Flood rescuer repeats father’s heroic actions

By doris | Published: October 4, 2009

Full Story atCNN.com

The youngest of five children, he was only 8 when his father died.

For three decades, he’d carried with him mere snapshots of memories: Family time at Christmas. Riding on the back of Dad’s motorcycle. Tommie Stephney’s love for drag-racing.

But as the 37-year-old Douglasville, Georgia, man set out September 22 to try and save a woman whose car was swept away by rushing waters, he thought of his father’s drowning. He, too, had fought to rescue people struggling against currents.

That was in 1979.

Tommie Stephney, a City of Atlanta employee, dove into the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, Georgia, to save canoeists who’d flipped their boat, his son said. He safely brought two to shore. The third, he said, panicked — forcing them both under. It would be a week before his father’s body was found.

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