In its fifth and final award announcement of 2003, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission named 15 individuals from throughout the United States and Canada as recipients of the Carnegie Medal. The bronze medal is given to persons who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others. Four of the awardees died in the performance of their heroic acts.

The Commission names awardees five times a year. Latest awardees and the resumes of their heroic actions are listed in the following news release. The next awards announcement will be made in mid-March, 2004.

The announcement brings to 98 the number of persons who have been recognized in 2003 and to 8,764 the total number honored since the Pittsburgh-based Fund's inception in 1904.

Commission President Mark Laskow stated that each of the awardees or their survivors will receive also a grant of $3,500. Throughout the 99 years since the Fund was established by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, $26.8 million has been given in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits, and continuing assistance.

One of the awardeees received his honor for the daring rescue of a passenger from a stricken aircraft. Nathan Michael Grube of Wind Gap, Pennsylvania, helped to rescue William S. Smith, Jr., from burning, Brunswick, Georgia, September 21, 2002. Smith, 52, was in the left front seat of a six-passenger airplane that a student pilot was attempting to land at an airport. The plane struck the ground just short of the runway and burst into flames at its front end. Both wings, which held the plane's fuel tanks, and the plane's only door, on the right side of the fuselage, were torn off in the accident, in which Smith lost consciousness. The pilot released his and Smith's safety belt, then stepped from the wreckage. Grube, 23, a chef, was driving near the airport and saw the burning plane just after the crash. He immediately parked and with others ran to the scene, approaching the plane on its right side. Despite flames on the plane's nose and wings and in the cockpit, Grube leaned into the plane, his jacket placed over his head for protection, and grasped Smith. He and the pilot, who had returned to the plane and also reached inside for Smith, then pulled Smith from the wreckage. They and others carried him away from the plane, the front half of which was shortly engulfed by flames. Smith was hospitalized for treatment of severe burns and other injuries.

FMI: www.carnegiehero.org