A Heroic Sacrifice in the Woods
A 12-year-old boy in Yagar dies while saving his sister from a falling fir tree during a windstorm.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Johnnie Adams, the 12-year-old son of George Adams of Yagar, was killed by a falling tree late yesterday afternoon. While on his way home from school with a number of other children, including his little sister, the wind bowling through the forest uprooted a big fir tree by the roadside close by the girl. The boy, who was a short distance ahead, saw that the tree was likely to fall upon his sister, and running back quickly he caught her and pushed her out of reach of the tree, but was himself caught by the falling trunk and so badly crushed that he died a few hours afterward.
“The boy, who was a short distance ahead, saw that the tree was likely to fall upon his sister, and running back quickly he caught her and pushed her out of reach of the tree.”
This tragic story from the rural frontier era illustrates the constant, unpredictable physical dangers of living and working in Washington's logging-heavy landscapes, a reality that shaped the daily life of pioneer families.
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