Bio: Szydel, Michael (27 July 1940)

Contact:  Crystal Wendt
Email: crystal@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Szydel, Garber, Ball, Haskell, Mathews

----Sources: Humbird Enterprise (Humbird, Wis.) Sat., 27 July 1940

Car Crashes Cause Death and Suffering

Twenty five miles of highway 12 through this section, saw death and suffering over the weekend. Saturday, Michael Szydel, of Fairchild, was instantly killed in a head-on collision five miles west of that village, and Harold Garber, a CCC youth who had thumbed a ride with him, was seriously injured. Garber is 21 years old and his people are one of the resettlement families of the Hallie Dunn farms in Garden Valley. He is in an Eau Claire Hospital. Mr. Szydel was 55 years old and leaves a wife and seven children. He was buried from the Catholic Church in Fairchild Tuesday [buried in St. John’s Catholic Cemetery, Fairchild, Wis.].

Occupations of the other car were Mr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Ball, of St. Paul, and both were seriously injured. They are in an Eau Claire Hospital.

Sunday forenoon another collision a short distance east of the village, put four into the Krohn Hospital at Black River Falls. The injured were Samuel Haskell driving a cark with a Minnesota license, and his wife, and father, Herman Haskell, all of whom were injured. Frederic Mathews, of Sparta, was driver of the other car. With him was his wife, who was seriously hurt. Both cars were badly wrecked.