While it's probably politically incorrect, Shirley Wicks, who married his grandson, stands by her mother's description of the talented, courageous and well-loved man.

"My mum knew him [Peter] well," she said. "He was a larger than life figure; a footballer, a tennis player and able to play several musical instruments.

"She used to say `Peter Long has the blackest skin and the whitest heart of anybody I have ever known'."

He certainly demonstrated that when he risked his life to help pluck the then infant Eunice Monica Freebody to safety just over 100 years ago. Peter had gone into the home at the same time as Harry Hockley, the cook at a local hotel.

While there is some confusion about who discovered Eunice on her cot in the smoke-filled room, the inquest into the deaths of the other occupants was told Harry handed her out the window to a police constable while Peter tried to save the others. He was beaten back by the intense heat and flames.

Harry was dead within two years, losing his life on the Menin Road during Third Ypres on September 20, 1917.

Peter, who was born in 1873, lived until December 6, 1944, and is buried in Queanbeyan. He had married Alice Louise Wark in 1898 and the couple lived near Captain's Flat. They had three daughters, Lilian, Rita and Phyliss. Phyliss died when seven months of age. The family moved into Queanbeyan in 1910.

According to a family history compiled by Peter's granddaughter, Pat Wilcox, he was a natural athlete who played Rugby Union, as a fullback, until he was in his forties.

"The only time he was ever drunk was when Queanbeyan beat the Royal Military College for the first time," she said.

Mrs Wilcox [maiden name Tierney] said when she went to the pictures as a child Eunice Freebody would say "do you know your grandfather saved my life when I was a little girl?"

The family were at the pictures a lot. Peter worked the projector for the Freebodys who owned the theatre and his daughters played the music for the silent movies.

Peter had come up the hard way having gone off the rails when he was orphaned at the age of 13.

"His two older sisters would not have been able to care for him," Mrs Wilcox said.

"They were only two and three years older than him. He had no other relatives in Australia. His mother was from Liverpool, England, and his father was from New York."

He became a ward of the state aboard a ship called The Vernon which served as a rehabilitation centre in Sydney Harbour.

The Nautical School Ships took homeless boys and taught them useful trades as well as sports, music and other talents. The Vernon was the first, operating from 1867 until 1891.

Boys were aged from six to 18 and the institutions were remarkably successful but expensive to maintain according to John Ramsland in The Dictionary of Sydney.

"The Nautical School Ship was a singular success as a child-saving institution of its type," he said. "The curriculum provided was an articulated mixture of elementary education and nautical and industrial training, with the purpose of developing the boys into useful, worthy and morally upright adult members of society."

Mrs Wilcox said Peter used to say he had "been in the navy" as a boy.

The NSS Vernon was the making of Peter Long and, regardless of what it cost, he gave back more than he received.