No sooner had Carnegie Hero Fund Commission Chair Thomas L. Wentling Jr. retired from a 48-year career as a financial advisor, his cousin beckoned him to Las Vegas to talk about his nearly 35 years of service to the Hero Fund.
“I call my cousin, ‘Mr. Las Vegas,’” said Wentling about Joe Brown, a retired attorney who has lived in the vicinity of the Sin City since 1967.
Brown hosts a monthly luncheon where “professionals, visionaries, and change-makers converge to exchange ideas and forge connections that matter,” the Joe W. Brown website states.
About 140 people attended Brown’s Oct. 1 lunch, where Wentling spoke about the Hero Fund.
“It was a wonderful event,” Wentling said. “The commentary was very positive.”
Joining Wentling at the speaking engagement was Carnegie Hero Samuel Justin Johnson, who in 2003 pulled a 60-year-old pilot from a burning aircraft after a collision with own plane on a North Las Vegas runway.
Johnson, who was involved in the accident and suffered significant lacerations and a burn to an arm, began to flee from the flaming wreckage, but returned when no one left the other plane.
Despite flames and leaking fuel there, Johnson knelt at the left side of the man’s plane, assisted the pilot from his restraints and then pulled him through a window to safety.
Also at the lunch was the grandson of John Harry, who attempted to save a 35-year-old man from suffocating in a Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, mine in 1917.
Harry and Carnegie Hero David A. Cadwalader were with a group of men working when a pocket of methane exploded, sucking all the oxygen from the scene. In complete darkness, the men fled. At a fork in the path, one man turned toward greater danger, while the rest of the group went the other direction and reached good air about 140 feet from the intersection.
Upon realizing that the man was missing from the group, Cadwalader and Harry volunteered to retrieve him. After progressing 150 feet, Cadwalader said he could go no farther. Harry ventured on, holding his breath.
As soon as he took a breath, he was affected by the gas and dropped to his hands and knees and called for help while crawling back to the fork. There, a man assisted him to safety. Others attempted to retrieve Cadwalader, but at some point they turned back before reaching him. Cadwalader and the 35-year-old man died.
Wentling said he was glad to share information about the Hero Fund and, especially, those it honors.
“Each time we make a presentation and tell our story, we honor all our heroes and let the public know what very special people they are or were. Las Vegas now knows a little bit more about the extraordinary ongoing legacy of Andrew Carnegie.” said Wentling.