Major Metzger, then ten, held a six-year-old off a Virginia ski lift for four minutes, and on Wednesday the governor gave him the Carnegie Medal.

Bryce Rader was six and could not get himself properly onto a four-person bench on the chairlift at a ski resort in Nellysford, in central Virginia, on 26 January last year, and once the lift was moving he began sliding off the seat in a helmet and skis.

Four children were on that bench, Bryce and his sister and Major Metzger and his, and Major, who was ten and sitting right beside him, grabbed Bryce and tried to pull him back up while the lift kept climbing, and by the time the workers below were alerted and stopped it Bryce was off the seat completely.

The bottom of the bench was about sixteen feet above sloped, rocky ground, and Major was leaning forward and down out of his seat, in his own helmet and skis, holding Bryce by both arms with his gloved hands, and he held him there for about four minutes.

The ski patrol came and stood underneath with a safety mat and told Major to let Bryce go, so he did, and Bryce dropped onto the mat, bounced off it and came away with a small bump on his head that needed no further treatment.

Major rode the rest of the way to the top and got off with the two girls, and the Carnegie Hero Fund's account of the day records that his arms were sore and that he was shaken, and that he needed no treatment either.

What Major said about it

Two weeks later the Norfolk station News 3 came to his classroom and he told the reporter Erin Miller what had happened up there.

The ski just hit him twice and he fell, and he started slipping off, so I grabbed him with my gloves on and the skis were weighing him down and I was holding him in the air for like 10 minutes straight.Major Metzger, to News 3

The Carnegie Hero Fund puts it at about four minutes, and Major also said what was going through his head while he held on, which was "oh god, oh no, oh no, don't fall", and he described the ski patrol as the people who "grabbed a mat and they ran up and they held it up so they could drop him down".

The award in his classroom

Bryce came to the classroom with the reporter that morning, because the point of the visit was to surprise Major with the station's Everyday Hero award, and Bryce carried it in and handed it over and then put both arms round him, and the station's account of that morning says Major was left speechless and in happy tears, and Southern Bank, which backs the award, gave him three hundred dollars on a gift card.

The person who had put his name forward was Lieutenant Meryah Breeden of the Norfolk Sheriff's Office, and she was standing across the room while he opened it.

We get paid to do the things we do. You acted out of the kindness of your heart because you care about people and that truly should be recognized.Lt Meryah Breeden, Norfolk Sheriff's Office, to News 3

The medal

Andrew Carnegie set up the Hero Fund in 1904, after a mine disaster near Pittsburgh in which two rescuers died, to recognise civilians who knowingly risk their own lives for someone else, and in the hundred and twenty-two years since then it has given the medal to a little over ten thousand people in the United States and Canada.

Abigail Spanberger, the governor of Virginia, presented Major, who is in middle school in Virginia Beach now, with his on Wednesday, in front of the state education secretary, the Virginia Beach schools superintendent and the city's mayor, and she told the room that he was the very best of Virginia.