BLISS, Homer 1874-1895

BLISS

Posted By: Kathy Gerkins (email)
Date: 9/13/2013 at 18:19:06

Bliss, Homer
Tragic Death of Homer Bliss

The old must die, the young may die. The terminal points of human existence are birth and death. One is the product of the other. The first is as great a problem as the last and both are the mystery which no finite intelligence can grasp.

Immortality is the product of the heart. So long as a mother caresses the newborn infant and bathes its voiceless clay with her tears, so long will the blessed conviction prevail that somehow on the unknown shores of eternity child and mother will meet again.

Twenty one years ago there was born to Mr. and Mrs. R. M. Bliss of this city a son. They christened him Homer. Nothing unusual to be recorded of this boy. He was cared for by loving parents, educated in our schools, played and sported with companions, love and was loved, began to brush up with the practical problems of business affairs, used the hammer and the saw and gave a ready hand to whatever it found to do.

At five o'clock last Sunday p.m. he left the house, sauntered down on Main Streeet, met Ike Martin, Harry Blodgett and Frank Winslow all in a one seated buggy going to New Hampton. Bliss joined them. Were they only going to New Hampton or headed for the whitened harvest fields of Dakota we know not, but it seems there was no danger of thought of peril to one or all.

The company reached New Hampton at 12 o'clock. Martin is arrested by order of Mr. Burnett, for engaging a team to ride about this city and going to New Hampton with it. Winslow return home. Blodgett and Bliss start for St. Paul whether on passenger or freight train is unknown. The next known of Bliss is at Hayfield. He enters the ticket office to buy a ticket to a junction some twenty miles distance on a freight train. It does not carry passengers and a ticket could not be had. Bliss attempted to climb the ladder on the car but missed it. He fell and the car passed over him crushing a leg and arm. He was cared for by strangers; skilled surgery did its best.

He makes himself known and dispatch is sent to his parents here. They take the first train, reach New Hampton and there learn their son died at eight o'clock Tuesday evening. The body reached home Wednesday. The funeral services were held yesterday, attended by a great concourse of sympathizing friends and Homer Bliss who just passed over the threshold of life sleeps in the city of the silent dead. Do circumstances make us, or do we make the circumstances that are the forces on which float human existence?

Source: Newspaper clipping from the Floyd County Museum.

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Source: Decorah Republican Aug. 1, 1895 P 3 C 2

—Homer Bliss, of Charles City, on the 23d, while attempting to board a freight train at Hayfleld, Minn., fell under the rear wheels and his left leg and arm crushed, The injured members were amputated but he failed to rally and died. Bliss had been to St. Paul and was trying to make his way to Calmar in time to hit a passenger train for home.

Transcriber's Note: Find a Grave shows he was born Nov. 12, 1874 and died July 23, 1895. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery.