Payette County ID Archives Obituaries.....Franklin, Perry 1925
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Patty Theurer seymour784@yahoo.com August 14, 2005, 2:09 am

Payette Enterprise, Payette, Idaho, October 8, 1925
Payette Enterprise
Payette, Idaho
Oct. 8, 1925

CALIFORNIA PAPERS STORY OF PERRY FRANKLINS DEATH

The following taken from a Torrance, California paper, with reference to the 
tragic death of Perry Franklin, a former Payette man, on September 26th, will 
be of interest to his many friends living at this place.

Northbound from Long Beach passenger train No. 44 on the Union Pacific Railway 
was wrecked at Clearwater, nine miles from here, at 4 o’clock yesterday 
afternoon.  The trains collided with a truck load of structural steel en route 
from Torrance to Whittier.  The truck driver, Perry Franklin, 26, of Tirrance, 
was killed instantly.
The heavy metal strewed along the track derailed two passenger coaches, sending 
one in the ditch.  Passengers were shaken up, but none of them was reported 
injured.
The wreck tied up traffic on the line for more than three hours before a 
wrecking crew from Los Angeles could clear it.  Eye-witnesses said it was due 
to the failure of the wig-wag signal at the crossing on Washington Street to 
work.  Franklin leaves a wife and one child in Torrance and parents in Oregon, 
where he was born.
Young Franklin was driving his load east on Washington, which is the 
continuation of the Riverside Redondo Road.  The crossing is within fifty feet 
of the Clearwater Station of the Union Pacific Railway, but trains do not stop 
there unless signaled.  The train, in charge of Conductor Schaefer, was making 
usual time.
A house near the crossing might have obstructed the view of the truck driver 
but Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Horn, 131 North Greenleaf Street, Whittier, who 
witnessed the accident, declare the wig-wag was not swinging.  Franklin drove 
directly on the track.  Seeing the engine upon him and his heavy load of 
structural steel on the truck to which was attached a trailer, he attempted to 
jump.  The collision jammed the steel onto the driver, who was terribly mangled 
and then dragged 200 feet by the train.
Long steel bars became entangled in the wheels of the train.  The engine and 
tender remained on the track.  The two passenger coaches left the rails but 
remained upright.
Some of the passengers were given medical attention but suffered mostly from 
fright.  
The truck was owned by the Tolson Transfer Company of Torrance for whom 
Franklin had been working the past year.  The body was taken to the Neale & 
Town Parlors in Compton.

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