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My Cousin Jennifer
Sheriff’s office IDs fatal crash victim
CHELSEA DUNCAN, cduncan@newsreview.info
October 9, 2007
Note: This story has been updated, Oct. 9, 2:45 p.m. The original stories can be found below
GLIDE — A Glide woman who gained national recognition as a teenager by rescuing a young boy from the North Umpqua River died Monday evening in a car crash on Little River Road.
Jennifer Page, 37, was driving a 1999 Toyota Solara north on the 5600 block of the road when she lost control around 5 p.m., said Sgt. David Marshall of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.
The car crossed the other lane and hit the gravel shoulder before striking a fence, then a tree.
A deputy at the scene said he found no skid marks in the roadway and guessed Page had swerved to avoid hitting something.
“We don’t know what actually caused it,” Marshall said. The county’s deputy medical examiner will continue the investigation, he added.
Shortly after the crash, Glide resident Shannon Weniger pulled up to the scene. She said she tried for several minutes to open the doors, but couldn’t.
Finally, a young couple who had also stopped helped Weniger enter the car through a back window. She tried to perform first aid, but said the woman was too badly injured.
“I wish I could have done more,” Weniger said.
Weniger told deputies that it appeared Page had not been wearing a seat belt. Members of the Glide Rural Fire Department responded and pronounced Page dead at the scene.
Page, a 1989 Glide High School graduate, was well-known throughout the community.
In 1983, at the age of 13, she rescued a 5-year-old boy who’d fallen into the river just above The Narrows, according to a past News-Review article.
The teenager, born with spina bifida, gained local and national attention and ultimately was invited to meet President Ronald Reagan in Washington D.C.
Retired Glide High teacher Thales Smith remembers the event.
“She reacted to it with modesty,” Smith said this morning. “(She) just seemed like, what’s the big deal, that’s what anybody would do.”
Smith said although many years have passed, he holds fond memories of Page, whose maiden name was Boatman until she married Tony Page.
“She had an unforgettable warm smile,” he said, “and a kind manner that made her truly unforgettable.”
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