Well-thrown Lasso Saves Boy from Icy Death
by James Rada, Jr.
Charlie Jones, a twelve-year-old Thurmont youth, spent one December afternoon in 1915 walking through the forests around Thurmont, gathering pine boughs and other greens to use to make Christmas decorations. With his bag full of greenery, he headed home.
Though young, Charles was the man of the family. His father had died in 1911, leaving Mary Ann Jones a widow to support four children. She taught high school, and Charles helped in the care of his two younger brothers and younger sister. He had wanted to do something special for his family and decorate their home.
It had been cold out; ice had formed on most of the creeks in the area, and it appeared thick. Charles decided that he would take a shortcut across the pond formed by the Thurmont Electric Light Dam. He started out onto the ice, carefully easing his weight onto it to make sure it would hold. It did, and he grew more confident and walked further out.
Suddenly, the ice cracked and disappeared beneath his feet. “As the youth shot toward the bottom of the dam, he flung his hands outward, grasping the jagged edge of the broken ice,” the
Gettysburg Times reported.
Luckily, the ice held. Charles screamed, but he was alone, and the nearest house was half a mile away. He tried to pull himself up, but his clothes were sodden with water, and his legs were starting to go numb in the freezing water.
He couldn’t swim in that condition, and if he let go, he would sink into the pond that was thirteen feet deep at that point.
His only option was to scream and hope that someone heard him before he lost his grip on the ice.
Charles had been in the water around fifteen minutes when Frank and Albert Harne of Foxville came riding along in their buggy. They heard Charles’ screams and saw the boy struggling to stay out of the water.
Frank jumped out of the buggy and unclipped the harness from the horse; he quickly fashioned a lasso. Then he edged himself out onto the ice, knowing that if it couldn’t hold the weight of the boy, it would give way under his weight at some point.
“Cautiously, but quickly, the man walked over the ice toward the youth, who gave indications of exhaustion and of relinquishing his grasp on the ice,” the
Gettysburg Times reported.
Eventually, he was close enough to throw the lasso. It landed around Charles’s neck on the first throw. The boy grabbed hold of the leather. Frank began backing up, pulling Charles out of the water.
The Harne Brothers bundled Charles up and took him to his grandmother’s house, who lived a mile away. He was so cold that his clothing was sticking to his body and couldn’t be removed. He was placed in a warm bed and kept warm to help bring up his body temperature.
Charles recovered from his ordeal and was soon as good as new.
He grew up to become a salesman who lived in different towns around the state. When he retired, he returned with his family to Thurmont. He died in 1977 at age seventy-four and is buried in Wellers Cemetery.
