He has been often in the moving pictures—the handsome engineer who from his cabin on a speeding locomotive sees a sweet baby girl toddling along the track ahead, jambs on his emergency brakes, staggering but not halting the heavy train sweeping down a grade, climbs out of his cabin, down to the cowcatcher in front, and scoops up the infant to safety, with just a scant fraction of a second to spare.
Yesterday it happened in real life, not 50 miles from Raleigh, and with more thrills than any moving picture ever had the imagination to put into it. Engineer J.H. Furman was the man; Gertrude Collins, aged 3, was the little girl; the Norfolk Southern was the road; Smith’s water tank, two miles beyond Kipling, toward Fayetteville, was the place; and 3:05 was the time. And he had never had time to practice the feat, with a sack full of straw instead of a real, live, dimple-faced little girl.
Engineer Furman was taking 25 loaded freight cars to Fayetteville, and running at about the usual speed of freight trains. Rounding a sharp curve and going down grade toward the Cape Fear River and Lillington, he saw the little girl walking along and unsteadily down the track. Her back was toward him. With one hand Furman yanked the whistle-cord and with the other the emergency brake lever. The child was 75 yards away.
The speed of the train was slackened but the weight of the cars behind thrust it on. Furman saw that it could not stop before it ground the child to bits. Without an instant of hesitation, he ran forward on the running board, climbed down on the pilot. The locomotive was then within a few feet of the still unheeding child. He reached down and grasped her by the arm and pulled her up to safety. Her worst injury was a slight bruise on the head and scratched foot. The train was then moving at 10 miles an hour.
At home half a mile way the child’s mother had not missed her. She had wandered off toward the railroad, clambered down the steep embankment and onto the track. Furman stopped the train and began inquiry as to whom the child belonged. With modesty as becoming of a brave man he retreated before the demonstration of parental joy. Then he went back to write the casual, matter-of-fact reports that railroads keep, and went on Fayetteville-wards.
Furman is 30, married, lives in Boylan Heights, Raleigh, and Norfolk Southern officials say the coolest engineer in their employ. When younger he went off to the navy and served out an enlistment period. Then he came home and went to work with the Norfolk Southern as a fireman. Three years of that and he moved over to the other side of the cabin, and has been an engineer since.
From The News and Observer, as reprinted on the front page of The Smithfield Herald, Friday, Sept. 23, 1921
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