"HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF"

“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)

The front page story of today’s MetroWest Daily News (Framingham, MA) is about Framingham resident and longtime educator George Marcus, age 79, whose Hyundai sedan veered off Route 1 South in Walpole and hit a pole. Marcus is dead. His wife, who was riding with him was injured. The story is found at:

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x320082925/Framingham-man-killed-in-crash-was-an-inspiration

Reading about an elderly couple driving along Route 1 South, and their car going off the road and hitting an object leaving the driver dead reminded me of a very similar automobile fatality which took place in October of 1963. I was 9-years-old and in the 4th Grade at the time. Today, fatal automobile accidents are investigated by the State Police Accident Investigation Team, but in those days, the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts was divided up into geographic territories for the purpose of accident investigation. A Registry of Motor Vehicles Inspector (later called “Registry Police” and now merged into the State Police) was responsible to investigate all fatal accidents in the geographic territory to which he’d been assigned. “Investigator” was the first promotion above “Examiner” for Registry Police in those days. My father had given driving tests between 1956 and 1963 as an Examiner, and was promoted to Investigator that summer. One of the first fatal accidents he investigated involved the death of Claude Atkinson of Boston’s Roslindale section. This was the October 1963 accident I thought about this morning.

There were two elderly couples driving along Route 1 South in Norwood on a Sunday in the late afternoon. Suddenly, the car veered off Route 1 and slammed into a large tree. As I recall, Claude Atkinson the driver was the only fatality, and the others were badly injured. As part of his investigation, my father would go to see the wrecked car, take pictures of it, make notes, etc. For some reason, on an October afternoon very similar today, my father asked me to go with him after I got home from school. This was just my Dad and I, and didn’t include my younger brother and sister. We went to the junk car lot where the wrecked maroon 1950 Mercury sedan had been towed. Mr. George Marcus of Framingham who had Friday’s accident in Walpole was driving a Hyundai. I don’t think of them as being particularly sturdy cars. Conversely, a 1950 Mercury was built like a battle ship! Even so, I can still see the grille and hood area of that Mercury badly damaged. Inside the passenger compartment was lots of dried blood (maroon just like the Mercury) on the tan upholstery. In those days, old ladies really dressed like old ladies. There were a couple of “old lady hats” on the back floor, and at least one pair of “old lady eye glasses”. I remember that after we left the wrecked car, my father drove to the Norwood Hospital. He went inside for a few minutes, and I waited in the car. I now realize he must have been checking on the condition of the survivors.

It’s been forty-six years, but as I recall, it was determined that Claude Atkinson didn’t actually die FROM THE CRASH. He likely died instantly of a heart attack or something like that while at the wheel and the car veered into the large tree. It’s similar to the death of State Rep. Debbie Blumer a few years ago when her car suddenly went off a Framingham street and hit a guard rail. She had died at the wheel first. I suspect that was probably the case with 79-year-old George Marcus.

As you can tell, seeing that smashed up 1950 Mercury and the dried blood and the old lady hats, etc. made quite an impression on a 9-year-old boy in 1963. Maybe that was my father’s point: to let me start to see what can happen in an automobile. I didn’t have nightmares about it or anything like that, but it stayed with me vividly that Fall. It took a jarring news report about three weeks later on November 22 to put Claude Atkinson’s accident memory away. But sometimes it comes back. Reading about another elderly man and another car accident on Route 1 South on an October day brought it back to mind today.