ECKLES, Howard 1878-1925

ECKLES, OLMSTEAD, WHINERY

Posted By: Tammy (email)
Date: 3/21/2015 at 21:00:13

Mr. H. Eckles Killed By Fall

Was Well Known to Many Residents of South Grundy County

Howard Eckles, 46, a widely known farmer of north Marshall county, was killed Monday about four o'clock when the trip rope of a hay fork broke and caused him to lose his balance and fall several feet to the ground. He lived only a short time and was dead when a Conrad physician reached the scene of the accident.

Although working with his tenant, Fred Holman, the latter was in the hay mow and did not witness the accident. Mr. Eckles had come in on the first load of hay and had sent up one forkful into the mow. The accident happened when he pulled the trip rope when the second forkful was sent up.

He was standing in such a position that the sudden breaking of the force of his pull caused him to lose his balance, and being a large, heavy man, he plunged headlong, striking the ground with his head, fracturing his spinal column just below the head.

Mrs. Eckles, attracted by sounds which she thought were groans, came out of the house and not seeing her husband on the load went to the barn. She found him unconscious on the ground, but Holman did not know the tragedy had occurred.

Mr. Eckles was president of the Marshall county Farm Bureau, the farm member of the Rotary Club and a director of the Iowa Savings Bank, in Marshalltown.

After being graduated from Iowa State College, Ames, in 1899, where he became a star lineman of the varsity football team, he returned to the old home farm and engaged in farming. He had partly retired from active farm work, having leased the farm last year to Holman.

He had been a member of the Presbyterian church since boyhood and was active in it, being an elder, and in Sunday school in which he was a teacher of a class of young men. He held membership in Roman lodge, No. 564 of Masons of Conrad, of which he was senior warden.

Mr. Eckles was born Aug. 26, 1878, on the farm where he died, his parents being Mr. and Mrs. Robert Eckles, both of whom are now dead. Miss Kathryn Olmstead, of Albion, was his first wife, the marriage having taken place Feb. 17, 1904. They were the parents of a daughter, Marian, who survives her father. Mrs. Eckles died January 20, 1917, and Sept. 25, 1918, Mr. Eckles married Miss Della Whinery, of Marshalltown.

The only other member of the family is a brother, Raymond Eckles, of Aplington. Notified a few minutes after the tragedy, it became his sad duty to go to the "Y" camp at Pine Lake, Eldora, to tell his niece, who was in camp with Y.W.C.A girls, of the death of her father. Mr. Eckles was a nephew of Ex-Senator Charles Eckles.

Other sad details of the tragedy are that Mr. and Mrs. Eckles had just completed remodeling their country home to make it more comfortable and that they were planning for a happy gathering of relatives and friends for a picnic there on July 4.

The funeral services will be held from the home at 2:30 this (Thursday) afternoon and burial will be in the Conrad cemetery.

--The Grundy Register (Grundy Center, Iowa), 2 July 1925, pg 6