Go to the homepage for the Sylva Herald and Ruralite

Carnegie Medal for Heroism awarded to Goldsmith, Munn

By Rose Hooper
Michael Munn

Michael Munn

 For risking their lives to save newlyweds from a deadly house fire, Phillip Goldsmith and Michael Munn have received the Carnegie Medal for Extraordinary Heroism.

The Pittsburgh-based hero fund was established by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and, along with a bronze medal, awards each hero a grant of $3,500. Some 20 others throughout the United States and Canada received the Carnegie Medal during honors June 29. 		Phillip Goldsmith

Phillip Goldsmith
In 1998, on a cold, dark December morning, Goldsmith and Munn pulled Keith Miller, 23, and his 20-year-old bride, Nadia, from the flames of their home near the Thorpe Power Plant on N.C. 107.

Munn, then 27, and Goldsmith, then 26, were driving south to their job site at Cedar Creek when they came upon the fire, the only visible light in the dark of the early morning.

As Goldsmith climbed through the window, visibility was "less than zero. The smoke was so dark and thick. I've never experienced anything like that," said this young man, who now lives in Houston.

They discovered Keith, unconscious and bloody on the floor next to the window he had tried to break in an attempt to escape. As they pulled his wife off the bed, through the window and down the ladder into the frost-covered ground, she didn't wake up.

"Their bodies were burned so badly," said Munn, who lives in Cullowhee's Wayehutta community, "that you could see the skin just rolling off them. Black tar was pouring out their mouths and noses."

The newlyweds were taken by helicopter to Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn., where Keith died eight days later and Nadia remained several months for intensive skin grafting and recovery. Both Goldsmith and Munn said they don't feel like heroes.

"Firemen do this stuff all the time," they said. "If somebody needs help, you help them. That's the way we were brought up."

"They didn't have to stop to help; nobody would have known," said Keith Ashe, assistant fire chief of the Cullowhee Volunteer Fire Department. "But they did. It was their quick thinking and quick acting that kept that couple from burning to death."

The Cullowhee Fire Department, which responded to the fire, was one of the agencies responsible for nominating Munn and Goldsmith for the Carnegie Medal for Extraordinary Heroism.

Back to Archive: 07/06/00.