Kathy Fiscus

history.

On the afternoon of Friday, April 8, 1949, Kathy Fiscus was playing with her sister Barbara and cousin Gus in a field in San Marino when she fell down the 14-inch wide shaft of an abandoned water well. (Ironically her father, David Fiscus, worked for the California Water & Telephone Co., which had drilled the well in 1903. He had recently testified before the state legislature for a proposed law that would require the cementing of all old wells.) Within hours a major rescue effort was underway with "(d)rills, derricks, bulldozers and trucks...from a dozen towns...(t)hree giant cranes...(and f)ifty floodlights...from Hollywood studios."Fact|date=September 2008 After digging down 100 feet, workers reached Kathy Sunday night. After a doctor was lowered into the shaft an announcement was made to the more than 10,000 people who had gathered to watch the rescue: "Kathy is dead and apparently has been dead since she was last heard speaking." It was determined that she died shortly after the fall from a lack of oxygen.

The rescue received nationwide attention in the United States as it was carried live on radio and on television, a still-new medium, by station KTLA. It is regarded as a watershed event in live TV coverage [cite web | url=http://www.latimes.com/news/local/history/la-125th-leaving-pg,1,1705379.photogallery?index=6 | title=Leaving Their Mark - Kathy Fiscus | publisher=Los Angeles Times | accessdate=2008-05-12] [cite web | url=http://ktla.trb.com/extras/ktla/60th/news-kathyfiscus.html | title=Kathy Fiscus Tragedy | author=David L. Ulin | publisher=KTLA, adapted from a Los Angeles Times article | accessdate=2008-05-12] and was recalled nearly 40 years later after the 1987 rescue of Jessica McClure had a happier ending.

The location of the well is now a football field at San Marino High School. Kathy is buried at Glen Abbey Memorial Park in Bonita, California. The inscription on her marker reads, "One Little Girl Who United The World For A Moment".cite web | url=http://www.geocities.com/garycountry/kathyfiscus.html | title=The Death of Little Kathy Fiscus | author=Gary Carico | publisher=Gary's Country | accessdate=2008-07-03]

Later in 1949, country singer Jimmie Osborne wrote and recorded the song "The Death of Little Kathy Fiscus" (King 788). [cite web | url=http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/Tony_Valdez/2008/03/31/Kathy_Fiscus_A_Fox_Flashback | title=Kathy Fiscus: A Fox Flashback | author=Tony Valdez | accessdate=2008-07-03] The single sold over one million copies and Osborne donated half the proceeds to the Fiscus family.

Woody Allen fictionalized the Kathy Fiscus tragedy in his 1987 film Radio Days. In the film a little girl named Polly Phelps falls into a well in Pennsylvania. It becomes a big national story and, like the real life Kathy Fiscus, little Polly does not survive.

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