Still carrying weight of Osage Ave.

It seems impossible to imagine Birdie Africa at the age of 41, let alone dead at that age after apparently drowning in a hot tub on a Caribbean cruise ship vacation.

The circumstances of Michael Moses Ward's death last month almost mock the use of the word ironic to describe it. At 13, Birdie Africa was the lone child survivor of the May 13, 1985, MOVE confrontation in West Philadelphia in which five children and six adults were killed and 62 homes perished in a blaze started by a bomb dropped by police from a helicopter.

"The MOVE bombing endures in national memory as one of the most shameful episodes in Philadelphia's history," New York Times reporter Margalit Fox wrote in a story about Ward's death.

Birdie Africa endures in civic memory as we first saw him in photographs after his rescue in the burning, water-filled alley behind the MOVE house on the 6200 block of Osage Avenue.

The Birdie Africa we remember was sitting in the backseat of a police vehicle, a scrawny, naked, dreadlocked wildling of a child with a feral look of fear and hunger on his face. His burned and malnourished body looked to be that of a 9-year-old.

But the first indelible vision of Birdie by Philadelphia Police Officer James Berghaier, one of three Stakeout Unit officers guarding the west end of the alleyway during the fire, was almost biblical in impact.

"As often as I've tried to describe it over the years, it always comes to this," Berghaier said last week. "There was a wall of fire that no human could survive and suddenly this little boy came walking through the wall of fire."

Berghaier's life would never be the same. In the 23 years I have known Jim Berghaier, and I consider him my friend, he has borne the personal anguish of that day like stigmata.

"Everything, all day long, top to bottom was upside down," said Berghaier of the May 13 confrontation.

As part of the insertion teams that entered houses on either side of the MOVE house, Berghaier's team came under fire from a police machine-gun position.

Bullets from friendly fire formed a crescent shape on the wall behind them. Almost comically, the four cops ran into a closet for shelter. As if a wooden closet door would stop bullets that had already pierced brick walls.

While in the claustrophobic confines of the closet, one of the officers suffered a panic attack and began gasping for air. He had to be carried out on a stretcher through a collapsed first floor in the midst of a firefight. And MOVE members' log-reinforced basement barricade prevented the insertion team's plan to use tear gas to force MOVE members out of the house.

"We had no Plan B," Berghaier said.

Late in the day, when the improvised plan to drop the bomb by helicopter was circulated among police, Berghaier remembers his partner Charles "Reds" Mellor sleepily commenting, "On any other day that might sound f-ed up, but not today."

In Philadelphia, we all watched on live TV as the worst possible scenario unfolded in real time. First the bomb, then the small fire, then the larger fire, then the gates of hell opening before our astonished eyes.

By then Berghaier was in the alleyway, and he saw a little boy walk through a wall of flame and unimaginable heat. The rubber on the soles of cops' shoes started to melt. Berghaier shouted at Birdie, "Kid, come here!"

Disoriented from hitting his head while trying to climb a wall, Birdie lurched forward, head in front of his feet and fell into a deepening pool of hot water from the firemen's hoses. The child lay face down in the steaming water.

Remember, the cops were prepared to meet armed MOVE members running from the house. This scene was surreal. As Berghaier said, "Upside down." He handed his shotgun to Mellor, and with a handgun in his left hand, the cop ran to the child, grabbed him with one hand, and lifted him from the water.

"I looked down at him and it was like looking into puppy dog eyes," Berghaier said. And then Birdie spoke.

"Don't shoot me," he pleaded.

That's when Jim Berghaier realized how upside down his world had become. Don't shoot me. The words haunt him still.

Then, there was no time to ponder. As he dragged Birdie across the deepening water, Berghaier kept his eyes locked on Mellor's, hoping to see nothing change. Then Birdie spoke a second time. "I'm hungry," he said.

Finally, as Berghaier tugged the child closer to the edge of the pool of water, Birdie said: "My pants are falling off."

All this took place in a matter of seconds that felt like centuries. When asked at the MOVE Commission hearings how deep the water was in the alley during the slog pulling Birdie to safety, Berghaier joked: "It felt like 43 feet."

Deeper than a hot tub by any measure.

Berghaier is long retired from the Philadelphia police. At the age of 64, he works as a janitor. He likes cleaning up things. Up at 4 a.m., done at 10 p.m. "Medication through perspiration," he calls it. Most of the students at Father Judge High School don't realize that their maintenance man is an authentic and anguished Philadelphia hero.

For 28 years, Jim Berghaier has been doing penance for failing to save the lives of those five other children. "We were so close," he said. "We were bricks away."

Go to www.inquirer.com/move for more coverage of the MOVE bombing and aftermath. EndText