A Widow's Hour of Calamity in Renton
A singular sequence of tragedy strikes a Renton resident as house fire, drowning, and injury converge in sixty minutes.
Three misfortunes crowded one hour for Mrs. Joseph Govenelli, age 65, a widow, living at Renton, near Seattle. Within the fateful 60 minutes on Saturday, she lost a son-in-law by drowning, fire did $500 damage to her home, and while receiving the condolences of friends, she fell from the front porch, breaking her right leg.
“Three misfortunes crowded one hour for Mrs. Joseph Govenelli.”
While the dramatic nature of this news snippet feels ripped from a tabloid, it underscores the lack of social safety nets for widows in 1916. Today, Renton remains a place of rapid expansion where individual misfortune is still often eclipsed by the city's growth machine.
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