AMERICAN TRAGEDIES

Evening Star, Issue 18852, 29 January 1925, Page 9

AMERICAN TRAGEDIES

BAD END TO YEAR. MANY DEATHS AT YULETIDS. closing of the old year in tire Umlcd States was marred by a, series of lamentable tragedies in widely-separated regions of the country, marked by the fvighlfulness for which America is nottorious (writes tho San Francisco correspondent of tho Auckland ‘ Star ’). On Christmas Day and Christmas Eve no fewer than sixty persons were killed and nearly a hundred fatally injured as tho result of a.u unusual number of Yuletide accidents. In addition to the loss of life, fires—many of them resulting from over-heating due "to the zero weather in some sections of the country on Christ-mas-caused a heavy property loss. The most serious as well as the most pathetic Christmas Eve tragedy occurred at Hobart, in Oklahoma, where thirtytwo persons were killed outright and six others were missing as the consequence of a tire in a schoolhouso where a Christmas entertainment was in progress.

At Stamford, Texas, four wore killed and six injured, one seriously, in a fire in the Stamford Inn.

Two men were frozen to death in Chicago’s five-below-zero Christmas weather; a policeman was killed front a fall; and a Chinese laundrymnn was shot and subsequently succumbed wounded in a renewal of tong warfare. Three were killed and one was fatally hurt and another seriously injured in an automobile accident at Richmond, Virginia ; and at Dixon, in Illinois, a three-year-old child shot and killed his ten-year-old brother with their father’s shotgun, and one person was killed as tho result of placing oil in a cook stove. Two were killed in a Christmas Eve shooting scrape near Richmond, in Kentucky ; two were killed in a motor car accident at Birmingham, in Alabama; a tliree-vear-old girl died of burns at V\ orcoster, Massachusetts; and one was killed in an automobile accident at Lexington, North Carolina; a policeman was killed at New Orleans by a hank robber; a mother died of barns at Lincoln, Nebraska, after pouring kerosene on a kitchen lire; two were injured at Glendale, in California, when a bomb in tho form of a Christmas package exploded; two were killed and two were injured in a motor smash at Centralia, Washington; and at Michigan City, Indiana, two were killed and two injured when a train struck an automobile; while in Now York five men were seriously wounded by two gunmen. CHRISTMAS TREE FIRE. In this awful death roll for the \uletide season Ihq worst, feature was the tragic lire in tho small frame house serving" as a school at tho Christmas party seven miles south of Hobart, in Oklahoma, tho joyful party terminating abruptly with thirty-two persons being burned to dentil and thirty-seven being carried to hospitals. Christmas Day dawned with the grief-stricken residents of tho school community making plans to bury their dead in one. of the most lamentable Christmastido tragedies in the annals of America.

