While on a July 4, 1965 vacation in Atlanta, Georgia, Pete saved a boy who was drowning in the motel pool on July 5, 1965. The story was written up in the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Two Bystanders Rescue Child From Pool. A 3-year-old Macon boy who fell into a motel swimming pool in Atlanta Monday afternoon was saved front drowning by two bystanders, police said. The child, identified as Si Simmons, was seen floating face down in the pool at Holiday Inn, 1810 Howell Mill Road, by Pete Van Deusen of Fairfield, N.J, who jumped in and hauled the boy out. L. E. Dixon, an Atlanta water works employee, gave the child artificial respiration, police said. A physician who examined the boy said he would recover, police reported. The child's mother told them the boy had told her he was going out to play in some swings. (Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on July 6, 1965)

• 0:00 Black screen
• 0:15 Si Simmons and his mother
• 0:17 The pool
• 0:22 Si Simmons and his mother
• 0:32 Guests only sign
• 0:48 Burnett Peter Van Deusen interview starts
• 1:34 Burnett Peter Van Deusen interview end
• 1:35 Si Simmons and his mother
• 1:50 Black screen

A 30 second interview with Pete was broadcast on local television in Georgia and a VHS copy of the interview was saved, that copy was transferred to the "vob" format and then the "mpg" format in 2008. It was transferred to the "webm" format on January 23, 2020.

• Peter Van Deusen: "... You just act. The thing happens and you jump, or do whatever you have to do. I believe you have to think later, you don't have time to think. Its like when your playing ball, I guess, and if your pitching and the batter hits one straight back at the box. Its an instinctive thing to put the glove up to protect yourself, you don't have time to think, you just act first."
• Interviewer: "How does it feel to be a hero now?"
• Peter Van Deusen: "I don't feel like I'm a hero. I mean there were a lot of people mixed up in this. There was the woman that hollered, the man that gave him mouth to mouth, the rescue squad. It took a lot of us to really do the job. I just happened to be the one that was in the pool."

This is the video package distributed to affiliates. It contains no copyright notice as was typical for these video packages.

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