Margie Jean Snyder

Margie Jean Snyder, 15, school-girl, saved Eugene L. Patrick, 5, from burning, Palmer, Alaska, July 27, 1937. While Eugene, Miss Snyder, and Miss Snyder’s younger brother and sister were asleep in a bedroom on the second floor of a frame house, the house took fire. Flames filled the stairway to the first floor. Miss Snyder was aroused; and after handing her sister out through a window to her father, who had ascended a ladder, Miss Snyder stepped to a cot on which Eugene lay. She carried him to the window and handed him to her father, who again was on the ladder. Shouting to Miss Snyder and her brother to follow him, her father carried Eugene, who was not burned, to the ground and again climbed the ladder. Handing her brother to her father, who carried him slightly burned to the ground, Miss Snyder turned from the window. Her father again ascended the ladder, found her lying on the floor, and pulled her from the window. Her night dress was burned, and her body was burned from the hips up. Eighteen hours later she died of burns.