Monthly Archives: September 2016

Our Worst Road Crash, Our Worst Train Wreck

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Lately I’ve been studying various tragedies in our regional history. In the process I’ve learned more about what I think are the worst death tolls for several types of events in Steuben County – though I’m ready to hear if I’ve missed anything.

*The Avoca Bus Crash, December 14, 1943, I believe to have caused our county’s biggest death toll in a HIGHWAY ACCIDENT. Orval Putnam was driving a 1936 Chevrolet bus carrying workers mostly from Avoca, but also with pickups at Kanona, Bath, and Savona, heading to Ingersoll Rand in Painted Post where they were employed as defense workers. The bus was being operated by the Steuben County War Council.

*At a bend in Campbell, the bus was sideswiped by an oncoming tractor-trailer at about 5:30 AM — still pretty dark in December. It appears that the tractor-trailer strayed over the centerline.

*The bus was thrown over onto its right side, making a second impact and also tossing passengers about, plus making it difficult to exit. In addition to that the bus also caught fire, perhaps from a kerosene heater in the front. Eleven men, including the driver, were killed (ages 27-52), eight men were injured (ages 17-57). The tractor-trailer also was badly damaged, but stayed upright. From what I can tell, that driver was not badly injured.

*Eight widows brought suit, charging criminal negligence, and the cases were eventually settled out of court. In year 2000 a monument commemorating the tragedy was erected in Avoca, and dedicated on the fourth of July.

*(The next worst highway event seems to be the August 23, 1934 single-vehicle crash in Jasper in which six members of the Cady family were killed, along with an unborn child. Three family members survived.)

*The worst RAILWAY ACCIDENT was on July 4, 1912, when a Delaware, Lackawanna passenger train, carrying holiday-makers from Hoboken to Niagara Falls, was stopped in early morning fog half a mile east of Gibson station.  A second passenger train plowed into it going at least 65 miles per hour.  The rear two cars were telescoped, and in all 41 people were killed. 

*One of the newspapers reported that the steam locomotive “remained on the roadbed to hiss and snarl for the next three or four hours while thousands of human beings rushed to the scene of its desolation in every kind of vehicle, to lift and pry the dead and injured from their bloody berths.”

*There were also plenty of gawkers, of course, but frantic rescuers rushed the 41 dead and 88 injured to Corning and Elmira. This was our worst railroad accident, and although more people died in epidemics, it is almost certainly the worst single-incident death toll in Steuben history.

*(The August 30, 1943 sideswiping in Wayland took 29 lives, mostly by scalding with steam. Many more were injured, with hospitals as far away as Bath and Rochester taking in victims. Our second-worst rail tragedy took place in the middle of World War II; the dead included the railroad’s superintendent of locomotives – crushed despite trying to jump clear of the cab – and the production manager for Mercury Aircraft. In future columns we’ll look at our worst fires, floods, and epidemics.)

T – 50: Half a Century BEFORE “Star Trek”

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A week or so back in this space, we looked fifty years behind us to 1966… the year in which Star Trek debuted. It’s thought-provoking to think about what life was like, and how different it is now… but also how much it’s still the same.

*But if our own time now is T (for Trek) + 50, there was also a time of T – 50… a time 50 years before that debut, just as our time is 50 years after. Despite our computers and cell phones and independent Africa and an African American president, that half-century before Star Trek probably brought more changes than the half-century since.

*Do you know what was closer to Star Trek than we are? World War I. When Star Trek debuted, the war had been over for 47 years and 10 months. All the horror of Spanish influenza, the Great Depression, the rape of Nanking, World War II, the Hitler genocide, the Korean War, the nuclear axe swinging over us, and the early years of Vietnam were crammed into less than 48 years.

*On the other hand, those same years brought forth penicillin, polio vaccine, television, jets, satellites, space travel, direct dialing, and rural electrification.

*What was going on in 1916… at T – 50?

*Woodrow Wilson was re-elected President, beating former New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes. In New York, and in most other states, women couldn’t vote.

*Corning Glass Works introduced Pyrex to the buying pubic. Glenn Curtiss sold controlling interest in his company for seven million dollars. Endicott Johnson gave everybody a 40-hour week.

*On our northern border, we signed the Migratory Bird Treaty with Canada. On the south, Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico, killing almost 20 people. General Pershing led 10,000 troops, along with a dozen Curtiss Jenny biplanes, in an unsuccessful punitive invasion of Mexico.

