HEROES AMONG US:  I didn’t know about the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission until very recently when I ran across its web site.  But it’s the sort of thing I can’t help but love.  Andrew Carnegie established it in 1904 to honor “individuals in the United States and Canada who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree saving or attempting to save the lives of others.”

“We live in a heroic age,” Carnegie wrote in the Commission’s founding document.  “Not seldom are we thrilled by deeds of heroism where men or women are injured or lose their lives in attempting to preserve or rescue their fellows.”

There is a “Search Heroes” function on the web site that allows visitors to search for past Carnegie Hero Fund honorees.  Hoping to find a relative, I searched “Heriot.”  Alas, no dice.  So I searched my mother’s maiden name, which is also uncommon–Vannah.  Bingo!  In 1913, someone named Bessie Vannah tried valiantly–though futilely–to try to save a boy who’d fallen through the ice.  She was 16 at the time.

I don’t recall my mother ever mentioning an Aunt Bessie, but the attempted rescue happened in the same rural county where my mother was born and raised.  I don’t think there are any unrelated Vannahs in Lincoln County, Maine–current population 35,237.  Or at least that’s what I’ve convinced myself.  But whether or not she was my lost long relative, Bessie was a heck of a girl. We have that on the authority of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, and they ought to know.