Long before White County’s George Fisher became a nationally known cartoonist, he helped save a young life in Little Rock, an act that was witnessed by two competing newspaper reporters. Following is an excerpt from the oral histories of the Arkansas Gazette being prepared by the University of Arkansas. The speaker is Jerry McConnell, who is living in retirement at Greenwood.
I remember once, when I was working the police beat at the [Arkansas] Democrat, a fire broke out early on Sunday morning, and Joe Wirges [of the Arkansas Gazette] and I raced up there to cover it. It was in an apartment house near the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, on Louisiana, I think. When we got there, we found that a few people had been trapped in the apartment house but were rescued. One woman had been trapped on the second floor with her baby. So she put the baby in a dresser drawer and dropped it out the window to a man who caught it. That man was George Fisher, who later became the editorial cartoonist for the Gazette. I think George was working for the telephone company at the time. At any rate, that was the first time I met George Fisher.
George, who was born at Searcy and grew up at Beebe, had already been recognized for heroism earlier. He earned a Bronze Star in WWII.
George Fisher was operating a graphics service in Little Rock when he died December 15, 2003. He was returned to Beebe for burial. The Gazette oral histories may be found on the Internet at
http://libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/ACOVH/default.asp
