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By Tim Ruzek

John Hulet heard his calling in 1933 while throwing horseshoes near the Cedar River in Horace Austin State Park.

A man standing on the iron bridge that once extended North Main Street over the Cedar saw a 3-year-old boy fall into the river upstream. The man yelled to the 18-year-old Hulet, who ran to the river and pulled the boy out of about 5 feet of water.

On the shore, Hulet gave CPR or “artificial respiration” to the boy – Roland Zook – for a few minutes until Zook showed signs of life, the Austin Daily Herald wrote Sept. 18, 1933.

“(Hulet) then carried the boy to the Zook home, where he was worked on for about an hour,” the Herald wrote, adding that Zook was placed between warm blankets because he was blue from the river’s cold water.

By the next day, however, Zook had “completely recovered from the narrow escape from drowning.”

Zook went on to live until age 88, passing away in 2019 in northern California. After moving with his family to California, Zook served as a U.S. Marine in the Korean War; married his wife in Los Angeles; and raised two children while working as an iron worker and insurance agent.

Nearly 30 years after Zook was saved, Hulet —now an Austin police officer since 1945 — heard another scream for help from the Cedar River at Austin Mill Pond. Hulet was fishing in Austin Mill Pond’s southwest corner on the Sunday afternoon of June 23, 1963.

Four boys — ages 8 to 10 — had formed a chain while swimming in the river when one broke loose and went underwater where there was a steep drop.

Hulet dove into the river, which was deep enough to go over his head, and pulled the boy out. Hulet told the Herald the boy appeared uninjured but was so scared he ran home before he could be identified. A woman at the scene verified the rescue.

Hulet the hero

In the early 1930s, Hulet and Zook lived a block apart along Lansing Avenue — today’s First Drive Northwest — with their backyards overlooking Austin Mill Pond and the state park. Their homes later were removed for building Austin’s first YMCA and the Red Cedar Inn (today’s Cedars of Austin complex).

About 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 15, 1933, the 3-year-old Zook joined a 4-year-old girl in walking to the state park near the Rayman boat house on a sharp river bend that curved around the property that today hosts Bremer Bank.

Zook and the girl were playing near the river when something got Zook’s attention.

“The Zook boy thought he saw a fish in the water and reached down to seize it,” the Herald wrote. “He lost his balance and tumbled in. The water was about 5 feet deep.”

A man never identified was standing on the Charles Fox Bridge (installed just two years earlier and removed in 1961). He saw the boy fall in the river and he called out to Hulet, who graduated four months earlier from Austin High School.

“At this time of the year, there are very few people near the state park along the Cedar River,” the Herald wrote. “The only persons at the park at the time the boy fell in the water were the man on the bridge and Hulet.”

Hulet’s “quick action” in pulling the boy from the river and use of CPR were credited by Zook’s father with saving his son’s life. The father said he wished he also could find the unknown man on the bridge to thank him.

Life of service

At the time of his death in 1989 at age 74, Hulet was described in a Herald obituary as an avid fisherman who “spent many pleasant hours on the shores of many a river and lake.”

“A well-known and well-respected man in the community, he always had a ‘word of greeting’ to anyone who crossed his path,” the obituary stated April 2, 1989. “He was a kind and loving husband, a caring and dependable father, a protective grandpa and a faithful friend.”

Hulet worked for 12 years at the Hormel plant after high school.  During that time, Hulet also played on many amateur sports teams for baseball, basketball, bowling and even hockey – a rarity in the 1930s in southern Minnesota.

Known as the “big Austin third baseman,” Hulet was named in 1937 as the “most valuable player” at the Minnesota State Amateur Baseball Tournament, receiving the Governor’s Trophy.

In 1945, Hulet left Hormel to start a 24-year career as an Austin police patrol officer. The father of five was highlighted for his police work numerous times in the Herald.

Hulet then chose to work as a custodian for Austin Public Schools until 1977, when he retired for good.