The 7-Year-Old Who Went Over Niagara Falls and Lived

On July 9, 1960, a seven-year-old boy from Niagara Falls, New York, was swept over the Horseshoe Falls with nothing to protect him but a life jacket. Roger Woodward came up alive in the pool below, and the crew of a tour boat pulled him out of the water.

A Boat Ride on the Upper River

Roger was out on the upper Niagara River with his 17-year-old sister, Deanne, and James Honeycutt, a 40-year-old family friend who was working as a contractor on a hydro project at the falls.

They set off in a small aluminum boat with an outboard motor from a trailer camp on the American shore, several miles upstream of the falls.

About a mile above the Horseshoe Falls, the motor quit. Honeycutt found that the propeller pin had broken off, and he rowed for shore while the current carried the boat toward the brink.

He told the children to put on their life jackets. Roger's parents had insisted he wear one, an adult-size jacket on a seven-year-old. Honeycutt, busy rowing, never put on his own.

Twenty Feet From the Edge

Near the falls, the waves flipped the boat and threw all three into the river. Deanne held on to the side of the boat until a wave pushed her under.

When she came up, she saw two men on shore at Terrapin Point on Goat Island. John Hayes, a New Jersey truck driver and auxiliary state policeman, reached out, and she caught his thumb 20 feet from the falls.

A second visitor, John Quattrochi, helped pull her out of the water. Hayes told her to pray for her brother.

Over the Brink

Roger was in Honeycutt's arms when the water tore them apart at the crest. The falls ripped his shoes off as he dropped more than 160 feet into the deep water at the base.

His life jacket floated him back to the surface. Roger later said the drop itself felt like "floating on a cloud of mist." The real danger, he said, was "the rocks that are as big as houses at the base of the falls."

The Maid of the Mist Comes for Him

Below the falls, the crew of the Maid of the Mist II spotted a small boy bobbing in the churning water. Captain Clifford Keech was at the wheel.

It took eight minutes and three approaches before the crew got a life ring to him and hauled him aboard.

"They threw it to me three times, and they got it to me and pulled me out of the water," Roger said.

Once he was on deck, his only request was a drink of water.

He was taken to hospital in Niagara Falls, Ontario, with cuts, bruises and a mild concussion. Deanne was treated for shock. Honeycutt drowned, and his body was found downriver.

Roger is widely recorded as the first person known to survive a plunge over the Horseshoe Falls without a barrel.

A Family Secret, Then a Reunion

The Woodwards left Niagara Falls for Florida in 1962, and for years they rarely talked about that day. "It was a family secret," Roger said.

He never sold film or TV rights to the story. He went to university in Mississippi and built a career in the communications business in Huntsville, Alabama.

He came back to the falls on the 20th and 30th anniversaries of his plunge, and the Niagara Falls Public Library keeps photographs of both visits.

In 1994, Deanne and Roger were reunited at the falls with John Hayes and John Quattrochi, the two men who had pulled her out of the river.

The Maid of the Mist still sails from the American side, past the American Falls and into the mist of the Horseshoe Falls, the same pool where its crew found a seven-year-old in a life jacket.