August-September 2022 • Nebraskaland 33
any material amends for the crippling injuries you received,"
and it went without saying that the railroad would take no
further responsibility for its former employee, even though
he was injured on the job and the boy he rescued was the son
of a station agent. It was up to local people to provide for the
disabled 25-year-old.
Poell posed for photographs with the child he rescued;
prints were sold to raise money to buy a small house for
Poell and his wife. The young man needed a desk job, so Hall
County voters elected him county clerk.
According to railroad historian Jim Reisdorff , Poell resigned
his clerkship in 1910 after being accused of misappropriating
county funds. Poell left Grand Island and eventually moved
to Kansas. But he maintained a lifelong friendship with Paul
Ussary, the little boy he had rescued. Ussary, who grew up to
be a train dispatcher, recalled that Poell "was like a second
father to me." Reisdorff tells the story in his new book, Hero
of the Rails (South Platte Press).
For me, the oddest part of Poell's story is that I fi rst heard of
him while researching a nearly identical 1907 railroad rescue
between Seward and Milford. Marion Lux didn't lose any
limbs, but like Poell, he rescued a toddler by climbing out on
a locomotive's cow-catcher. How many small children were
playing on railroad tracks in those days?
N
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Prints of this reenactment of the rescue were sold to raise money for Poell and his wife. Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer.
