Decent people didn’t speak her name.

Her house on the hill outside town was well known for what could be purchased there.

Charges against her were pending in court.

But when the massive concrete dam below Cora Brooks’ house suddenly broke apart in September 1911, sending 260 million gallons of water churning down the narrow valley toward Austin in southern Potter County, her quick phone call into town gave many enough warning to run to high ground.

The torrent of water obliterated the industrial town, but the woman saved all but 78 of its residents.

Three months later, when Cora Brooks pleaded guilty to the charges of running a “house of ill repute” and selling liquor without a license, the town came to her defense.

“Had it not been for her, undoubtedly hundreds more lives would have been lost,” residents said in a letter to the sentencing judge. “Large numbers of people were fed by her, and the suffering and distressed rendered aid and assistance.”

“Cora Brooks,” the judge declared, “proved she was not only human, but humane,” and he released her with a $200 fine.

But the conviction still stands, and Cora’s distant relatives are now asking Gov. Tom Corbett to pardon her of her public sins.

“She was the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold,” says Margo Baker Crosby. Yes, she was a thorn in the side of the town’s elite, “but that was part of her charm.”

Crosby says, “She needs to be recognized for her good deeds that saved that town.”

Twenty-two years earlier, when the more famous dam above Johnstown broke, the water traveled 14 miles before it hit the city; 2,200 people died.

The Austin dam was one mile from town. The water arrived much faster, but only 78 died.

The lower death toll is largely the result of the early notice provided by Cora’s phone call.

Two of the three switchboard operators on duty at the Bell Telephone central ran out into the streets yelling for people to run to high ground. The third, a teenager named Katherine Lyons, stayed at the switchboard ringing everyone she could until her board stopped working.

That was 100 years ago, this Friday.

Cora Brooks had been raised dirt-poor with no formal education. She married at 19, to a drunkard, and opened her first brothel to support her children after he died. She married again — and got the surname “Brooks” — but that husband was, his relatives admit, “a louse” who slept with the help. Cora never married again, but partnered with a man in Austin shortly before the flood, and the two remained together until Cora died at the age of 78 in 1943.

“From what I can tell, she raised hell until about five years from the day she died,” said Crosby, “a woman after my own heart.”

She admits she feels a certain bond with Cora, who was much more than a woman of the night.

When Cora’s second husband’s sister died during childbirth, Cora became foster mother to the surviving children.

“Rather than let the kids go to the county home, she stepped up to the plate,” said Crosby.

When the second husband left with another woman, the little boys stayed with Cora and her girls.

Crosby’s husband is a descendant of one of those fostered boys.

She said she hopes as her own children grow older, “they show some of Cora’s determination, her street smarts and dedication to community and family.”

Crosby wants a pardon for Brooks, but she’s discovered that’s easier said than done.

She said she has sent three applications to the Board of Pardons in Harrisburg.

Every one of them, she said, has been sent back to her with notice that it’s incomplete with yellow Post-it notes attached indicating what more needed to be supplied.

There’s no Social Security number.

Cora didn’t have one.

There’s no recent photo.

Cora’s been dead for nearly 70 years.

There’s no death certificate.

Crosby says she hasn’t been able to find one.

“If I see another yellow Post-it, I’ll scream,” she said.

An official at the Board of Pardons told The Patriot-News they have no recollection of any application for Cora Brooks.

Frustrated, Crosby recently employed the help of an attorney.

“As a practical matter to a living person, a pardon gets [the conviction] off your record for employment purposes or if you want to purchase a gun,” said Coudersport attorney Walt Stenhach.

For a dead person, he said, “I think it’s a stupid idea.”

But Stenhach told Crosby he’d do the paper work for Cora’s pardon for free, because he thought it was fun.

“The history is what makes it interesting,” he said.

Stenhach’s only condition is there be no attempt to expunge the record of Cora’s convictions from the local courthouse.

“I don’t think a distant relative should foreclose future generations from the opportunity to access those records,” he said.

Crosby, a genealogist, agreed.

The new paperwork has not yet been sent to Harrisburg, but posthumous pardons are not without precedent.

In 1979 Gov. Milton Shapp pardoned Jack Kehoe, who had been executed in 1878 as leader of the Molly Maguires.

According to Stephen Greenspan, a professor at the University of Colorado, more than 100 people have received posthumous pardons in 15 states and the federal jurisdiction.

While most have been for subsequently proven innocence or obviously unfair trial proceedings, some have been for exemplary character.

In 1990, the governor of Arizona pardoned five prison inmates who died while fighting a major wildfire.

In 1994, the governor of Maryland pardoned a man convicted of stealing from a bank, based on the man’s “lifetime of philanthropic service,” time served and $10 million paid in restitution.

Crosby said the next pardon application for Cora Brooks will come from another relative, one with the same last name.

“She raised my grandfather,” says the director of Potter County’s tourist promotion agency David Brooks. “When I was young, riding around with my grandfather, he’d say ‘I used to live up there’ and point up on the hill. Later, on the school bus, my buddies used to say, ‘There’s the whorehouse.” I about got into fistfights. ‘No, that’s where my grandpa used to live!’ ”

Brooks has helped to organize a centennial festival next weekend to commemorate the failure of the dam, pieces of which still stand, ghost-like, across the valley above town.

He hopes people from around Pennsylvania will attend.

“This isn’t Pirates of the Caribbean,” he acknowledges, “but it’s real life, real people and part of our heritage as Pennsylvanians.”

Although the Johnstown flood is more famous today, Austin’s changed the law.

The 1911 disaster in Austin resulted in the first dam safety regulations in the United States.

And Cora is very much a part of that story.

“There’s an irony in there somewhere between her profession and my profession, bringing people to town,” said Brooks.

He’s over the embarrassment of her trade.

“I’m proud,” he said. “If you’re going to be known for something, saving the town isn’t bad.”