Spur Baby Drown in Duck Creek Tuesday
Little Roberta Lynn Thomson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Thomson, Jr. of Spur, drowned in Duck Creek Tuesday evening July 8.Funeral services were held at the Bethel Baptist church here at 4 p.m. Wednesday, July 9, with Rev. R.D. Hill officiating.
The two year old tot, with her parents and two sisters were standing at the Blair crossing bridge around 6:30 p.m. watching the swollen creek rush under the bridge. She slipped from the grasp of her father and into the water on the up-stream side. Her father jumped in after her, but was sucked under the bridge by the strong current. He narrowly escaped death himself as the violent water carried him through the three-foot tile culvert.
After being sucked under the first time, the body of the child was not seen again until approximately two hours later when one of the some 50 searchers found her at the bottom about ten feet from the bridge.
After failing to find his daughter, Thomson rushed to the highway about a half mile away and sent word to town. In very little time the Spur Volunteer Fire department and others responded to the call and started a systematic search for the body.
The searchers fastened a large seine about 200 yards below bridge and started another seine upstream from the first net. Others went for two or three miles downstream searching the banks and snags where the body could have lodged.
The still dangerous water under the bridge prevented anyone from swimming under to see if the body was lodged under it. However, firemen and others probed under and around the bridge with grappling poles.
The body was found on the bottom in about five foot water by Robert Stewart who was working on the large seine. It had been in the water approximately two hours.
Dr. Joe Alexander Billy Ray Barrett, Norton Barrett, Joe Bell and others of the fire department worked over an hour with the department's resuscitator trying vainly to revive the child.
The child was born Aug. 6, 1950 in Spur.
She is survived by her parents, two sisters, Betty Lee 5, and Myrtle Laverne, 3; grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Milo Thomson of Spur, Mrs. Frank Dobson of Hereford, and F.R. Stewart.
©The Texas Spur, July 10, 1952
from the records of Lillian Grace Nay
© Dickens County Historical Commission 1997-2022
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