Norman L. Geissler saved Sharon, Laurie, and Paul Newman from suffocation, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, April 21, 1963. At night, fire broke out in the kitchen of a three-story dwelling in which the Newman children were asleep in bedrooms on the second floor. The maid, the only other person in the dwelling, telephoned a volunteer fire company but was driven out by dense smoke when she attempted to reach the second floor. Three men made their way to a landing on the stairs before they also were forced out by the smoke. Geissler, 40, machinist, arrived and learned that four children were on the second floor. Despite a warning not to do so, Geissler entered the dwelling and crawled to the stairway, which was opposite the door of the burning kitchen. He ascended to the second floor and found Sharon, 7, Laurie, 2, and Paul, 4, in the hall. Geissler gathered all three into his arms and, coughing from smoke he had inhaled, carried them downstairs. Crouching beneath flames, which had spread onto the hall ceiling, he took the children from the dwelling and then collapsed from smoke inhalation. Another man rescued the fourth child. Geissler, the other man, and the four children were given oxygen, and they recovered.
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