*In Jersey City German saboteurs blew up two million pounds of ammunition at Black Tom, damaging the Statue of Liberty and doing wreckage to the tune of half-a-billion in today’s dollars.

*The German-backed Easter Rising in Ireland was crushed, but set the stage for independence five years later. The British-backed Arab Revolt, egged on by Lawrence of Arabia, also broke out. It would be far more successful, only to be betrayed by the British and French, setting up hostility between the regions today.

*In the main war, battleships clashed at Jutland. The battle of the Somme began, and the Battle of Verdun ended. Tanks were first used in significant numbers.

*Down at the bottom of the globe, Ernest Shackleton and his select crew made a desperate and unprecedented small-boat journey through polar seas, followed by the scaling of a cliff and an epic trek across South Georgia island.

*The toggle switch for electric lights first appeared. So did oxycodone. So did the Sopwith Camel. So, in silent movie cartoons, did Farmer Al Falfa.

*Dwight D. Eisenhower was at Fort Sam Houston. Franklin D. Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy. Harry Truman was farming. Lyndon Johnson was eight years old, and Ronald Reagan was five. John F. Kennedy would be born in the following year.

*Emma Goldman was arrested for providing birth control information.

*The National Park Service came to be.

*Americans lynched 54 other Americans in 1916, but still the national government refused to act. So did the state governments. So did the local governments. James Weldon Johnson became field secretary of the N.A.A.C.P., which proved to be a turning point for the struggling young organization.

*Jack London died, and so, after considerable struggle, did Rasputin.

*Jackie Gleason was born, as was Dinah Shore. Eugene McCarthy and Beverly Cleary first saw the light of day. Kirk Douglas, Walter Cronkite, and C. Everett Koop all drew their first breaths in 1916.

*It would be years before the names of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Amelia Earhart, Charles A. Lindbergh, and Billy Graham became household words.

*So – 1916 was just as far from the debut of Star Trek as we are. Doesn’t seem possible, does it?

“Star Trek” and Us — Fifty Years Ago

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For those of us who were actually there, it seems quite puzzling that fifty years – half a century? – have gone by since we sat eagerly down to watch that very first episode of “Star Trek.” Most of us weren’t TOO badly disappointed, though we all agreed it could have been better. And over the next three years it GOT better, though never reaching quite the heights we’d hoped for. Still… space travel in prime time, and we didn’t need to be ashamed of it.

*From its original moderate success, “Star Trek” has swelled into a phenomenon… last weekend, I even bought “Star Trek” stamps at the Post Office. Those square computer discs have come and gone… those flip-lid clamshell communicators look an awful lot like our phones.

*Then we looked forward, now we look back. What were our lives like the night “Star Trek” premiered, back in 1966?

*Lyndon B. Johnson was our president, and Nelson Rockefeller was our governor. Our senators were Jake Javits and Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy was 41. He would never be 43.

*“Cadillac” Bill Smith was a state senator from Big Flats, three years into his 24-year service. He initially grabbed the voters’ attention by campaigning in a Cadillac that he bought with subsidies for not growing crops, and condemning government waste.

*Steuben County was still governed by a Board of Supervisors, rather than an elected legislature. The state legislature was just finishing a chaotic reapportionment on the “one man, one vote” principal, which broke an undemocratic stranglehold by rural Upstate counties.

*Down in Georgia, though, the assembly overwhelmingly blocked duly-elected Julian Bond from taking his seat. (They insisted it was because he opposed the Vietnam War, not because he was black – the Supreme Court ordered him seated later in 1966.) Civil rights worker Vernon Dahmer was burned to death in Mississippi. Robert Weaver became the first African American cabinet secretary. Riots exploded in Watts. Ed Brooke became the first African American senator since Reconstruction.

*“The Dick Van Dyke Show” ended, and “Dark Shadows” began. Mr. Ed made his last snide remarks. Doctor Who regenerated for the first time. Walt Disney died.

*“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” got its very first airing. A New York City TV station made the first yule log broadcast. Kwanzaa had its first celebration.

*A midair collision in Spain caused three H-bombs to be dropped and lost. Several Gemini space missions took place. A Russian probe made a soft landing on the moon. Johnson sent more troops to Vietnam, and demonstrations against the war began in ernest. The Supreme Court issued its Miranda ruling. The Freedom of Information Act became law.

*A sniper with an undiagnosed brain tumor killed 14 people from a tower at the University of Texas. Albert Speer finished his 20-year sentence for crimes against humanity.

