It was a typical newspaper article, the kind you’d likely see any day of the week, glance at, then move on to more compelling headlines. Following after yet another Friday night, it was all the more mundane. Besides, the state had had a rash of highway collisions, and this only added more statistics to an already-unaddressed pile of government data.
But there was someone out there who wouldn’t want to see this headline.
The Associated Press story read, “City Man Among Three Road Fatalities.” Despite the AP credit, it was a local story that ran on the front page of the Albuquerque Journal on February 5, 1966.
After a long week at work, making the long trip home on a Friday night along that monotonous U.S. Route 54, someone’s dad missed a curve in the road.
Three more victims, one of them a former Otero County sheriff and another an Albuquerque resident, have been added to the state's 1966 highway fatality toll.
Latest victim was Francis X. Stevens, 41, of 2800 Cuervo Dr. NE, Albuquerque, who died in a one-car accident Friday night, 7 miles north of Tularosa on US-54, State Policemen Felix Work and Neal Curran reported.
Stevens, a salesman, was driving a late-model station-wagon when he failed to negotiate a curve. His vehicle left the roadway on the right hand side and then skidded across the highway to the left side.
Officers said the car crashed down a 12 foot embankment, rolled 2 1/2 times and came to rest on its top. Stevens died of head and internal injuries and was dead on arrival at an Alamogordo hospital, officers said.
So sad. He had an adventurous life crammed in too few years of life, and so much more to give his young family. Ican not imagine the shock Norma had that evening nor the greif that those left behind suffered. Frank was a hero in the biggest sense of the word. His sons were deprived of too many times that should have been shared.
ReplyDeleteI can only say I am so sorry for their loss. Honor his memory always.