Ex-Blair Boy Drowns-Mickey Sterba, 10, Former McCarthy Pupil Drowns in Lake

A former Blair farm boy was drowned last Thursday morning at Carter Lake when a raft overturned.

He was Mickey Sterba, 10, who formerly lived in the McCarthy neighborhood south of Blair with Mr. and Mrs. Paul Stapleton before the Stapleton’s moved to Omaha.

Mickey and his brother, Gary, 11 both formerly attended McCarthy School here.

Gary and still another brother, Richard, 9, themselves narrowly escaped death when they were cast adrift on the lake while trying to bring Mickey to shore.

The two lads said they arrived at Pershing School before noticing that Mickey, who had started out at the same time, was not with them.

Surmising that he might have gone to the lake, Gary and Richard went back and began searching the lake shore. They found Mickey on a raft close to the shore.

The two said they tried to persuade Mickey to come back to shore, but that he refused. Then Gary and Richard waded out to the raft and tried to get it back to shore.

Instead the raft drifted offshore, marooning all three boys aboard. In the center of the lake, the boys said, the nondescript raft broke in two. The section carrying Mickey tipped over, plunging the boy into the water.

Cries Bring Help

They boys yells for help attracted Marvin Cleaver, 3713 Himebaugh Avenue, who was fishing about three-fourths of a block away.

He ran to the scene and saw Mickey’s head bobbing in the water.

“Save him! He’s drowning!” the two boy yelled to Mr. Cleaver.

Mr. Cleaver started out into the lake, but developed a cramp in the cold water and had to turn back. He ran to a filling station at Twenty-first and Locust Streets to summon officers.

Mickey had disappeared when the first officers reached the scene. They could not reach the other two boys until the Fire Department boat arrived. Police shouted instructions to one of the boys to lie down on the raft so it would not overturn. The other lad had deserted the raft for a log floating near by.

When the distraught parents reached the scene, the boys cried. “We tried to save him but he wouldn’t listen to us,” Gary said.

Body Recovered

Mr. Sterba said Mickey had asked several times to enter a swimming class. The father said he told the lad to wait until he was a little older.

Omaha fireman found the body shortly before 8 o’clock Thursday night.

Other survivors are a brother Frank, 3rd, born May 10, and two sisters, Dolores Marie, 13, and Dorothy Lil,2.

~~~Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clipping on file in the Blair Public Library at Blair, Nebraska.~~~