Goodyear North American Highway Hero Award
Past Winners
2006
Edward A. Regener
Edward A. Regener, of Perris, Calif., escaped one fire and jumped into another to save the lives of two men trapped in their burning car.
The FedEx Freight truck driver scrambled from the passenger door of his damaged cab; a burning pickup truck was lodged against his driver’s door, blocking an easy exit. To make matters worse, his twin trailers contained hazardous materials that would contribute to the spread of a toxic fire.
2005
Douglas Crawford
Douglas Crawford of Ashford, Ala., a driver for Saia Motor Freight Lines Inc., was named the 23rd Goodyear North America Highway Hero.
Crawford helped save the life of one of his own when a Roadway 18-wheeler collided with Herman Langford’s Sexton Farms Trucking tractor-trailer. Both tractors exploded into flames. Dodging out-of-control cars trying to avoid the accident, Crawford immediately parked on the highway shoulder and ran across the median and was able to pull Langford out of the burning truck.
2004
Rick Dent
A Texas truck driver – called a “mountain of a man” by the family whose lives he saved – was named Thursday night as the 22nd Goodyear North American Highway Hero.
Rick Dent – a 6-foot, 300-pound, Diana, Texas, driver for Groendyke Transport Inc. – was credited with coming to the aid of Bob Strickland and his small children, Megan and Paul, when Strickland's car swerved to miss a deer and landed in a water-filled ditch.
2003
Derrick Harris
The 21st annual Goodyear North America Highway Hero was a Virginia truck driver who saved the life of an individual deliberately set on fire, then helped police locate and arrest the person charged with the hideous crime. Harris, a driver with Schneider since October 2002, was also recognized by his employer with Schneider's Presidential Citation Award.
2002
Charles Ingram
Charles Ingram, a six- year veteran driver for FedEx Ground was the 2002 North American Highway Hero. On Oct. 28, 2002, Ingram was driving his 18-wheeler in the metro Atlanta area when he came upon an accident with a car on fire. There were two passengers trapped in the burning vehicle, and no bystanders were attempting to fight the flames and rescue the pair. Ingram grabbed a hammer and rushed forward. He broke out the passenger-side rear window and pulled the passenger out of the vehicle. He then broke the driver's window, and pulled free the unconscious driver.
2001
Larry "Scott" Travis
Travis is a 10-year veteran and a master trainer for Covenant Transportation in Chattanooga, Tenn. and the 2001 North American Highway Hero. Travis was traveling just outside Sheridan, Ark., when he saw flames shooting into the air from an SUV that had run off the road into a deep ditch. Fire extinguisher in hand, he rushed into the deep ditch. As he approached the vehicle, Travis realized there was a woman behind the wheel, apparently unconscious. Passing his fire extinguisher to another bystander, Travis reached through an opening in the flames to pull the woman from the SUV, suffering burns on his own body in the process. He struggled to pull her through the high overgrowth, and was repeatedly showered with flame and ash. Just seconds after pulling the woman from the vehicle, it exploded.
2000
David Zorn's
Selfless actions in rescuing a police officer under attack on the side of the highway earned him the 2000 Goodyear North American Highway Hero Award. Zorn, of Forest Park, Ga., was traveling through Norcross, Ga., when he witnessed a police officer being attacked on the side of the road. The suspect had pinned the officer and was trying to get his gun. However, when Zorn stopped his 18-wheeler to assist, the suspect fled. Brandishing a large flashlight, Zorn pursued the suspect, caught him and held him until the police arrived.
1999
Terry Harvey and Floyd Anthony Miller
Truck drivers Terry Harvey and Floyd Anthony Miller didn’t know each other when they came across a fiery two-car accident on Kentucky’s Mountain Highway. Yet they worked together like seasoned partners and saved the two motorists from near certain death.
Their bravery and split-second ingenuity earned them the title of Goodyear North America Highway Heroes for 1999. The award was announced today at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky.
1998
Wayne Carpenter
At a press conference at the Mid-America Truck Show in Louisville, Kentucky, Carpenter, a 13-year trucking professional who drives for Cheshire Oil Company, was identified as the winner of the nations' most prestigious truck industry award.
Carpenter was headed for his terminal to pick up a load when he saw the head-on collision of a car and truck, causing both vehicles to explode in flames. Carpenter emptied his fire extinguisher on the blaze in a futile attempt to control the escalating fire.
The badly injured passenger in the car had managed to pull free of the burning wreckage and yelled to Carpenter that the driver was trapped. With no regard for risk to himself, Carpenter lunged into the flames and pulled the unconscious and critically injured driver out of the car. Later, the injured passenger car operator succumbed.
