BOY, GIRL DROWN AT QUINNEBAUGH

CHILDREN OF FORMER BLAIRITE LOSE LIVES BY FALLING THROUGH ICE

Two children of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Erickson of north of Tekamah were drowned Saturday when they fell through the ice near the Erickson farm home on the south bank of Lake Quinnebaugh, popular summer fishing resort. Mrs. Erickson is the former Dorene French of Blair.

It was the same backwater from the Missouri river which last summer filled the lake and brought moderate prosperity to the Erickson’s, owners of the lakeside boat livery, that took the lives of their children. Before last year, the lake had been almost completely dry for several years.

The children, Eloise, 4, and Leroy, 6, fell through the ice while playing. Mike French, working nearby, heard Eloise’s screams and saw her clinging to the ice about 30 feet out. The boy already had disappeared. Rotten ice crumbled under French as he tried to reach the girl and she had disappeared under five feet of water when he got there. The father and a neighbor joined in the search, and the two bodies were found half an hour afterwards. French was so exhausted that he had to be dragged from the water.

#2-Published in the Lyons Mirror Sun February 2, 1939

ERICKSON CHILDREN DROWN IN LAKE QU1NNEBAUGH

The two children, Leroy 6, and Eloise, 4, of Mr. and. Mrs. Carl Erickson, who reside at Lake Quinnebaugh, near Decatur, were drown Saturday, when they went through a hole in the ice where they were playing. A cry from the little girl was heard by Mike French, a brother-in-law of Mr. Erickson, as he was doing the evening chores. He saw the girl clinging to a piece of ice at the edge of a hole about thirty feet from the bank of the lake. The boy had disappeared. French went to the rescue of the girl and had his hands on her two or three times, but the ice kept breaking with him until he finally lost hold of her and she disappeared. The father and a neighbor, Harvey Bray, found the two bodies a half hour later, when they joined the search with a boat. Artificial respiration failed, to restore either of the children.

Obituaries courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society – Newspaper clipping on file in the Blair Public Library in Blair, Nebraska.