Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1957. Journal driver loses life while trying to save boy

John A. Macleod was driving his Providence Journal delivery truck down Reservoir Avenue in Cranston just before 3:30 p.m. Feb. 18, 1957, when he spotted a boy who had fallen through the ice of Blackamore Pond.

Macleod pulled over, grabbed two ladders from an Old Colony Advertising Co. truck and dashed toward the pond. As Macleod made his way across the ice from the far side of the pond, two boys with hockey sticks headed toward the one who had fallen through.

Halfway across the pond -- still 150 feet from the boy in the pond -- the ice beneath Macleod gave way, dumping him into the frigid water. As Macleod clung to one of the ladders, one of the boys with hockey sticks also broke through the ice.

Meanwhile, firemen had been summoned by another boy who had fallen through with the first, but managed to free himself and run to a nearby house for help.

As Macleod held onto the ladder and watched, firemen tossed lifelines to the boys and dragged them on their bellies across the ice to shore.

When rescuers turned their attention to Macleod, all they saw was a ladder next to a hole in the ice. It took 20 minutes to maneuver rescue boats to the hole and another 30 minutes to locate Macleod and bring him to the surface with grappling irons.

Firefighters on shore administered oxygen and artificial respiration for 20 minutes before a Cranston doctor pronounced Macleod dead.

In November that year, the Carnegie Hero Fund bestowed bronze medals for "outstanding acts of heroism" on William Walsh, the boy with the hockey stick who had fallen through the ice, and on Macleod.