Charlie Lee Coe

     "On February 6, 1923, Charley Lee Coe made a great sacrifice. Charley was an oil field driller and lived with his wife, Helen (Rosencranth), and three children in Newtown and then in Burkburnett. On the day we was to take his daughter to the Wichita County Fair, Coe saw a fire at a neighbor's house. Coe worked his way through the smoke-filled home and found Arnold and David Hahn (ages 3 and 1) trapped in a bedroom. A neighbor knocked out a door panel through which Arnold Hahn was saved. Flames then overtook the home and claimed the flives of Coe and David Hahn. In January 1924, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission established a pension for Coe's family and awarded him a posthumous Carnegie Gold Medal for his brave actions." (2012)

     Thanks to Becky Trammell, who moved toward the installation of this marker, the community may feel inspired by an action taken by a man who in 1923 attempted to save the lives of two children, losing his own. He was found dead huddling protectively over the second child he had gathered from a burning house. So brave was Charlie Lee Coe, that he was awarded the Carnegie Gold Medal. Trammell indicated that the award he received post-posthumously was the nineteenth and last of the gold medallions; thereafter they were awarded in silver; and now they are awarded in bronze.

Robert Palmer, president of the Wichita County Historical Commission, Pat Norriss, Terri Coe-Barner, Alexander Coe-Barner, and Bard Barner stand before the marker. 

Photos courtesy of the Museum of North Texas Museum and Archives and the Wichita County Historical Commission.