by

Todd Kyle

    Phillip Lund was born in 1901 to a poor Cedar Falls family. He finished sixth grade, but because of his family’s financial status, he had to work so the family could survive. In 1921, Lund died in a heroic effort to save two girls from drowning.[1] Mary Vietor and Minerva Stalkner, both students at the Iowa State Teachers’ College (now UNI), were in a canoe on the Cedar River when tragedy struck. Robert Riker saw the girls in the canoe on the Cedar and immediately recognized that the water was too fast and turbulent at the bend above the dam. He immediately went out to them in his boat and offered them a ride. When his engine quit, the girls became frantic and jumped back for their canoe. Phillip Lund was working at the City Boat Livery when he saw the girls’ predicament. Phillip reached the girls, but because they grabbed the sides of his rowboat, he was unable to row and the boat went over the dam. Lund and Mary Vietor perished in the accident but Stalknar was saved because she held on to an oar. Lund had died at the young age of twenty. After the Carnegie Hero Commission heard about Lund’s bravery, it posthumously awarded him the Carnegie Medal for Bravery. Because of the family’s financial position, the Cedar Falls Commercial Club set up a fund to pay for Lund’s funeral. It was soon apparent that there was surplus money and a fund was set up for a "Hero Monument Fund." Ackley, Minerva Stalkner’s hometown, offered to pay half of the cost of the monument in Greenwood Cemetery. The Carnegie Commission also awarded money to the Lund family, who in turn donated the money to the Superintendent of Schools to allow other students to get the education that their son had to give up. In 1974, Cedar Falls School Superintendent James Robinson donated the Carnegie medal to the Cedar Falls Historical Society.

Endnotes

1."Two Drowned", Waterloo Courier, 23 May 1921, p 1. 

  Bibliography

Hake, Herbert V. 101 Stories of Cedar Falls Cedar Falls: IA, 1977. 

"Two Drowned", Waterloo Courier, May 23, 1921, p 1.