East Grand Rapids surgeon honored for heroism during 1963 fire

By Madison Bennett | MLive

East Grand Rapids resident Genevieve Swanson does not think her efforts during a 1963 fire in Montreal were heroic, but much to her surprise, others do.

Dr. Swanson, 77, was recently awarded a medal of bravery for her efforts to aid firefighters inside a collapsed building on April 6, 1963.

"That's what you're trained to do, when you're a physician, there's no limit to what you do," said Swanson, who is a retired cosmetic surgeon who practiced in East Grand Rapids.

She recently traveled back to Montreal in April for a ceremony honoring firefighters who have died on the job since the department was founded, three of whom lost their lives during the 1963 fire. During the ceremony, they surprised her with the medal.

According to Swanson, the fire department had been trying to track her down for a number of years, but had issues finding her due to the change in her last name.

After finally finding her and reaching out, she made the decision to travel to Montreal for the ceremony on April 3 and returned to them the helmet she was wearing at the time of the fire, which she held onto for more than 50 years.

"It (the helmet) is a connection to my life in Montreal and to a lot of things when I was young, but it was marvelous to go back," Swanson said.

On April 6, 1963, a fire broke out inside a furniture store, to which firefighters responded. While they were able to get the fire mostly under control, the damage done by the fire combined with an excess of water caused the building to collapse.

Swanson, 23 years old at the time, was a first-year resident at the Notre-Dame Hospital in Montreal. She received a call from the hospital at home requesting that she come in because a nurse had injured her back.

She then arrived at the hospital and as she was familiar with the ambulance drivers, left her car parked in the ambulance bay. Shortly after, the drivers came in and said they needed her assistance with an emergency. They then took her to the scene of the fire.

"Needless to tell you, I was totally scared to death," she said.

As she recalls, firefighters put her in gear and sent her up to the collapsed building in a cherry picker, where she crawled around on her stomach trying to provide help to those trapped in the rubble.

"I had a feeling that I was going to be OK and I had this internal strength in me," she said.

Swanson, along with other firefighters, worked tirelessly to rescue and provide aid to firefighters. Despite their combined efforts, three firefighters lost their lives.

"You hear people screaming, you hear people needing help and you just do it, you don't think," she said.

In the days, months and years following the incident, Swanson's maiden name, de Groot, had been mentioned in multiple publications and was known by those involved in or affected by the fire.

"At the time, you know, it was unusual to have a woman in medicine and surgery...it made a lot of noise," Swanson said.

Eventually, she traveled to the New York for a post-graduate program at Cornell, where she met her late husband, Alfred Swanson, a widely known hand surgeon, and moved back to his hometown of East Grand Rapids.

"I'm just a regular person that did what you're supposed to do," Swanson said.

This story originally appeared May 12, 2017 on MLive.com.