One icy morning in February, Vernon Graven, a driver from Sullivan, Mo., was scheduled to deliver to a remote location outside of Leasburg, Mo. Graven called ahead to talk with the customer to confirm the road was passable and told the customer he would arrive within 20 minutes.
When Graven pulled his truck around the side of the customer’s barn, he glanced across the nearby pond and noticed something was wrong. There was a hole in the ice, and someone was clinging to the edge of the hole.
Graven jumped out of his vehicle and could faintly hear someone calling for help. He quickly discovered it was the customer who had fallen through the ice. The man had managed to get his shoulders and one leg up out of the water, but he couldn’t pull himself out.
The frigid winter air was well below freezing that morning and Graven knew the man was in danger of drowning and hypothermia. Graven quickly searched for something he could find to throw to the customer to pull him out. It wasn’t long before he discovered a garden hose that was near the driveway. Graven grabbed the hose, tied it into a lasso and threw it to the freezing man.
After two misses, the third toss landed in a position where the customer got a hold of it and Graven hauled the man to dry land.
“He could barely talk when I pulled him out,” Graven says. “If I hadn’t got there when I did, he may have frozen to death.”
Graven wondered if he would have to carry the man, but the customer said he thought he could walk. With Graven assisting him, they began to walk to the customer’s house. As they were making their way to the home, two people inside, unaware of the accident, came outside to help. Together, they got the customer inside, removed his cold, wet clothing and worked on warming him up.
As he recovered his warmth, the customer said he knew Graven was on his way, and he knew he “just needed to hang on until you arrived.” The man had been in the water around 10 minutes before Graven rescued him.
One of Graven’s tosses of the garden hose knocked the man’s glasses off his face, but the customer said he didn’t mind considering the circumstances.
Graven says there was no hesitation in his mind when he arrived on the scene.
“When someone needs help, you help them,” he says.
Jared Lause, plant manager for Union, Potosi and Sullivan, says Graven’s willingness to put someone else’s needs above his own and do the right thing is not out of the ordinary.
“Vernon has always given his best to the customers he serves and MFA Oil,” Lause says. “He is passionate about providing excellent service and his heroic actions are just a reflection of the type of person he is. Vernon told me, ‘God put me in the right place at the right time to help save him.’ When I think about the company’s core values, I think of Vernon. I consider myself blessed to have worked with him and we will miss him after he retires in August.”
Graven will have been with the company for 11 years when he retires on Aug. 10.
District Manager Trevor Honeycutt commends Graven for his commitment to doing the right thing and his alertness to his surroundings, which Honeycutt says, “no doubt saved our customer’s life.”
“In my brief time as southeast district manager, I’ve found Vernon to be a person of strong character who regularly puts his customers first,” Honeycutt says. “He has helped us develop younger employees, and he is a great example of our values. We will miss him when he retires, but Vernon has certainly earned the opportunity to step back and enjoy life and his family.”