Carnegie Hero William D. Bradshaw of Valdese, North Carolina, died Friday, Oct. 18, 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was 72.
Bradshaw was born May 25, 1952, to the late Dwight Elmer Bradshaw and Gracie Rector Street in Burke County, North Carolina.
Bradshaw as awarded the Carnegie Medal after he saved people from a possible explosion in Morganton, North Carolina, on March 21, 1989. Bradshaw, then 36, worked as a security officer at the time and was alerted to escaping propane gas from an opened valve of a tank outside one of the residential cottages of the state institution where he was employed. When he arrived at the scene, he found that the highly flammable gas had formed a large, white cloud that was beginning to the enter the basement of the cottage, where the slightest source of ignition would have precipitated an explosion. Bradshaw immediately entered the cloud and turned off the valve, then left for pliers and re-entered the cloud to tighten it. He then helped to evacuate the cottage, some of the residents of which were not ambulatory.
Bradshaw was preceded in death by his grandson, James. He is survived by his wife, Edith Bradshaw; siblings, Robert Kelly, Vickie Deal, and Debra Richards; son, William Bradshaw, Jr.; daughters, Kim Phillips and Kelly Paige; his three grandchildren, Zachary, Jesse, and Brittany; and four great-grandchildren.