Sunday, February 1, 2009

Four years to the day

On February 1, 1947, four years to the day after his brother was killed in an airplane crash, my uncle Lester Broward Green was killed in a train crash. I never knew the cause of his death until a cousin sent me a newspaper clipping she found in the Perry, Florida paper.

The Live Oak Perry & Gulf Railroad was owned by the Brooks-Scanlon Corporation who operated a sawmill in Foley, Florida.

TAYLOR COUNTY NEWS, PERRY, FLORIDA
Feb. 6, 1947

Lester Green Dies In Motor Car Wreck

Lester Green, 37 year old son of M.F. Green of Perry, was fatally injured in a railroad motor car accident last Saturday afternoon. He died in an ambulance shortly after leaving Perry for a hospital at Thomasville. The accident occurred on the L.O.P.& G. about twelve miles east of Perry.

After nine years in the Army, Mr.Green came home last November 27, going to work for the L.O.P.&.G. R's in late December. The accident which cost his life occurred when a section motor car jumped the track and the trailer with men and tools piled up on the motor car as boxes of heavy tools was said to have fallen upon his body, crushing his chest.

The deceased is survived by his father, M.F. Green, his widow, the former Miss Doris Vera Avera of Orlando, to whom he was married December 21, 1940. There is a son, Dan, and a daughter, Miss Doris Green of Eustis, by an earlier marriage. Three brothers survive, being Tech. Sgt. Clyde Green of Eglin Field, Alton B. Green of Jacksonville and Floyd Green of Macon, Georgia. There are also several uncles and aunts and other relative. Another brother, Bryant Green, US Army, was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico, just four years to the day and almost to the hour before Lester’s death February 1.

Funeral services were held here at the First Baptist Church Tuesday afternoon at three o’clock, Rev. Alva Horton of New Home Baptist Church conducting the service. Internment was in the City Cemetery.

Lester Broward Green was born in this county on May 31, 1910 and spent his entire life here, except for the nearly ten years he spent in the Army. His mother died when he was five years old.

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