them don’t look around for another place to do it. They just retreat.”

Another researcher, Dr. David Rosen, interviewed 10 people who had survived bridge jumps. “What was immediately apparent,” he told The Times, “was that none of them had truly wanted to die. They had wanted their inner pain to stop. They wanted some measure of relief, and this was the only answer they could find. They were in spiritual agony, and they sought a physical solution.”

Like anyone who suffers from depression, I know how despair can fuel thoughts of a quick escape. For that reason, like many people in my boat, I will never own a firearm. As for a bridge, Kevin Hines jumped and returned with a message: He made a huge mistake. But he got a second chance.

In distress? The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling or texting 988.