A Century Of Heroes Chambers, Douglas R.

On January 25, 1904, a massive explosion ripped through a mine beneath the town of Harwick, Pennsylvania, killing all but one of the 180 men below ground. Andrew Carnegie, then retired and living in New York, was moved by the disaster, particularly the selfless acts of two men who died in failed rescue attempts. Within six weeks he was hard at work establishing the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, which both redefined what it meant to be a hero and helped to establish modern philanthropy. In the past hundred years, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission has awarded over 8,700 medals for heroism and distributed nearly USD27 million in awards, grants, tuition, and other assistance. A Century of Heroes includes a history of the commission - from its first heady days when a handpicked group of men set out to design a new organization under the intense glare of media attention to the present - and offers unique insights into how it investigates and authenticates the hundreds of acts of heroism reported each year. It is the heroes' stories themselves that form the heart of the book - profiles of more than one hundred ordinary men and women who risked their own lives to save those of others. In these pages you'll meet A. James "Jimmie" Dyess, the only person to be awarded both the Carnegie Medal and the Medal of Honor, and Louis A. Baumann, Jr., a seventeen-year-old boy who was awarded the very first Carnegie Medal. You'll also read about the only four individuals in the history of the commission to have been twice named heroes: Henry Naumann of Hammond, Indiana, John James O'Neill, Sr., of Yonkers, New York, Rudell Stitch, of Louisville, Kentucky, and Daniel Elwood Stockwell of Phippsburg, Maine, and later of East Swanzey, New Hampshire. Medals have been awarded fifteen times for rescues performed on the Niagara River, just above the falls. Between July 11, 1904, when Daniel Davis died attempting to save a fellow miner from suffocation in Sherodsville, Ohio, to September 23, 2001, when twelve men died trying to save a coworker in the wake of a methane explosion in a mine near Brookwood, Alabama, the commission has awarded more than 150 medals to brave and unselfish individuals who took part in mine rescues. The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission has honored and assisted those who participated in relief efforts following national and international disasters, such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the sinking of the Titanic, the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 in the Potomac River, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. For the most part, however, the commission's work has focused on recognizing smaller acts of heroism which did not capture the attention of the country as a whole. Carnegie Heroes have saved - or attempted to rescue - people from burning buildings, rabid dogs, attempted murders, cave-ins, drownings, avalanches, and other perils. Published in conjunction with the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission's one hundredth anniversary, A Century of Heroes is both an homage to the thousands of men and women who have demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice everything for other human beings, and a lavishly-illustrated celebration of the unexpected heroes who walk among us.