Victor Heiser

Victor Heiser

Public Domain

Quick Facts

Significance:

Flood survivor and physician

Place of Birth:

Johntown, Pennsylvania

Date of Birth:

February 5, 1873

Place of Death:

Brooklyn, New York

Date of Death:

February 27, 1972

Place of Burial:

Southmont, Pennsylvania

Cemetery Name:

Grandview Cemetery

"Some time," they thought, "That dam will give way, but it won’t ever happen to us.” -Victor Heiser

Victor Heiser was sixteen when the Johnstown Flood occurred. He survived the flood, but his parents and possessions were lost in the flood. Victor left Johnstown and attended Jefferson Medical College and became a physician. He traveled the world to help eradicate leprosy, cholera, malaria and more. Through his work in the medical field, he is credited with saving up to 2,000,000 lives.

Victor Heiser published his autobiography, "An American Doctor's Odyssey: Adventures in Forty-Five Countries" in 1936. He writes in part:
"Nobody seemed particularly concerned at the time over the dam which rich Pittsburghers had maintained high up on the South Fork to provide water for their fishing streams. When the earthen dam had first been constructed, there had been some apprehension. There was a ninety foot head of water behind the embankment, and only a small spillway had been provided. But the dam had never burst and, with the passage of time, the townspeople, like those who live in the shadow of [the volcano] Vesuvius, grew calloused to the possibility of danger. 'Some time,' they thought, 'That dam will give way, but it won’t ever happen to us.'”

Victor was sent to the barn by his father on the day of the flood to untie horses due to the rising water. Right after the horses were untied, he heard a "dreadful roar." He looked back and saw his parents in the window of their home. His father was motioning for him to get onto the barn roof. It was recently repaired, making this possible in a short period of time. Victor, like many other flood survivors, did not see water. He saw all the debris being pushed in front of the wall of water. He saw his home "crushed like an eggshell." He noted that the time was 4:20 p.m. The barn went floating with the flood waters, but Victor was able to stay on top as it was rolling. He lept off the barn roof just as it was about to crash into his neighbor Mrs. Fenn's house. That house began falling in and he clung to another house as it came by. He held onto the wet shingles and eventually lost his grip falling back onto the barn roof. He floated down to the Stone Bridge where the debris was accumulating.

He spent the night in a house with nineteen other people. The next day, Victor set off to look for his parents. He tried to save people stuck in the wreckage the the Stone Bridge that caught fire.  

In his autobiography, An American Doctor's Odyssey, Victor writes:
"Day after day, I searched among the ruins and viewed with a tense anxiety the hundreds of corpses constantly being carried to the morgues, Two weeks were devoted to this gruesome task, a most agonizing experience for a boy."

His mother, Mathilde Heiser's body was identified, but he was never able to positively identify his father George. 

In an interview with historian and author David McCullough in the 1960s, Heiser said that he likely would have stayed in Johnstown if his parents survived the flood. Heiser died at age 99 and is buried beside his parents at Grandview Cemetery.