BOY DROWNED IN WILLIAMSTOWN POOL
Funeral services for Richard Blanning, 7 years, who drowned in the swimming pool at Williamstown Monday afternoon, will be held from the home of his parents this afternoon. Interment will be made in the Methodist Cemetery at that place. The child was a son of Mr. and Mrs. C. F. Blanning, former residents of this place [Elizabethville]. His father conducts a hardware store in Williamstown.
Besides his parents, he is survived by one sister and a brother, Carol Blanning, 13, and Robert Blanning, 10; and his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. William Blanning, Williamstown, and Mr. and Mrs. Harper Bressler of Philadelphia.
The cause of the child’s drowning is unknown as Richard was capable of swimming. He had gone with a companion, George Graham, to the pool early that afternoon. The boys were playing in the shallow part of the pool when Richard slipped into deep water. The pool has a clay bottom, and it is said the stream feeding it had washed out a deep hole, into which the boy slipped.
The Graham boy told older bathers who were loath to believe his story. He then ran home and told his parents. His mother returned to the pool with him. By that time, Clarence Bressler, 17, had located the body by diving, and brought it to the surface. The child’s body below the surface it is thought for more than half an hour. All effort of resuscitation failed.
________________________________
From the Elizabethville Echo, 20 June 1929 via Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.