In 1915 a little seven year old girl named Helen Dorr was recovering from a traumatic few months.
In mid-November her father, Arthur Dorr, died from complications resulting from severe diabetes. He was thirty two years old and operated a machine that made stationary in a paper mill along the Whetstone Brook. As his health slowly failed, Helen’s dad had not been able to work for about a year before he passed away. Young Helen witnessed her father’s passing and was saddened by the experience.
Helen’s mom was a seamstress and there was a younger daughter in the family as well. The family lived on Western Avenue and a week after Helen’s father had passed away Helen was accidently run over by a motorcycle.
She had been on the side of Western Avenue, playing with friends, and the motorcycle lost control on the dirt road and ran into seven year old Helen. She was severely bruised and her leg was badly broken.
Helen Dorr was taken to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. She was treated for her bruises and, most importantly, her badly broken leg was reset. For over a week she was not able to get out of the hospital bed.
Her grieving mother, and little sister, visited her when they could, and the healing process was slow, but steady. After ten days or so, Helen was able to move from the hospital bed to a wheelchair.
She continued making steady progress and, after a month, was released from the hospital and was able to get around on crutches while her leg continued to heal.
Helen’s life began to settle back into a more normal pattern and the local newspapers didn’t share much about her again until she was fourteen.
In May of 1922, when Helen was fourteen, her mother had remarried and the newspapers reported that her family would be visiting friends in Lancaster, New Hampshire, north of the White Mountains. It was quite a trip and it became eventful not just because of the distance Helen’s family traveled to get there.
Her family was visiting friends in Lancaster, whose farm was located near the local railroad tracks. As usually happened with neighborly visits; the women settled in the house to talk amongst themselves, the men shared stories while sitting on the front porch, and the children played in the barnyard.
Helen was one of the older children, and they had gathered in the barn to share stories when the train whistle was heard. Helen looked through the open barn door and saw the younger children playing near the train tracks.
One of the children, three year old Bobby, was actually sitting on the tracks playing with the stones on the gravel track bed. Helen immediately ran through the barn, out the door, across the barnyard, jumped over a fence and grabbed young Bobby just as the train rushed down the hill towards the frozen, stunned child on the tracks.
The train engineer had applied the brakes when he saw the little boy, but the weight and speed of the train, as it came down the hill, was overpowering. The engineer reported to the local newspaper that he thought for sure both young people, Helen and Bobby, would be crushed by the train engine, but as the train rushed by and he looked back, he saw 14 year old Helen quickly carrying 3 year old Bobby to safety.
Helen, whose leg had completely healed from her accident many years earlier, was able to run and save Bobby’s life. The other children had not reacted to Bobby’s predicament and the adults had been too busy with their own visiting to know the danger.
Fourteen year old Helen Dorr was recognized for her courage and quick thinking when she was later awarded a bronze medal by the Carnegie Hero Commission in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nineteen people from around the United States were honored for heroic acts of courage by the commission. Helen, and her family, traveled to Pennsylvania so she could receive the prestigious honor.
Heroes can be found anywhere. Sometimes they can be fourteen year old girls who have suffered traumatic losses and hardships, but are still able to think and act quickly enough to help those in need.