The joys of Christmas forgotten, relatives of men, women, and children cremated in the inferno resulting when a small candle ignited the. pines of a. large. Christmas tree, from which a Santa Claus was distributing presents, wandered about the streets aimlessly the following day. Tears were, in their eyes as they left the hospitals and homes where those trampled and seared by the flames rushed in wagons and automobiles on the previous night for medical attention. Many of the injured subsequently succumbed, so terrible were their burns and other injuries. It was n. one-story building, flimsily constructed in a rural district, and, as mav be imagined, when the flames enveloped the building it was quickly doomed with the struggling mass of humanity practically imprisoned under its roof. Tnuic-strickeii, the crowd, estimated at 200, women ami children, swamped the. only exit, shrieking ami fainting as flumes seared the ilesh ol those nearest the blazing tree. Heavy wire screens prevented exit through thn windows, FAMILIES WIPED OUT. District Hehoolhouso No. 42, as it was oflicially known, had been visited by two previous disasters in addition to the piosent tragic Christmas party. 'iwo years ago ti cyclone cloiiioJiMckl the building during tho night, and tiro destroyed the small' frame building several years ago, when an over-heated stove set it afire. All the. students then escaped. Several families lost two or more members in the lire this Christinastide. Ihe family of T. C. Colley, consisting of his wife hind four children, was completely willed out. ihe names oi Bolding. Cui Diggers, Peck. Keville, and Clements appeared two or more times in tho us ■ of the dead. , , , , Bells which were to have pealed for (he. wedding of Claude Bolding and Chill vs Clements on Christmas Day within twenty-four hours were toiling lugubriously'as the body of the I,rule-to-be was being laid in its last resting-place in the Hobart Cemetery. . .Miss Clements was one of the three sisters who perished in the tiro which doslowed the sclmollmm-e v;hi.e the Unistinastide party was in progress. ou,, <j Bobbin- was badlv burned in an attempt to save his sweetheart, and was taken to a hospital in a dying condition; .but hopes were entertained that lus hie rnigh be eventually saved. Una of Miss Clements's sisters, Mrs Juanita, Clements Stevenson, went to Hobart from Michigan to attend the wedding, but two da.\s after the date set. fm the" marriage ceremony the bodes ot do mother ami child were lying sum by side, tor-ether with that of Mms Clements » odor sister, who was to have acted as bridesmaid. . . I’uiminco again bowed to tragedy in the ease of Aubrey Coffey and A csta Jackson, who were to have married next.spring. Both perished in the lire-. Andrew Jackson, brother of the girl, sought to rescue the pair, when, standing mi the outside, ho tried to tear loose tie wire-netting which barred ilieir way u) s.ntty. 10 wire resisted his cilorls. PATHETIC DETAILS. J. F. Eden, carried through Hie doorway of the building on the tide ol In stoical' humans lighting their vmy to safety, sought to force his way hack into the inferno for his three-year-oid daughter but was unable to gain an entrance, and tho child burned to death- Mrs \V. <r. Bolding lost three, children in the tire. One of them, Edward, eight, sho had managed to net out of the budding with her, but oneo''outsido the boy remembered Ins toys ho had left behind, and dashed back alter I hem. Ho never came out. At tho previous Christmas love celebrations at, the school Christ mas trees caught fire, but were extinguished without serious damage. Last Christmas \\ dnam Curtis, who lost his liio in tho lire, , played the role of Santa Claus, and,, during the distribution of gifts, his white beard caught lire, but ho quickly extmguisned it Several of the. victims m the hospitals subsequently died, and tho funerals were of a strangely pathetic nature, one afternoon sixteen being interred m the local cemetery, followed next nay by seventeen further victims of the holocaust. TRAIN IN RIVER._ Wisconsin was the see no of another frightful tragedy, where, .at Chippewa Falls, tho dinner coach ol the fast boo Line passenger train plunged froin a trestle into tho raging torrents of tne Chippewa River below, carrying tan persons to their deaths in tho icy waters oi the river. Two off the bodies went down m the ice floes and were not recovered lot seveial days. Two bodies-an aged eouple-were recovered from tho. wrecked can.nge, but were not identified. Enter details showed that the tiaan had just pulled out of the Chippewa halls station, and had picked up speed It was then slowing down again for usual caution for the crossing of the bridge. 1 hreorars had passed over a switch near the bridge, when a bolt broke. Tho switch closed on tho cafo car, which loft the rails, ihe finginoar applied th® brakes in s desp&rate

effort to halt the train before the disabled car should reach the bridge. It reached the edge of the bridge, however, before the train could bo stopped, and toppled half olf the bridge and half off the bank, crashing through tho ice and lying upside down in tho river, half submerged. Several men escaped through a window, and were rescued by boats as they sought to swim through tho ice floes to the shore. In Chehalis, in the State of Washington, five persons were killed when a tree, blown off ft bluff, crashed on top of the ChehalLs-Morton automobile stage. The dead were Dan Shuler and his seven-year-old son, Buck Belsher, N. E. Chapman (a school, teacher), and W. S. Kaiser. The accident happened about twenty-one nines east of CTiehftlis, at a turnout in the road near Siikum. The bus was proceeding from Morton to Chehalis, and, as it drew alongside of a truck, a large tree, tumbled off the bluff through a gale blowing at tho time, crushing the stage. The driver and several passengers we.ro also seriously injured. Floods and cyclones accounted for a heavy toll of life in other parts of the United Slates coincident with the Christmas season, and twenty-three persons lost their lives in Saltviße, in Virginia, as the result of tho breaking of a dam across tho Holston River. Fourteen persons were also missing, and they were_all employees at the alkali plant, which was swept ft way when tho dam broke. An emergency hospital was setup in Saltville, and doctors and volunteer nurses were rushed from Abingdon and adjacent towns to assist in caring for the injured. A row of houses was washed away by the onrushing torrent liberated by the breach in the dam. AIR MAIL ACCIDENT. The Ghristmastide Arctic weather in the United States played havoc with the maintenance of the transcontinental air mail, and while millions ot Americans were feasting to their hearts’ content Clarence Gilbert, relief air mail pilot, and first of tho night flying mailmen to lose his life in the service of the. United States Government, was killed in a plunge, it was discovered, when his lifeless body was found near Kancsvillc, fifty miles west of Chicago. His parachute apparently had faded h;ra in a leap in the dark ond the the snow swirled down about him. For fifteen hours farmer searchers and representatives of tho Air Mail Service had scouted around the open country near Knnesville, where the lights of tho lost pilot s plane were last observed. Charles Shoop, of Kanesville, found the wrecked plane a mile north of Kanesville with the mail Intact. ’• A searching plane, piloted by R. G. Rage, sent out from Chicago soon after daybreak, picked up the mail and started for Omaha. Gilbert’s fatal parachute jump was the first actual emergency test of the. air mail parachutes sinco their installation on planes. For six months the transcontinental day and night air mail had carried its valuable freight without a serious accident.