Longtime visitor remembers rescue

"We were no heroes,'' Harvey Leininger says of his lifesaving act decades ago on Clearwater Beach. "We just try to help people.''

By SHARON TUBBS

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

CLEARWATER -- Clearwater Beach, 1962. No parking lots, no neon, no kiosks. All that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the asphalt is a wide expanse of sand.

Harvey Leininger stands near a beach motel when he hears a scream.

Without pausing, Leininger jumps over the sea wall and sprints toward the gulf.

An older man struggles to stay afloat against the current. Leininger, 35 and agile from his work as a volunteer firefighter back home in Finneytown, Ohio, dives into the water.

Two lifeguards rush to his side with a raft and lift the man aboard. As they muscle their way back to shore, Leininger presses his lips to the stranger's mouth and breathes air into his lungs.

The ambulance shows up and people gather round, but Leininger quietly drifts away without a word.

A story in the St. Petersburg Times captures the moment the next day. "Rescuer Saves Life, Vanishes," the headline reads.

"I sure would like to know that guy's name," the Clearwater patrolman who responded to the accident is quoted as saying. "That mouth-to-mouth breathing might have been the thing that made the difference."

Last week, almost four decades after that scene on Clearwater Beach, Leininger and his family were back. They have come here, to the Sea Captain Resort, nearly every summer since they can remember. For a week, they swim in the pools, parasail and bask in the Florida sun.

"When we cross over that causeway, we feel we're going home," said Leininger's wife, Nita.

But even as they return, year after year, Leininger never speaks about the rescue. The couple's twin daughters and son have talked about the near-drowning among themselves and friends, but Leininger says he has not uttered a word of it in 38 years.

"I didn't want to remember it at the time," he said last week. "We were no heroes. We just try to help people."

After all, the family says, the beach rescue was only one in a series. The family rattles off tales of rescue as if they were everyday occurrences, nestled among the graduations, the weddings, the grandchildren's births.

Smoke billowing from a nearby chimney? Leininger would stop his car and rush to help any way he could.

A stranded motorist on the roadside?

Leininger, who worked as a forklift operator before retiring, is there with flares and any other gadget or tool that might help someone in distress.

"We just can't pass an accident," he said.

Mrs. Leininger learned to keep books handy in the car to read to the kids. Sometimes, it could take awhile.

"We just knew Dad was going to help," said Leininger's daughter, Pam Zangardi. "We just waited till he was finished."

Once, a couple years after the Clearwater Beach accident, they saw that a truck had jack-knifed off the road. A man was trapped inside the cab, screaming for his life as gawkers gathered along the roadside helpless.

Leininger, the family says, took off down the hill and made his way to the wreckage. Somehow, he squirmed his way into the cab with the victim. The man was trapped inside and Leininger couldn't get him out. So he just stayed there with him, talking to him, stopping the blood flowing from a head wound as rescue crews dismantled the cab.

Outside, Leininger's children looked on for the two-hour ordeal. "I remember thinking my Dad was going to die," said his son, Rob, who was about 7 at the time.

But Harvey Leininger, better known as "Blackie" for his deep tan, was fine. He eased his way out of the cab and strode back to the car with his family. Rob remembers his father used water from the family's cooler to rinse the blood off his hands.

And then they left. Without fanfare or glory, the Leiningers said, they got back on the road to Clearwater.

On the way back home, they intended to pick up a newspaper near Valdosta, Ga., to find out whatever happened to that guy in the truck. For some reason, though, they never got around to it, Mrs. Leininger said.

"We don't know the outcome of that story," Mrs. Leininger said. "Once it's done, it's done."

Leininger is 73 now and recovering from a stroke he suffered four years ago. Last week he sat in a room at the Sea Captain, listening to his family boast of how he saved this one and helped that one. Leininger said little and fidgeted with place mats on the table, turning to look out the window.

If it were up to him, Leininger would still be the "unidentified man" in that 1962 Times article. The only reason this has come up now is because one of his brothers died about six months ago. When family members went through his things, they found a clipping of the article and a letter.

It seems Leininger's mother, who was on vacation with the family that year, wrote a letter to his brother, bragging of Harvey's rescue.

"So Harvey jumped up and started across the beach alongside the cop," Emma Leininger wrote. "He had to run out battling the waves all the way."

The family never knew the letter existed. So it brought back memories. Emma Leininger always was proud of her son. The day after the rescue, the family saw the article and Emma Leininger wanted to call the newspaper to reveal who the "rescuer" was. But her son wouldn't hear of it. The family packed up and left for Ohio.

It was Leininger's son, Rob, who told the secret; he called the Times with his father's story. Rob is a firefighter, just like his father. "He just kind of leads by example," Rob Leininger said.

Harvey Leininger, now a slender man with salt and pepper hair, pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the tears from his eyes. It was a miracle that he survived the stroke, he said. His goal in life now is what it has been all along.

"I just want to help people," he said.

But no longer can he dash to the scene of a raging fire or muscle a flailing man from the grip of the sea. In the evenings, it is his son who drives to the beach from the motel, past the restaurants, the parking lots and the bare-chested young men still wet from taking a dip.

Still, Leininger is the handyman of his suburban Ohio neighborhood. He talks to other stroke survivors. "I try to talk in front of people and say, "You can whip it, don't give up.' "

While in town last week, he handed a copy of his specialty, butterscotch coffee cake, to another couple visiting the Clearwater resort.

And as for that day in 1962, the man whose life Leininger helped save was Eugene Held, a visitor from St. Louis. At the time, Held was 67. Leininger's efforts added 12 years to his life. According to Social Security records, Held died in 1974.

- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.

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