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Show Tel. Employees Cited For Public Service Five employees of the Mountain States Telephone Company were honored - Tuesday, Tues-day, August 26, for their actions which probably saved the lives of three persons. Walter K. Koch, President of the Company presented Vail Medal Awards in recognition recog-nition of "noteworthy public service" to Karl D. McQuivey, Merrill E. Lewis, Ralph G. Henrie, Robert E, Kraenbuhi and Merrill D. Peay. Vail Medals, the telephone industry's highest award for all members in Public service, ' were established 38 years ago as n memorial to Theodore N. Vail, former President of the American Telephone Company. They provide recognition for meritorious and outstanding service requiring good judgment judg-ment and heroic action by telephose men and women. A total of 1G Vail Awards have been made to Telephone employees em-ployees in Utah since 1920. The men designated to receive re-ceive the awards Tuesday were all members of a construction con-struction line crew. They were cited for heroic service performed per-formed on October -31, 1957 while they were enroute in their trucks to the Company garage and warehouse in Murray after completing their days' work. As they were proceeding pro-ceeding in two trucks along Redwood Road near 7000 South, the drivers, Ralph Henrie and Karl McQuivey, observed aj cloud of black smoke an flames through their rear vision mirrors. Both drivers turned around and sped to the scene to investigate. They found a truck and semitrailer, semi-trailer, carrying crude oil, overturned over-turned and burning. The driver of the semi-truck was aflame, and running through a field to get away from the holocaust. Three of the men, Henrie, ' Kraenbuhi and Lewis, grabbed their coats from the truck, caught the truck driver, smoth-tred smoth-tred the flames and assisted him to a safe area away from the heat and exploding fire, i Lewis and Kraenbuhi re- mained with the driver, treat- 1 (Continued on page 3) (Continued from page 1) TELEPHONE ing him for shock and rendering render-ing first aid. Henrie returned to the accident where he found the driver of a passenger car that had collided with the tanker, lying unconscious by the left rear fender of his car. Gasoline leaking from the punctured gas tank had saturated his clothes. With the aid of Mc-Quivey, Mc-Quivey, Henrie carried the driver away from the fire. An unconscious girl, who had remained in the wrecked car was carried to safety by Merrill Mer-rill Peay and another passerby passer-by only seconds before the entire area burst into flames. The two occupants of the 'car were treated for shock and lacerations by McQuivey and Peay until an ambulance arrived to care for all three injured victims. After removing the injured from the burning oil and gasoline, gaso-line, which had ignited a power pole and presented an extreme hazard of falling wires, the line crew remained on the scent; directing traffic, assisting assist-ing fireman, and keeping onlookers on-lookers away from the downed power wires. Following this action and at a later date the telephone men went to the hospital where the injured tank truck driver had been taken. Each donated a pint of blood to aid him in recovering from third degree burns which covered sixty per cent of his body. In addition to Mr. Koch others in attendence and participating par-ticipating in the ceremony were A. S. Alston, Company Vice President in charge of personnel, person-nel, Eric C. Aaberg, Vice President Pres-ident in charge of Utah Operations, and George ' T. Cunningham, Utah Plant Manager. TRAER, IOWA, STAR-CLIPPER: STAR-CLIPPER: "How a fool and his money get separated is no puzzle compared with how they got together in the first place." |
