Lillian M. Coburn

Lillian M. Coburn, 42, nurse, saved William D. Minckler, Sr., 62, civil engineer, and William D. Minckler, Jr., 25, civil engineer’s assistant, from burning, Susanville, California, September 7, 1913. The elder Minckler was a patient at a hospital and could walk only with difficulty because of rheumatism, and his son was in the room adjoining his, a patient suffering from concussion of the brain. The younger man was delirious. Fire broke out in the elder man’s room while he was asleep and under the influence of medicine. The flames spread rapidly and were shooting out of the upper part of the door when Mrs. Coburn discovered the fire. She ran from a place of safety into the room, put a towel over the patient’s head and took him to the hall. She took him to the door of his son’s room then entered the son’s room and tried to put him through a window. The flames were bursting through the partition between the rooms. The man struggled so violently that Mrs. Coburn was thrown to the floor. She twisted a towel around his head and neck and dragged him across the room to the hall. The elder man was dazed, and he was standing where Mrs. Coburn had left him. A draft was driving the flames toward him, and they were close. The hall was filled with dense smoke. Mrs. Coburn pushed the elder man before her with one hand and dragged the younger man after her to the end of the hall, about 30 feet distant. She then passed through a door and was out of the path of the flames. Her clothes and hair were burning. An hour later the whole building was in ruins. Mrs. Coburn was seriously burned and permanently disfigured. The men were burned, but they recovered.