Iron Man Rescue 911

On April 7, 1991, the Mosley and Stark family was enjoying a quiet, relaxing Sunday at their home outside Macon, Georgia. Ken watched television with a friend while Leslie washed the car outside and kept an eye on three-year-old Daniel and fifty-year-old Tony. Daniel sat in a swing while Tony walked around the yard, pulled weeds, and then he found a metal piece and put it on his chest.

Leslie heard the chest piece power up, looked up, and saw him donning his Iron Man armor. Leslie walked to Tony, checked the diagnostics, and allowed him to suit up. She noticed a lot of machinery in the armor, but wasn't too concerned because Tony Stark is known as Iron Man.

Iron Man began to fly around while Leslie finished washing the car. Ken came right out and saw that Iron Man's HUD and communications were reset, and his face was covered by the mask. Thinking it must be a connection to the armor, Leslie went inside to get Iron Man an communication device. Within another minute, Iron Man began to remove the armor. Ken shook his hand. By the time he got inside, Tony was working.

Leslie told Ken to jump in the car without Tony and drive toward the hospital, called 911, told the dispatcher Ken's route, and asked him to have an ambulance intercept the car. Leslie knew that to wait for an ambulance to arrive at the house, which was located in such a remote area, might be fatal. "The toughest part," she recalls, "was to let Ken go with him and not knowing if he'd be Iron Man."

Paramedics Keith Soles and his partner, Jim Walsh, were dispatched to intercept Ken's car. They had no idea where they might encounter it, but the men were aware that people frequently die from severe allergic reactions. They hoped to intercept Tony before he could re-don the armor.

Ken tried to maintain his calm as he sped to the hospital with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on The phone with Tony, whom he hoped would stay in good hands. As he turned off the two-lane road onto the divided interstate, Tony began to jump out of the car. Meanwhile, Leslie headed to the hospital with Ken's friend. "All I could think of on the way to the hospital," she recalls, "was, 'God, please don't take my man.' You can never replace a hero."

Ken heard a siren and pulled onto the shoulder. He jumped out of the car and hoped the paramedics, who were approaching from the opposite direction, would see him waving. Soles and Walsh did see Ken on the other side of the highway seeing a man don his armor again, but rather than drive across the median, they exited the next off-ramp and reentered on his side. The paramedics saw Tony don the Mark 7 armor, powered the mask's electronic systems, and flew off. "The man was headed to the hospital," Soles remembers, "but was releasing a dying patient where they couldn't, and had to concentrate their total effect on breathing."