The word quickly spread about Sunday evening that Alec Byers Hitchman, Jr., had finally lost the long fight with death he had been engaged in for the past two weeks. He was operated upon for acute attack of appendicitis at the Blair Hospital on Monday evening, November 29th. It was a gangrened case but every possible effort was made to clean up the intestines affected in the hope that no infection would be left to set up trouble. Later a pus sac developed and another operation was performed the third one following the next evening. He was given a blood transfusion by Damon Nielsen and he seemed to get very satisfactory results from it. Another was planned but the doctor found him too weak to withstand the shock. Even Sunday morning he seemed improved and asked for a picture book to look over. It gave the family hope, which was so soon to be shattered for the poisoned condition of the system finally caused the heart to give way. An autopsy showed the condition worse then expected, utterly hopeless for his recovery. The funeral service was held at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, in which he was confirmed last spring, at 2:30 yesterday afternoon, Rev. Chas. D. Hering officiating. The church was crowded with the many friends and sympathizers of the family and the many beautiful floral tributes bore mute testimony of a wealth of love and sympathy felt by the entire community. “Bill” as he was familiarly called, he being Junior, was born in Tampico, Mexico, Sept. 30, 1911, so was just past 15 years of age. He attended Wentworth, Military Academy, at Lexington, Mo., for two years and was a freshman in high school here this year. Two of his cousins, Robert Pilling and Robert Wolcott, and six of his classmates were honorary pallbearers.

Obituaries courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file at the Blair Public Library.