Harry Stahlman From: [
www.mindspring.com] Patrick J. Henry
Clarion, Sept. 21. - Harry Stahlman, 10 year old son of Dr. Harry Stahlman, prominent Clarion citizen, was drowned in the Clarion dam near the water station late Saturday afternoon. This is the first victim claimed by the new dam, with its precipitous banks and deep water.
Owing to the nature of the country flooded by water in the construction of the new dam, which is 11 ½ miles long, the dam has no beach in all its 23 miles of shore line, with but few exceptions, and every man, woman and child in this entire section have been warned or know of the dangerous condition of its shores.
Young Harry Stahlman and his brother, Donald, after assisting their mother with the work around the house, asked permission to go to "Wilson’s Woods" and play awhile. The permission was gladly granted, as the parents were always anxious that the boys should play and study in these beautiful woods, which almost adjoin their home, rather than play around the hot, dusty and dirty streets of the town.
Harry then, taking his Boy Scout hand ax and accompanied by his younger brother, Donald, walked to the woods shortly after 3 o’clock P. M. After playing there awhile, Donald says that young Harry proposed going to the water works station and watch the water and dam from that point. The boys did this and playing along the way as they walked down the steep path to the river.
Arriving at the river, they walked out the narrow boat landing below the water works and then came back to the shore and took off their shoes and stockings and sat on the landing with their feet dangling in the cool water. After awhile Harry climbed up and sat on the railing of the narrow boat landing and swinging his feet back and forth, sat there talking to Donald sitting below him. All at once Harry slipped from the railing and fell into the water, between the landing and a stone retaining wall which had been built along the shoreline at that point.
Donald says that his brother went down and down and down, finally coming back to the surface, grasping at the slippery stones and debris trying to keep above water, which at this point, only a few feet from the shore, was 25 feet deep.
Grasping, and his tiny hands slipping off the slippery stones and rocks, he valiantly tried to keep afloat, and while he was able to swim some, it is thought that the sudden shock of falling into the water, so benumbed the boy that he swallowed immense quantities of water filling his lung space almost instantly.
Donald kept calling to Harry to come near to the landing so that he could reach out and save him, but little Harry was unable to do so and sank again. Calling to some men laboring near; screaming to his brother; again calling to the men who were within a few hundred feet, but unable to hear the lad on account of the noise of the water station, Donald finally left his brother and ran to the pump station for aid, bringing back with him John Meisinger, who called other men and they attempted to locate the body or give what assistance they could.
In the meantime some one had phoned Dr. Stahlman at his office to come to the water works station at once but would not tell him why he was wanted so urgently. Suspecting that something had happened, the doctor insisted on being told and when the message came, "Your boy has been drowned in the dam," Dr. Stahlman started from his office on Main Street, running as rapidly as possible and with never the least cessation, distracting all who were coming with him, reached the river banks before the body of his son had been recovered and within a very short time after the accident had taken place.
Urging the men to get pipes and bend hooks on them to grapple for the body, Dr. Stahlman was almost frantic with grief. Finally Walter W. Wilson started removing his clothes preparatory to diving for the body. He was dissuaded in this effort against his own will, but it was pointed out that this particular place had been used as a dumping ground for an immense quantity of old wire and cable, that the possibilities were that the body was already entangled in the wire and that he would likely be entangled himself and be unable to reach the surface.
After grappling with hooks and poles for a while, ex-Sheriff Les Carson stripped and said he was going to dive for the body. Raised along the Clarion river and a most expert swimmer and diver in his younger days, the sheriff prepared against the advice of many to begin searching the riverbed for the body. As he prepared himself to search, Walter Wilson also prepared to assist him and working together they both dived and searched many dozen of times before locating the body; one resting while the other was down.
At last Carson had been under so long that people began to be alarmed, thinking that he had become entangled in the wires. He came to the surface and announced that he had found the body among the wires that he had lifted it about five feet after almost superhuman effort, but had to come to the surface for air. Mr. Wilson immediately dove where Carson had located the body and in short time was back with the body in his arms.
Willing hands assisted him and shortly the body was on the bank where Dr. Long, partner of Dr. Stahlman, was ready to begin methods of resuscitation; the lungs were quickly emptied of water and artificial respiration began; quantities of hot water from the station nearby were brought and the stripped body wrapped in warm and hot cloths in a vain attempt to restore life.
After working there for quite awhile, the body was carried to the pump station where before a hot gas fire, in a warm room, the work was again carried on in the most approved method of restoring from drowning. Hoping against hope and still with the thought that bodies had been restored to life after working for a period of six hours, the doctors and volunteer assistants kept valiantly on with their struggle.
An automobile was secured and the body placed in it and with Dr. Stahlman and Rev. Wayland Zwayer as his assistant, the started to the office of the doctors, never ceasing for a moment the work of restoration.
Arriving at the doctor’s office electric heating pads were placed all over the body and every method known to modern science attempted for a long time, before they would give up hope and pronounce the boy dead.
While the boy was but 10 years old, he was exceptionally well developed for a boy of his age and looked more like a lad of 15 that one of 10. He was a favorite with his fellow schoolmates and was popular all over Clarion. Every spare minute of his time was occupied by reading books and even young as he was, he was planning for his future life.