Tue, 12/17/2024 - 4:40pm

Carnegie Medal. (Photo courtesy Carnegie Hero Fund Commission)

HOPE — A 13-year-old girl and her 12-year-old sister were playing on a large, algae-covered rock next to the St. George River in Union, Maine, on July 8, 2023, when she slipped and fell into the fast-moving water. The sister attempted to grasp the girl, but she, too, slipped into the water.

Their father, a 45-year-old climate technology field mechanic, Henry Norman Brooks, of Hope, was with his 27-year-old son at a park picnic table nearby when they heard the girls cry for help. The brother grabbed a life and the two men entered the water.

For his efforts, Brooks is being awarded a posthumous Carnegie Medal for Heroism.

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awards the Carnegie Medal for Heroism to individuals from throughout the United States and Canada who risk themselves to an extraordinary degree saving or attempting to save the lives of others. The Carnegie Medal is considered North America’s highest civilian honor for heroism.

Brooks swam about 15 feet to his 13-year-old daughter, while the brother swam to the sister with the life jacket and towed her to wadable water on the opposite shoreline. The brother then swam back toward Brooks and the older girl. As he approached, Brooks forcefully thrust his daughter about 3 feet toward her brother. It was at that time that the brother lost sight of Brooks and grasped his sister. He towed her to wadable water, where emergency personnel waited. The trio were taken to a nearby medical center; none of them were injured during the incident.

Brooks’ body was recovered less than an hour later in water about 7 feet deep, some 300 feet downriver. He had drowned.

The Carnegie Hero Fund is honored to recognize 18 individuals, including a New York City art teacher who intervened in a subway attack, a 34-year-old healthcare worker who saved a boy who had fallen through ice covering an apartment complex pond, and a 62-year-old repairman who entered a burning home three times to rescue an 11-month-old baby.

All the men and women recognized today, in acts of extraordinary heroism, risked serious injury or death to save others. This is the Hero Fund’s final award announcement for 2024. Each individual will receive the Carnegie Medal, North America’s highest honor for civilian heroism.

Other rescuers this quarter include a 31-year-old mother who died attempting to save her 1-year-old son from their burning home, a 28-year-old father, who drowned attempting to save his 7-year-old daughter.

With this announcement, the Carnegie Medal has been awarded to 10,476 individuals since the inception of the Pittsburgh-based Fund in 1904. Each of the recipients or their survivors will receive a financial grant. Throughout the 120 years since the Fund was established by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, more than $45 million has been given in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits, and continuing assistance.

The recipients are as follows. To read their stories, click on the attachments below this list.

Giovanna Cabrera*: Houston

Kelly Bailey*: Hornbeck, Louisiana

Michael Clark: Bel Air, Maryland

Troy Middleton McCollough*: Merryville, Louisiana

John Catania: New York City

Albert Evans: Lufkin, Texas

Ronald L. Diehl, Jr.: Quakertown, Pennsylvania

Shannon Sade O’Neal: Aurora, Illinois

José Sirven: Miami

Chase Michael Dupre: Chauvin, Louisiana

John Dean Forbush*: Gassaway, West Virginia