Section Hand Is Fatally Injured

WARD

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes
Date: 4/28/2013 at 08:56:40

The Grinnell (IA) Herald
Sept. 25, 1914

SECTION HAND IS
FATALLY INJURED
---------------
T.C. Ward is Struck Down by a Train
While Walking Beside M. &
St. L. Track.
---------------
DIES OF HIS INJURIES
A FEW HOURS LATER
----------------
Just How He Happened to Be Struck
Is a Mystery as Yet
Unsolved.
-----------------

T.C. Ward, a section hand for the M. & St. L., was struck and fatally injured by a train on that road at 1 o'clock Tuesday afternoon, at a point seven miles south of town, where the road passes through the John Boyle farm. Ward was brought to Grinnell as soon as possible after his comrades on the section gang had discovered his broken body lying beside the track. He died at the city hospital at 11 o'clock Tuesday night. The body was taken to Searsboro for burial yesterday morning.

Just how the accident happened is a good deal of a mystery. Ward himself was not able to explain it before his death. All he could say was that he was walking beside the track and was struck. It is presumed he was hit by a southbound M. & St. L. freight but just how he got in the way of the train no one can explain.

His left arm was broken in three or four places, his skull was fractured, five ribs, his collar bone, and his left leg above the ankle were broken.

Ward was a widower and is survived by a daughter, now studying in a Burlington hospital to take up the work of a trained nurse, and a son.