In May 1941, a 19-year-old Tennessee Wesleyan College student named Wallace Earl “Wally” Clendenen dove into the Bald River near a waterfall outside Tellico Plains to save a drowning classmate, and the desperate struggle that followed nearly cost him his own life. Twenty-year-old Marvin B. Gass had fallen into the river and been swept into water about eight feet deep before Clendenen went in after him.
The details of that rescue, first documented by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission and recounted in a recent Knox TN Today report, describe a chaotic fight against the current. Gass wrapped his arms around Clendenen's waist as the two were carried roughly 30 feet upstream, dangerously close to the brink of a higher waterfall. Clendenen swam toward a rock about 15 feet away, and though Gass's near-unconscious grip pulled him underwater twice, Clendenen fought back to the surface each time with the younger man clinging to him.
A Rescue Completed on the Rocks
Clendenen eventually jumped from the riverbank to a rock about three feet above the water, still holding onto Gass. Another young man on the scene helped free Clendenen from Gass's grip and pull both of them onto the rock, according to the Knox TN Today account. Gass was revived after the rescue; Clendenen survived it exhausted and badly winded.
The waterfall where the near-tragedy unfolded, Bald River Falls, drops 90 to 100 feet into the Tellico River in the Cherokee National Forest, right alongside Forest Service Road 210, according to Tennessee River Valley. The site's fast currents and deep drop-offs have made it the scene of repeated fatal drownings over the decades, including deaths in July 2025 and September 2020, as Hoodline previously reported. Hoodline also covered a multi-agency search for a missing hiker in the same Bald River Falls area earlier this month.
Carnegie Hero Fund Commission Recognition
The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission named Clendenen a Carnegie Hero in 1942 for saving Gass's life. The commission, established in 1904 by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie with a $5 million trust following the Harwick Mine disaster, requires that candidates be civilians who voluntarily risk death or serious injury to save human lives without any prior legal or occupational obligation to do so. Since its founding, the commission has recognized more than 10,000 civilian heroes across North America and awarded over $40 million in direct aid, including scholarships, death benefits, and grants.
Clendenen and Gass were students together at what is now Tennessee Wesleyan University, founded in 1857 in Athens, Tennessee, as a Methodist-affiliated college; the school operated as Tennessee Wesleyan College until transitioning to university status in 2016, per the school's own history.
From Riverbank Heroics to Combat Over Europe
Within a few years of pulling Gass from the Bald River, Clendenen was serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II as a Staff Sergeant radio operator-gunner aboard a B-26 Marauder, flying 66 combat missions over Italy, France, and Germany with the 42nd Bombardment Wing, according to the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission. He received the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters and France's Croix de Guerre avec Palme, the latter stemming from a unit commendation given to the 42nd Bombardment Wing by General Charles de Gaulle for precision air strikes that destroyed enemy bridges and supply networks during the 1944 Allied offensive in Italy, according to a RootsWeb genealogical record. He also served as a Chaplain's Assistant during the war and as a student pastor after returning home, and he later wrote a private family memoir titled “The Way It Was” documenting his wartime experiences.
After the war, Clendenen built a long career in East Tennessee commerce and civic life, becoming president of the Knoxville Wholesale Drug Company, president of the Tennessee Drug Association, and president of the Knoxville Toastmasters International chapter, according to the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission. He remained active in Knoxville churches and civic life for the rest of his life, teaching Sunday school for decades across several Methodist congregations.
Clendenen died in Knoxville in 2020 at age 98. He was a lifelong member of St. Paul United Methodist Church in Fountain City and a 1940 graduate of Knoxville High School, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2010, according to Stevens Mortuary Inc. Nearly eight decades after his split-second decision to dive into the Bald River, the story of that rescue — and the life of service that followed it — remains part of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission's record of civilian bravery.
