Shaw Explores Tom Lee’s Background

Senior Makhi Shaw made a presentation in chapel about Tom Lee, whose heroism in 1925 was memorialized with the dedication of Tom Lee Park along the Memphis riverbank in 1954.
Shaw showed a video detailing how Lee saved 32 men, women, and children from the swift, icy waters of the Mississippi River after the M.E. Norman, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers steamboat, capsized. Lee could not swim but that didn’t stop him from filling his small wooden skiff with passengers as he made his way from the wreckage to the shore multiple times.

He was honored by President Calvin Coolidge and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for his bravery. A bronze sculpture depicting Lee rescuing a victim is featured in Tom Lee Park.
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