My paternal grandfather, Charles Judson “Charlie” Manley (1899-1974) was one of those quiet, unassuming men who never seemed to have a bad word to say about anybody. I remember him as a genuinely good man. Apparently, he was also considerably more of a badass than I ever realized.

In 1959, Charlie was 60 years old and had been a member of the Tecumseh Fire Department since 1942, driving the fire truck for the previous ten years. One afternoon, a loaded railroad boxcar became uncoupled while a New York Central crew was switching cars near Tecumseh Products. The runaway car began rolling toward the busy intersection of Chicago Boulevard and Evans Street in Downtown Tecumseh – and it was gaining speed.

Charlie went after it.

He caught up with the moving boxcar near West Pottawatamie and South Evans, climbed aboard, pulled himself up the steel ladder and turned the manual brake. The runaway car stopped roughly 100 feet short of what the local newspaper described as a possible disaster.

There’s another part of this story that the newspaper didn’t mention.

My grandfather had a club foot.

He walked his entire life with a distinctive, uneven gait. Yet at 60 years old, when he saw a runaway railroad car heading toward downtown Tecumseh, apparently none of that mattered. He ran after it, climbed aboard and stopped it.

The Tecumseh Herald later published an editorial entitled “A Citation for Charlie”. It’s conclusion was wonderfully simple: there had been no disaster and no tragedy to report because Charlie had prevented it.

All they could say was, “Thank you, Charlie.”

More than sixty years later as his granddaughter, I think it’s worth saying again.

Thank you, Grandpa.