Yesterday: Rowan Rescue Squad searches for river drowning victim in 1991

Published 12:00 am Monday, December 2, 2013

This Salisbury Post file photograph shows a Rowan County Rescue Squad recovery operation on the South Yadkin River in late May 1991, when the squad members were looking for the body of a drowning victim. A similar tragedy had given birth to the Rescue Squad 40 years earlier in 1951, when Bill Barnes, a 17-year-old Boyden High student, attempted to swim across American Quarry in Granite Quarry and failed to make it. Barnes’ body would not be located for 12 days, as hundreds of people flocked to the quarry to follow the recovery effort. Less than two months later, after a community fund-raising effort led by Fannie Gobble, Mary Beaver and Maud Crook, the Rowan Rescue Squad was chartered. Last week’s ‘Yesterday’ photograph showed a diving team brought in to search the quarry for Barnes’ body.