William F. Mullarkey

MULLARKEY, BRENNAN

Posted By: Paul Moritz (deceased)
Date: 5/4/2009 at 10:36:29

Sad Fatality in Lafayette
One of the most deplorable accidents it has ever been our duty to record in our fifty years as a journalist, happened on the farm of Michael Mullarkey, about ten miles southeast of this city, between five and six o'clock Friday afternoon, resulting in the almost instant and horrible death of the oldest son of the family William, who would be sixteen years of age had he lived until September 8th next.
Mr. Mullarkey and son were engaged on a piece of new breaking which was being turned over for corn, the boy plowing with a tractor and the father taking out a few grubs and stumps that were left. They had almost finished for the day and Mr. Mullarkey told the son he had better quit and go home, but the boy was anxious to make another round of the field and his father acquiesced. He had gone but a short distance over a knoll when the father looked up to see that the tractor had veered into the plowed ground and the boy was missing. Hastening to it, Mr. Mullarkey discovered that his son was being dragged along around under the plows, having fallen from the tractor in some manner. When he reached him he was wedged in between the rear plow and the wheel guiding it and the tractor had buried itself in the soft ground and stopped. The boy's life had been cruelly crushed out before the father's arrival, as the point of the rear plow had entered near the mouth and the head was buried in the dirt. Before the body could be extricated tools had to be secured and the plow taken apart. A doctor was summoned but the only consolation he could give the nearly distracted and heart broken parents was that the death had been practically instantaneous.
Deceased was the eldest of a family of eight children, the joy and pride of the parents, brothers and sisters, and a most wonderful boy for his age, if all reports are true, and this is the universal verdict of his pastor, schoolmates and friends. Although a mere child, he had the head and heart of an adult and could be trusted implicitly in all matters. He was deeply religious and had been to holy communion the morning of his untimely death. Such boys are the exception rather than the rule nowadays. The bereaved parents must look upward for consolation. The condolence of friends is theirs in unstinted measure but how vague and meaningless seem words at such a time.
The funeral Monday morning at 10 o'clock was said to be the largest in Wexford in twenty years. A High Mass of Requiem was celebrated by Father O'Sullivan, and after the absolution, taking for his text, the words of St. Paul to the Hebrews, "It is appointed once for man to die", he preached a most comforting sermon, paying a fine tribute to the deceased, whom he held as a model for his congregation , both old and young to emulate.
At the conclusion of the church service , D.A. Holmes and daughter Mary, of Lansing, sang beautifully the always popular May hymn, "Mother Fairest", after which the body was consigned to the tomb and given the final blessing.

Source: Lansing, IA Newspaper May, 1930
NOTE: William was born Sep 08, 1914, died May 02, 1930. Mother was Mary Lavina Brennan