JAMES, Lydia Ruth - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

Hillsdale, Vermillion Co., Ind.—The body of a 29 year old State Department employee slain near Saigon, French Indo-China, will be returned to Hillsdale for burial, her parents said last night.

  Miss Lydia Ruth James, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Otto James of Hillsdale in Vermillion County, and secretary of the U. S. Consulate General in Indo-China, was found with a fellow employee Saturday night in a dry river bed into which they had driven a jeep. Both had been shot to death.

  The death of Miss James and her companion, Mrs. Jeanne R. Skewes, of Seattle, Wash, were first reported in a French communiqué received in Paris from Saigon. Mr. and Mrs. James said last night they had been notified by the State Department of their daughter’s death.

  The French communiqué said bodies bore bullet wounds, particularly in the head, and that the jeep had been set on fire by the attackers.

  Miss James served with the Wacs in the Southwest Pacific and in Washington before taking the State Department job. She had been overseas with the State Department about one year.     She was a graduate of Hillsdale High School and Indiana State Teachers College in Terre Haute. – thanks to S&E