An accident occurred at Camp Lavigne when the 50 feet-long suspension bridge that crossed the creek collapsed with the center of the bridge landing in a foot or so of water, seriously injuring an eleven year-old scout by the name of Fred Griffith, Railroad Street, Bloomsburg. He died later that day on the operating table at Bloomsburg Hospital.
The suspension bridge at Camp Lavigne.
The photograph was by Paul Hess, a former free-lance photographer from Benton
In all, twelve boys were treated for bruises, cuts and scratches, and three were taken to the hospital. Griffith was carried from under the bridge by Mark Jury, the first-aid instructor at the camp and by Harry Kerstetter, Millville, a camp counselor. A tourniquet was applied to his leg in order to stop the flow of blood. Scout Executive Earl Blake and other members of the camp staff provided comfort for the boys and Wilfred Pifer, the camp cook, made coffee, tea and refreshments to sooth the worried cub scouts and members of their families as they arrived at Camp Lavigne.
Dr. William Confair, Benton, treated the injured boys. Griffith was loaded into the ambulance of E. P. Chapin, Benton, and taken to Bloomsburg Hospital along with Arthur Bloom, 11, Berwick, another injured cub scout. The third injured scout, Robert Knorr, also age 11 and from Berwick, was taken in the car of E.H. Blake to the hospital. At Bloomsburg hospital, Dr. W. K. Beckley was the attending physician.
Fred Griffith died at the Bloomsburg Hospital at 4:55 PM on July 11, 1938, following the suspension-bridge collapse earlier that afternoon. Griffith was one of an estimated 75 boys who went down with the bridge when it collapsed. Griffith's leg was caught beneath the cable and his leg was so severely torn that it required 50 stitches. The leg injury was described as about three inches long, and "into the bone" resulting in severed veins and arteries. The scouts had just finished their dinner in the mess hall and Griffith had a full stomach. The anesthesia administered in the operating room caused violent vomiting as Griffith was recovering. The vomit was sucked back into his lungs and death came by strangulation despite the efforts of physicians to revive him.
A professional photographer, Shamokin photographer Paul Thomas, was on hand to get a picture of the whole group. He set up his camera on a tripod, and Harry Watts--a retired Press Enterprise photographer, with an eye for details like that--remembers that it was a Graflex camera with blackjacket cloth. Ted Fenstermacher later told Harry Watts that the photographer was so shaken up when the bridge went down that he never snapped a picture and blew the opportunity to get a photo of the scouts and camp staff attempting to get off the bridge and out of the creek.
The boys were positioned on the bridge in two rows so that the taller boys were sitting on one side with their legs hanging down, while the smaller boys stood on the bridge behind the sitting cubs.
Harry Watts remembers that "there were no "center supports" on the bridge," just the two vertical towers at the shore ends. The extra weight of all the boys made the bridge sag as the eye of a turn buckle broke and the cable pulled out tearing the concrete anchor on the shore behind the abutment. Investigation later showed that "one of the concrete abutments was cracked in two.
The bridge was similar to a bridge in Millville, removed in 1970 because of liability concerns. We'll attempt to reconstruct a description of the Camp Lavigne bridge from a photograph of the Millville bridge. Four steel cables ran parallel to three 2" by 6" walking boards, which were held up by 2" by 4" boards placed perpendicular to the flow of the creek. Two of the cables were under the walking boards and two cables were over the ends of the boards to keep them securely in place. Walking guides about waist high ran on either side of the boards for the length of the bridge and were used to keep walkers from slipping off the bridge and falling into the cold Fishingcreek water.
As the bridge began to fall, one side tipped and several boys were thrown onto the rocky bottom of the creek, only a few inches deep along the edge of the stream, deeper toward the center. Richard Strauch remembered that he heard "Two separate booms as the bridge fell part way, then in ten seconds it went the rest of the way." The bridge soundly rested on the creek bottom and most of the boys made their way from the accident out of the creek across the bridge or through the creek. A number of boys suffered from shock, and twelve had cuts, bruises and scratches.
Don Rabb remembers that Griffith sat beside Jim Magee, Bloomsburg, as the bridge fell into the water, and he remembers Richard Strauch and Hube Conner yelling to no one in particular to lift their legs. Donald Rabb remembers that Dr. Confair was summoned from Benton, about three miles away, and was there "before I could blink."
Camp Lavigne attempted to return to normal operations following the accident and after the boys had been examined medically. Prof. D.S. Hartline resumed his nature-study instruction. The officers of the camp were the only ones who knew the extent of the injury by Griffith, and word of the tragedy did not get widely circulated into towns who had sent boys to camp until evening, partly because of telephone problems outside of the Camp Lavigne area brought about by violent electrical storms. Boys at camp were not told of the death of Griffith until the Wednesday mess.
Griffith had lived with his grandmother for seven years before the bridge accident following the death of his parents in an automobile accident in Oswego, New York. He was a student at the Ben Franklin Training School at Bloomsburg State Teachers' College. According to the Benton Argus, the boy was a close friend of Jimmy Magee, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Magee, and they went together to the cub-scout camp.
After the accident, the 265-foot long bridge that spanned Fishing Creek near the Magee residence in Bloomsburg was taken apart and the portion needed to span Fishing Creek at Camp Lavigne--about 60 feet--was given to the Columbia and Montour Boy Scout Council by Harry L. Magee. The only cost to the council was the erection of the concrete foundations on the banks of the creek. The Bloomsburg bridge was about twelve years old at the time and in excellent condition. Harry Magee even gave the camp the floor plates, heavy cables, shive wheels, hand rails and the four two-inch-long bolts to secure the bridge in its new location.
Other residents also immediately rallied around the camp. Harry Erwine, a private contractor from Bloomsburg, began erecting a temporary bridge over Fishingcreek to the boy scout camp on Thursday just a few days after the suspension bridge collapsed. |
