Marker Text
Near this location, on September 26, 1907, 18-month old Gladys Dixon followed her elder sisters as they left for school. Their home being near the A. & N. track, the children usually took this route to town. A Burlington train was turning a sharp curve between the whistling post and the City Mills, coming from Milford.
Locomotive fireman, Marion Lux, looked up from the engine and saw the child on the track ahead. With no possibility to stop the train, he crawled out over the footboard to as near the front as he could, and just before the engine reached the child, threw himself forward, grasping the toddler and rolling down the embankment with the child in his arms.
In the leap from the train, Lux’s shirt was torn from his body and his back scalded from the engine steam. He carried the uninjured child to her mother and continued on his run to Lincoln. For his act of selfless courage, Marion Lux of Ravenna became Nebraska’s first recipient of a Silver Carnegie Hero Medal.
Location
2764 Isaac Walton Road, near Highway 15, Seward, NE. View the marker’s location HERE.
