Charles Aime Gagnon, 18, Civilian Conservation Corps member, attempted to save one or more children and saved Joseph P. Lapointe, 32, shoemaker, from burning, Auburn, Maine, December 25, 1937. Several of Lapointe’s children and others were asleep in a bedroom on the second floor of a frame house when the house took fire on the first floor. Lapointe went to the bedroom, in which there was smoke, and became dazed. Very soon afterward Gagnon, having the children in mind, ran through a room containing flames and intense heat to stairs, at the top of which he kicked a pane from a window. Flames rose up the stairway; and he went to a window at the opposite side of the room, noting Lapointe at that window, semiconscious and in contact with flames. He broke the window and shoved Lapointe through it to the ground. Gagnon crawled through the opening and dropped head first to the ground. Within five minutes part of the roof collapsed, and the house was destroyed. Five persons died in the fire. Lapointe sustained burns but recovered. Gagnon was seriously burned, and he was disabled for seven weeks but recovered.
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