Most of the stories I cover date back more than a hundred years – but here’s one well within living memory.
In July 1977 Terry Rushworth was walking by Sundorne Pool in Shrewsbury.
He looked over and saw what he thought was a “blackened tree stump sticking out” about 20 feet from the bank. He thought nothing of it until a hand started waving and the muddy man called out for help.
Mr Rushworth, who was a 28 year old soft drinks salesman from Gloucester Road, grabbed two planks of wood that by some miracle were sitting by the side of the pool.
Laying the planks onto the mud he first managed to reach the dog, freeing it, then “up to his waist in mud” he pulled its exhausted owner onto the wood and then to the bank.
Here’s what Terry told the Shrewsbury correspondent for the Birmingham Daily Post.
The man he saved was a Mr Michael Williams, a 28 year old bachelor and car park attendant from Field Crescent. He was taken to hospital. He’d said he’d waded in to save his Labrador after it became stuck in the mud.
As you can see beneath the story went national and made it to page two of the Daily Mirror.
Sadly the hero of this story, Terry Rushworth died in February 1986, when he drowned in the River Severn.
News From The Past 