MAURICE CONNOLLY MEETS TRAGIC DEATH-1921

CONNOLLY, MILLER, BATCHELDER, AMES, MCDERMOTT, PENNEWILL, BLUMENKRANS

Posted By: cheryl Locher moonen (email)
Date: 2/12/2020 at 21:30:44

Manchester Democrat, Wednesday, Jun 01, 1921, Manchester, IA, Page: 1

MAURICE CONNOLLY MEETS TRAGIC DEATH

Washington, D. C., May 29-Seven men, five of the army and two civilians, were killed in the wreck of an army Curtis-Eagle ambulance airplane near Indian Head, Maryland, forty miles southeast of Washington, Saturday evening in a wind and electrical storm. The dead include:
Lieut. Col. Archie Miller, U. S. A., M. H., Washington, D. C.
Maurice Connolly of Dubuque, Iowa, former member of the house.
A. G. Batchelder of Washington, D. C., chairman of the board of the American Automobile Association.
Lieut. S. M. Ames of Boston, pilot.
Lieut. C. W. McDermott, Langley Field, Virginia
Lieut. J. M. Pennewill, Langley Field, Virginia
Sergeant Mechanic Richard Blumenkrans, Washington.
Army air service officers said the accident was the worst in the history of aviation in the United States, and that all of the passengers in a plane had been killed almost instantly.

The ship struck nose first and the force of the impact was so great that the 400 horse-power Liberty motor was thrown back into the cockpit on top of the pilot and the passengers. All bodies were badly mutilated.

The Curtis-Eagle was returning from Langley Field, near Newport News, Va., and had just crossed the Potomac River when it ran into the storm. The exact cause of the accident probably never will be known, as those in the machine were dead when witnesses from Morgantown, a village near Indian Head, reached the scene. Former Representative Connolly was a native Iowan being born at Dubuque in 1877. He received his collegiate training at Cornell and New York Universities. Later he did post graduate work at Oxford and Heidelberg. He never married.

Mr. Connolly was elected to the Sixty-third congress from the third Iowa District and served from 1913 to 1915.

During Wilson’s second administration he was appointed postmaster of Dubuque by the president.

When the United States entered the war, Mr. Connolly resigned to accept a commission of Major in the flying corps of the army. He was stationed at Rantoul Field, Illinois.

Besides being president of the Connolly Manufacturing Company of Dubuque, Mr. Connolly held an executive position with the Dubuque Fire and Insurance Company. He was a member of the American Embassy Association, Iowa State Historical Society, the Dubuque Golf and Country Club and numerous other civic and social organizations. He was an Elk and a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity.