Scout Hero & my Half 9th cousin once removed

 

On August 29, 1917, at approximately 12:20 PM, Edward S. Goodnow, age 16, of 136 King Street, Springfield, MA went swimming with other boys at Shaker Pond during a lunch break from working on a nearby tobacco farm in then Thompsonville, CT (current day Enfield, CT near Shaker Station RR Station just south of Springfield, MA). Two other boys reportedly stepped off of a ledge in the pond and began to drown. Goodnow managed to separate the two and save one, but the other, in a panic, reportedly got a stranglehold around Goodnow's neck. Both were drowned. Attempts to revive both using the latest technology, a pulmotor, proved unsuccessful. Edward S. Goodnow was a First Class Scout of Boys Scouts of America Troop 14, sponsored by First Church in Springfield, MA. For his selfless act of courage and sacrifice, Goodnow was one of four boys who were all simultaneously awarded, posthumously, the very first Gold Honor Awards by BSA's National Court of Honor. Goodnow is buried in a family plot in the Locust Hill Cemetery in Montague, MA.

In 2017, the local BSA Council held a Centennial Court of Honor at the cemetery for Goodnow. The Goodnow family, which still possesses Goodnow's Gold Honor Award, was present and sponsored a new inscription on the family plot monument reading: "Edward S. Goodnow, A Boy Scout Hero Who Gave His Life For Another." The inscription is similar to that of Goodnow's Gold Honor co-recipient, Robert W. Eicher, (who also drowned attempting to rescue another) buried in Jeannette, PA whose stone reads "Boy Hero Who Gave His Life For Another." The story of these four boy recipients was memorialized in a 1932 booklet from the BSA National Court of Honor entitled "Boy Heroes of Today." Go to: http://www.thedump.scoutscan.com/boyheroes.pdf.

According to accounts of author Michael S. Malone in his book "Running Toward Danger: Real Life Scouting Action Stories of Heroism, Valor and Guts," WindRush Publishing 2015, the death of these boys is believed to have had a significant impact upon BSA's Founders. In response, the BSA partnered with the American Red Cross to dramatically increased the first aid, safety, lifesaving, swimming and water safety requirements for millions of Boy Scouts who followed them and who then went on to save thousands of lives. Such is the legacy of First Class Scout Edward Samuel Goodnow and his co-recipients. "Learn it Young, Remember It Forever:" https://youtu.be/rpMFkcSn5IM.