Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1916 — Heroic Seven-Year-Old Boy Saves a Baby Girl [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Heroic Seven-Year-Old Boy Saves a Baby Girl

PITTSBURGH. PA. —“I rescued the glr-r-r-1, but it wasn’t nothin’ brave, murmured Joseph Bright, seven years old, joint hero with Robert Calpass, nine, in the saving of the life of little Veda Johnston, four, when the Johnston

home at McKees Rocks was destroyed by fire. Veda was in a first-floor bedroom when the fire began. As the flames, which started on the second floor, ate their way quickly through the thin partitions and floors of the dry frame building, the child remained in the room, for the moment forgotten by the frawtic mother and the excited neighbors. Then, discovering it was difficult

to breathe in the fast-thickening smoke and becoming terror-stricken when she saw a sheet of flame burst through the wall beside her, the baby screamed for help. Joe, who was 1 on the outside, heard the little girl’s cries, and, amid falling embers and smoke too dense to endure for more than the moment, rushed to her side, gathered her quickly in his arms and rushed for the door. The floor of the room had already become weak from the gnawing of the flames, but Joe and his tfiirden reached the door in safety. As the little hero emerged from the building, then a furnace of fire, bearing the girl in his tyms, a cheer broke spontaneously from the crowd. Little Veda, the pet of the neighborhood, had bben saved in the nick of time.