Ben Kasper LAMFERS

LAMFERS, DUZUMNN, SCHOOLCRAFT, PAULSON, DEIRKS, DOVE, CRENSHAW, EEKHOFF, HULL

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 3/29/2010 at 11:36:27

September 25, 1886 -- October 7, 1955

Ben Lamfers, 69, Dies As Car Lands In Drainage Ditch

Services Held Tuesday For Well-Known Kanawha Farmer

Funeral services for Hancock county's fourth motor vehicle accident victim of the year were held at Kanawha Tuesday afternoon. Ben Lamfers, 69, died Friday night after the car which he was driving went off the road 2-½ miles west of Kanawha. The car missed a bridge Lamfers was approaching and came to rest in three feet of water in a big drainage ditch. The accident happened about 5:15 p. m. when Lamfers was returning to his farm home from Kanawha. The impact caused head fractures and face lacerations and he was partially thrown from the car with his body and head in the water which caused him to drown Coroner Kenneth Boughton reported. Lamfers was following a car driven by Mrs. Peter Eekhoff who lives just west of the bridge. Mr. Eekhoff heard a crash, asked his wife if a car was following her, and then picked up a neighbor, Garland Hull, and they raced to the accident scene. They tugged to free Lamfers, whose foot was caught in the car, and then gave him artificial respiration on the bank of the ditch. He was still alive when they pulled him from the car, Eekhoff said but he died within minutes, before medical aid could arrive.

Lamfers owned his farm west of Kanawha and has lived there about 10 years. He was born in the Netherlands on Sept. 25, 1886. After coming to this country he married in 1908. Born to Mr. and Mrs. Lamfers were fourteen children who survive: Ben, Jr., Marion, Siebo, Kasper, Olafe, Carrie (Mrs. Everett Duzumnn) Geneva; Grace, (Mrs. Geo. Schoolcraft) Forest City; Gertrude, (Mrs. Paul Paulson) Britt; Alice, at home; Sadie, (Mrs. Dennis Deirks) Belmond; Lena, (Mrs. Chester Dove) Tacoma, Wash.; Jennie, (Mrs. Fred Crenshaw) Grand Hay, Ala.; and Bernard, Grand Rapids, Mich. Also surviving are 40 grandchildren. Services were held at the Christian Reformed Church in Kanawha, Tuesday, at 2:00 p.m., preceded by a prayer service at Hanson Funeral Home. Rev. Juliun Vandenhoek, of Woden, officiated. Interment was in the Kanawha Cemetery.

The Britt News Tribune, Britt, Iowa
October 12, 1955