*Twenty-eight original members founded the National Organization for Women. A merger formed the United Farm Workers, under an earlier name. The Black Panther Party was formed.

*Barack Obama was five, and probably wasn’t allowed to stay up for “Star Trek.” Andrew Cuomo was almost nine. Hilary Clinton was a sophomore at Wellesley. Donald Trump had just finished two years at Fordham, and was switching to Wharton.

*Corning and Hornell were busy industrial cities. Home computers and portable phones were nothing but dreams. Vaccines were available for measles, but not for mumps, rubella, or chicken pox. If gasoline prices ever rose as high as a quarter a gallon, people were horrified. The second stage of the Watergate Hotel was just opening. No one had ever spoken the name of Hurricane Agnes.

*Technology has advanced since 1966, but “Star Trek” envisioned a social future too. A future in which African Americans could be president. A future in which women could be president. A future in which people of different backgrounds could live, work, and play together.

*Mission accomplished? No, but mission advanced anyway. Even so, for all the ground we’ve travelled nativism and xenophobia are powerful forces in this election… even the Ku Klux Klan is a factor in this election, just as it was in 1966. So there’s a lot of journey still to go. Still climbin’. But we won’t sit down.

Disaster!

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Disasters have struck our region since time immemorial. The Sullivan invasion (during the Revolutionary War) may be the first one about which we have detailed information.

*We are now in the bicentennial of a quiet catastrophe that brutalized Europe and North America – the Year Without a Summer. Snow feel every month of 1816, and frost formed very month. Tuscarora Creek had half an inch of ice in May, and a quarter inch in September. Crops failed, and livestock died.

*This is all believed to have resulted from the gigantic eruption of Mount Tambora in the East Indies, along with several other major eruptions and a low sun cycle. Steuben County was only 20 years old, so this was till largely frontier back then.

*Because of the smaller numbers involved, and because of the limited collateral damage, we don’t usually think of highway wrecks in terms of disasters. But several major crashes stand out.

*The Cady Crash took place August 23, 1936. Nine members of the Cady family were coming back from Woodhull when Forrest Cady, driving a 1935 coach in the rain, missed a curve at Jasper Five Corners, crossed a ditch, sideswiped a maple tree, then hit another maple head-on. Six of the nine occupants were killed, and one of them was only a few days from giving birth, meaning the loss of the unborn child as well. The six dead were buried side-by-side in Troupsburg Cemetry.

*The Avoca Bus Crash, December 14, 1943, I suppose was our county’s biggest highway toll. A busload of workers were heading from Avoca to their defense jobs at Ingersoll-Rand when the bus was sideswiped by an oncoming tractor-trailer at about 5:30 AM — still pretty dark in December. The bus was thrown over onto its right side, and then caught fire. Eleven men, including the driver, were killed. In year 2000 a monument was erected in Avoca.

*The Benton Amish Crash, July 19, 2012, actually took place in Yates County, but the victims were all from Jasper and Woodhull. A driver attempted to pass a slow-moving tractor on Pre-Emption Road in Benton. He struck an oncoming van carrying Amish farm folks who were on a tour to study agricultural techniques. This crash spun the van into the path of the tractor, which crushed it. Six people were killed and eight injured. The dead included a husband and wife who left 12 children ranging in age from 9 months to 18 years.

*Naturally this created a crisis not just for the families but for the Amish community and for the larger community as well. “English” neighbors provided transportation to and back from Strong Hospital, pitched in with farm work, helped to shield their neighbors from the morbidly curious.

*Floods have a long history in our region. One study, running from 1784 to January 1999, lists 84 significant floods, including the Ice Flood, the Big Flood, the Great Inundation, and several Pumpkin Floods.

*Probably the two worst, both within living memory, were the 1935 flood (44 dead) and the 1972 Hurricane Agnes flood (19 dead in Steuben County). They had eerily similar footprints and similar dates (late June, early July), and both sprang up in the early morning hours.

*They clobbered Corning, Bath, Elmira, Hornell, Hammondsport, Ithaca, Wellsville, Rochester, Owego, Binghamton – everything. It would take years of work and millions in treasure to recover.

*I’ll be speaking on these and other regional disasters (including fires, epidemics, and train wrecks) at the next Steuben County Historical Society presentation, 4 PM Friday September 9 at Bath Fire Hall. The event is free and open to the public, and we’ll also have copies of my book, “The 1972 Flood in New York’s Southern Tier,” for sale. Hope to see you!