HEROES: Decision

Behind the rail guarding the summit of Yosemite's misty, snow-swollen Vernal Falls, 21-year-old Orville Loos, just out of the Navy and still in uniform, gaped -with the other tourists, listened to the mighty cataract pounding fearsomely on the jagged boulders 320 feet below. It would be something to remember when he went home to Dayton, Ohio, and the new electrical-appliance shop his parents had bought for him.

Then he heard a scream. Eleven-year-old Keene Freeman, son of famed Washington, D.C. neurologist Dr. Walter Freeman, had escaped his father's eye for a moment, and slipped into the racing torrent while trying to retrieve a canteen. He was headed for the falls. As the boy twisted toward the brink 80 feet away, Veteran Loos, like the other tourists, had a moment for decision. He made it. He vaulted the rail, floundered in icy, swirling power.

He caught the boy' shirtfront, lost it, groped, seized him again and held on. From the platform, the tourists caught a fleeting glimpse of two heads in the curve of water at the fall's edge. Then Orville Loos and the boy who was his friend for a few seconds were dead in the whirlpool below.