1997
Thomas Lawson, Lithonia, Georgia
The nation's 15th annual Goodyear National Highway Hero is a truck driver from Lithonia, Ga., who saved a man's life by pulling him from a burning vehicle moments before it exploded. Thomas Lawson, a 14-year veteran driver for ABF Freight Systems, Inc. in Fort Smith, Ark., accepted the designation, a $20,000 U.S. Savings Bond and a diamond ring on The Nashville Network's PrimeTime Country program.
1996
Jeff May, Guilford, Conn., and Clint LeFabvre, Moultonborough, New Hampshire
May and LeFabvre, driving for UPS from separate terminals in different states, converged on an accident scene one foggy night in Massachusetts. The two pulled a critically injured victim from his car moments before the vehicle’s gas tank exploded and engulfed the car in flames. Both men then rescued the second accident victim whose vehicle had run off the road and was wedged in a tree 20 feet in the air. May and LeFabvre stopped the victim, who was in shock, from stepping out of the truck and then helped him climb down from the tree.
1995
Rob Lomanno, Malden, Mass., and Chris Kendall, Nashua, New Hampshire
Lomanno and Kendall, drivers for Clark & Reid Executive Movers, pried the doors off a burning sport utility vehicle to pull to safety a critically injured woman and her three children. Actions by the two truckers saved the lives of the children. Their mother succumbed to injuries sustained in the accident.
1994
Todd Forbush, Sr., Elyria, Ohio
Forbush crawled on his stomach underneath and into the jammed open door of a pickup truck to rescue the young woman pinned behind the wheel after she fell asleep and slammed at full speed into his UPS truck in rural Ohio. Her truck burst into flames after hitting Forbushs' truck at least three times as the smaller truck spun out of control after the initial impact. Forbush, a career driver for UPS, took less than 10 seconds, according to his truck's computer, to exit the cab and reach the young woman to help her. Today, she has almost fully recovered.
1993
Boyd Applegate, San Diego, California
In just over two months, Applegate participated in life-saving efforts at two accident scenes. Thanks to his quick thinking and willingness to be of help, two motor vehicle accident victims are alive today. In the first incident, Applegate climbed into a steep, rocky ravine in the middle of the night and rescued a driver, thrown clear of his vehicle and hidden among some rocks on the opposite side of the ravine.
In the second incident, Applegate cleared the breathing passage of an L.A. patrolman whose face had been crushed in a car accident that also injured his wife.
1992
Connie Cooper and Patrick Fee, Cottonwood, California
Working together, this husband and wife driving team saved a woman from certain death when they pulled her from the center lane of an interstate highway under an overpass where she had been thrown after being attacked. Officials speculate her attacker threw her into the path of traffic to destroy evidence. Cooper and Fee dodged and sidestepped traffic to pull the woman to safety; and later, courtroom testimony based on the victim's conversations with Cooper, led to the arrest of a suspect and his subsequent conviction and imprisonment.
1991
Phillip Houck, Tupelo, Oklahoma
Houck saw a station wagon strike the rear end of a parked flatbed trailer, then burst into flames. The driver was decapitated and three children in the back of the wrecked vehicle were in danger of burning, so Houck used a fire extinguisher, a pipe and his hands to smash out the windows of the car and pull the children to safety.
1990
Kenneth Bass, Milton, Florida
Bass saved a man from drowning by making repeated attempts to pull him from a submerged car. Bass glimpsed the splash as a car left the road at a narrow bridge and plunged into a swiftly running and deep stream in the dark of night.
1989
Rickey McFadden, Lexington, Ohio
McFadden rescued two people by climbing into a smoking, overturned car as it teetered on the edge of a ravine, held from plummeting down the precipice only by a small sapling.
1988
Tommy Smith, Paragould, Arkansas
Smith twice entered a burning wrecked car to rescue injured motorists. He first pulled free a female occupant who regained consciousness and mumbled that her husband was still in the car. Smith went back into the car, got into the burning back seat and used his feet to push on the front seat to free the man pinned in the wreckage.
1987
Robert Williams, Fort Smith, Arkansas
Williams was cited for plunging into a burning vehicle and cutting the driver's seat belt to free her before the car exploded.
1986
James Warren, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Warren rescued a 13-year-old mentally handicapped child from a burning vehicle, tearing off a jammed door to reach him.
1985
Curt Jones, Oneonta, Alabama
Jones, then a resident of Blaine, Tenn., was cited as the first trucker to emblazon his tractor-trailer rig with huge posters of missing children, to point out the plight of runaways. He organized 10 truck convoys to call attention to the need for more awareness of missing children, and began a program of visiting schools urging youngsters to seek counseling instead of running from problems.
1984
Dennis Myers, Leipsic, Ohio
Myers, a cross-country driver, rescued a crash victim seconds before the damaged vehicle exploded.
1983
Ronnie Stapleton, Beckley, West Virginia
Stapleton used his bare hands to tear off the back door of a burning car, then broke the vehicle's back seat in two to extricate the vehicle's two unconscious occupants. At that time, Stapleton -- who was also a preacher -- hauled explosives.
