The Making of a Hero: What happened to Tom Lee after the river rescue
Tom Lee’s house on Mansfield Street is a work in progress. Despite the mural across the front of the house, there is a noticed from city code enforcement that the house is unsafe for occupancy that was posted this past December. (Jane Roberts/The Daily Memphian file)
The day after the M.E. Norman riverboat capsized and sank on the Mississippi River south of Memphis, the Kissling brothers, Hans and F.H., were on a team working to recover bodies and clear the river channel.
Seven miles south of Cow Island Bend, they found the boat’s pilot house that had been ripped from the top as the sternwheeler capsized before going down sideways beneath the muddy waters and into the treacherous currents.
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Tom Lee Centennial Tom Lee E.H. Crump Subscriber OnlyThank you for supporting local journalism.
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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