Linwood Earl Harmon, 39, golf course superintendent, saved Adelle W. Anderson, 31, from an impending fall, Grifton, North Carolina, March 2, 1956. Mrs. Anderson climbed a ladder on the superstructure of a bridge to the top beam 35 feet above the concrete roadway of the bridge. Standing on the end of the beam and holding to a guard rail, she periodically swung outward, threatening to jump when a man started up the ladder. Another man began climbing a girder at the opposite side of the bridge but turned back. While a highway patrolman tried to persuade Mrs. Anderson to come down, Harmon, although impeded by a permanent foot injury, made his way up the supports between the beams of vertical and angled girders at the opposite side of the bridge to a horizontal girder four feet below the top beam. The patrolman continued to divert Mrs. Anderson’s attention as Harmon moved 20 feet in a crouched position along the supports of the horozontal girder to a position beneath Mrs. Anderson and waited until she sat down on the end of the beam with her back toward him. Harmon then moved to the outside of the vertical supports between the girder and the beam, secured footholds, and raised the upper part of his body onto the beam behind Mrs. Anderson, seizing her beneath the arms with both hands. Mrs. Anderson lurched off the end of the beam, causing Harmon to lose one handhold and dislodging his feet, which dangled over the side as the upper part of his body lay across the corner of the beam. Harmon grasped the guardrail post with one hand and maintained his hold on Mrs. Anderson with the other. When Mrs. Anderson struggled and threw one arm backwards, Harmon grasped her wrist and wrapped her arm around the post. Harmon maintained both handholds on Mrs. Anderson for two minutes until the patrolman and another man, who were ascending the ladder, reached the beam, where they tied Mrs. Anderson with a rope and then lowered her to the bridge. She suffered no lasting ill effects. Harmon, who shook noticeably after descending the ladder, was tired and nervous but recovered in two days.
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