Man, 81, honored for rescue of 3-year-old
Published: September 29, 2006
What do you call an 81-year-old man who catches a 3-year-old girl tossed to him across six feet of water from a burning boat?
The Carnegie Hero Fund calls him a hero, but L. Rodger Currie isn’t so sure.
“It was just something anyone would have done,” says the Palm Beach resident. “I assure you, I looked around first to see if there was anyone else there to take first honors.”
On Thursday, the 102-year-old philanthropic organization named Currie one of 16 individuals from the U.S. and Canada to be honored for “risking their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others.” He’ll receive a medal and a $4,000 grant.
A retired dentist who still spends his summers in Hyannis Port, Mass., Currie and his pal, Richard Gallagher, the town’s fire commissioner, were returning from breakfast on Martha’s Vineyard in the Waverider, Currie’s 24-foot sport boat, on July 12, 2005.
Suddenly Gallagher said, “Hey, Rodger, look over there.”
Across the water, Currie saw the Priscilla, a 48-foot motor yacht with 10-foot flames roaring from stern to midship. They radioed the Coast Guard, then raced across Nantucket Sound to find the yacht’s owner, Daniel Adams, four other adults and Adams’ 3-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, on the bow. Only the child was wearing a life jacket.
“It was obvious they were really scared,” Currie recalls. “There was no other boat around, and they weren’t able to get to the life jackets from below because of the flames.”
In a northeast wind and 6-7 foot swells, Gallagher maneuvered the Waverider alongside the Priscilla, and Currie stood on the bow.
“Her mother threw her perfectly,” Currie said. And he caught her perfectly.
Four of the five adults had leapt from the Priscilla to the Waverider when Gallagher backed away, afraid the yacht would explode at any moment.
“You’re going to have to get wet,” Currie called to Adams.
“I can’t swim,” Adams called back.
“Well, you’re going to learn real quick. When I tell you to jump, jump.”
Adams jumped and Currie tossed a rope and pulled him aboard.
“He was frightened to death,” Currie said.
But not dead.
The boat didn’t explode, but was a total loss. And the Coast Guard helicopter hovering overhead returned to port without having to offer assistance.
Since its founding by Andrew Carnegie in 1904, the Carnegie Hero Fund has awarded $28.8 million in one-time grants to 9,028 individual heroes.
“We have a staff of nine, including three investigators,” says Walter Rutkowski, the fund’s executive director, “but any member of the general public can make a nomination.”
The Carnegie Fund learned about Currie and Gallagher - who also was honored - through a clipping service that sent them an article from Offshore, a boating magazine. The organization wrote to the U.S. Coast Guard for further information, then contacted the pair.
“The Commission gets between 700 and a thousand nominations every year,” Rutkowski said, “but only about 11 percent are actually selected.”
The Carnegie Hero medal is not the first time Currie, who’s now 83, has been honored for his bravery that July day.
He’s also received a bronze medal from the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - not the animal protection agency, but a maritime society founded in 1787 - and was honored at a ceremony hosted by his former neighbor, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.).
But Currie remains unimpressed.
“I thought it was a bit much,” he says of the award. “It was just the law of the sea: If a boat’s in distress, you go to it. So I was pleased and embarrassed.”
He chuckled. “But I will take the money.”
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