Charlie C. Johnson, 23, labor foreman, saved William M. Morris, 19, and Bobby D. Scott, 18, laborers, from suffocation, Memphis, Texas, August 8, 1959. While Morris and Scott were working in a storage building containing approximately 1,000 tons of cottonseed hulls, a section of the hulls 70 feet high shifted without warning and buried them completely. Johnson, the only other person in the building, was 40 feet away wearing a dust mask and was buried to his waist. He dug himself out and crawled under a metal roof which covered a conveyor belt. Straddling the belt, Johnson made his way in the heavy dust caused by the slide to a point opposite where he last had seen Morris and Scott. He then moved onto the hulls and began digging with his hands, forming a tunnel in the tightly packed hulls. Disregarding the danger of a second slide, he dug two feet, passing the edge of the roof into an area where the hulls were about 20 feet deep, and then dug several feet farther. He uncovered Morris and pulled him back through the tunnel into the area covered by the roof. Morris made his way alongside the conveyor to an opening at the end and was aided outside by others. Johnson crawled back into the tunnel he had made and in the deep area of hulls dug two and a half feet farther. He located Scott, who grasped Johnson’s hand and then lost consciousness. Johnson quickly pulled Scott back through the tunnel and dragged him to the opening at the end of the conveyor. Others pulled Scott to the outside and Johnson followed. Scott regained consciousness. 44956-4358
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44956-4358