Showing posts with label carnegie medal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carnegie medal. Show all posts

Monday, April 19, 2010

Carnegie Hero Winners Meet Across Generations



My son won a Carnegie Hero medal last week. The awards are rare, and I have never met anyone else who has won one. Eli has not either, but tonight he did get a chance to meet another Carnegie winner who won her medal 55 years ago at age 11.

Dianne Kearney Scott was only 11 years old when she pulled her Nana out of the river. She was fishing with her twin sisters and had on wading boots so after one try she went back to shore and shed her boots and pulled out her caretaker who has passed out and fallen in the water. The woman she saved weighed over double Dianne.

Eli was at a grill out with the family when a teenager yelled for help. The Yadkin River was raging like the ocean, flooded by rain. There were at least 100 people on the banks, but he is the only one who jumped in to help. I can't say I blame anyone. The conditions were not fit for being in the water.

Both these stories over a half century apart had happy endings, but about 20 percent of Carnegie medals are awarded to families who lost loved ones trying to help out and do the right thing.

Mrs. Scott saw Eli's article in the paper and called West Rowan High School to see about making contact. She wanted to meet Eli. In all these years, she has not met another Carnegie medal winner. He went right over this evening, and he got to meet another hero and got to see her Carnegie medal (his has not come in yet).

I sent my camera and told him to see if he could get a hero picture, and someone shot one for us. I will always treasure that.

Mrs. Scott lives right across the road from where I work at Catawba College. I plan to go meet her and thank her for being such a great person too. Eli said she was the nicest lady he ever met. He was real impressed. I guess heroes are like that. They care day to day as well as when it is a life or death situation.

Stay safe on your cook outs and picnics or when you go fishing, but if something comes up, I hope you hve heroes like Eli or Mrs. Scott on hand. They are both quiet about what they did and just thought it was the right thing to do, but not many people who chance the same to help someone out.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Barbecue Kid Wins Carnegie Hero Award



If you read my Barbecue Master blog, then you have heard about and seen my younger son, Eli Wittum. He's a great kid, and he puts together my new grills and helps me haul those around if I'm grilling on the road.

Last year at my Carolina Cook Out on the Yadkin River sponsored by Food Buzz, Eli rescued another teenager who was drowning, and he has just been awarded the Carnegie Hero award for doing that.

I still can get weepy when I talk about that day.

My Mom came up the hill to tell me that Eli had gone in the river and that they couldn't find him. Any parent can tell you that you do not want to hear something like that. I was stunned.

Eli would not try to go swimming in a river badly swollen from recent rains and churning like the ocean, so it didn't make sense. But, then someone told me that he went in after someone yelling "help." Then, it did make sense. He is the type of kid to go help even when about 100 people on the bank were just standing and looking.

For about 20 minutes, I did not know if my son was dead or alive, because the current was so strong that it pulled both boys down the Yadkin and out of sight. I was numb. I just refused to even think about maybe not having my son alive, or I tried to blank that thought out.

Finally, Eli came walking back up to the area where we were having the cook out. This is the first glimpse I had of him in the photo below.



The Carnegie Foundation saw the article about Eli in the Salisbury Post, and they put him in for that national award for bravery. The award dates back to 1904, and a little over 9000 people total have won a Carnegie medal. Around 20 percent of those getting the award die in the effort to save someone else, and I am so thankful that Eli is here to get the award and that I'm not accepting it on his behalf with him dead.

Eli was also awarded the Boy Scout Medal of Honor Cross Palms which is the highest award for heroism in the Boy Scouts in the United States, and the Rowan County United Way gave him third place for teens in the county last year for service to the community.



This is a photo I took of the Yadkin River before Eli went in and pulled out the other teen - someone he did not know and from the next county over. This is the roughest I have ever seen the water at the Bull Hole in Cooleemee. Usually, it is calm and about knee deep. It sure wasn't calm the day Eli went in. And, I will be forever thankful that Eli survived and that he was able to pull the other boy who passed out and went totally under out and get him to the bank.