Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Bristol, Lester 1936
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Marilyn Ransom mransom311@gmail.com August 29, 2014, 5:05 pm

The Belding Banner, Thursday, May 7, 1936


His decision to take a short cut over the Pere Marquette railroad tracks on his 
way from Kiddville to this city, instead of following the highway route which 
was somewhat longer, cost Lester Bristol, aged 87 years, his life, before he 
had walked on the railroad track very far, Saturday afternoon.

Mr. Bristol, who had been living at various places in the district between this 
city and Greenville for the past 8 or 10 years and who had been living on the 
former Jens Knudsen farm on the county line, had started to visit this city 
Saturday afternoon.  When he reached the Pere Marquette railroad crossing at 
Kiddville, he inquired from some people he met, if it was a shorter trip to 
town by way of the railroad than by the regular highway.  He was told that the 
distance over the railroad was considerable less and he started down the track.

Pere Marquette train No. 24, in charge of Cond. Claude Hardy, with Guy Weeks, 
former local resident, as the engineer, which is due at Belding at 2:35, was 
backing out of the station at about 3:30.  Mr. Bristol met the train and 
stepped off the track, apparently to let it pass.  Men on the train saw him get 
off the track but someone on looking back a second later failed to see the aged 
man and the train was stopped.  Mr. Bristol’s headless body was discovered by 
the side of the track, with the head some 20 or more feet away.  The right arm 
had also been completely severed just above the elbow.  Strange as it seems, 
the wheels of the cars had done a fairly clean job and the body appeared to be 
not otherwise mangled.  Neither was the face or head, the only mark, other than 
the severed neck, being an indentation in the forehead.  Mr. Bristol was very 
deaf and his eyesight was badly impaired and it is thought he stepped in 
between two of the cars making up the train and was thrown directly beneath the 
heels, with his neck and right arm resting on the rail.

The body was brought to the Fales funeral home in this city where it remained 
unidentified for about two hours and at about 5:30 George Bristol, a son, 
appeared at the undertaking parlors and definitely identified the body as that 
of his aged father.  He said that he had talked with his father shortly before 
8 o’clock and that he knew his parent was intending to walk to Belding.  
Following the identification, Coroner Bruce G. Fales and Sheriff Herbert A. 
Ross, the latter of Ionia, decided there would be no need of an inquest.

Surviving are the widow and six sons: Walter and Lester of Minnesota, James of 
Bay City, Louis, Frank and George of this vicinity and three daughters, Mrs. 
Charles Miller of White Cloud, Mrs. William Maitland of Brooklyn, this state, 
and Mrs. Clayton Skinner of Cedar Springs.

Funeral services were held Tuesday afternoon at 2:30 at the Fales funeral home 
with Rev. Charles W. Biastock, pastor of the Baptist church, officiating, and 
burial was in the Bristol family lot in Spender Mills cemetery.


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