SMITH, Darrell Glen
Source: "Obituaries - Year - 1960 Volume B" from the Covington Public Library. 25 May 1966
The two and one-half week long search of the Wabash River has ended.
Darrell Glen Smith, six-year old son of Vernie and Alice Karen Foster Smith of Rt. 2, Attica, was discovered in the river about one mile south of the Monroe Street landing where a rolling truck carried him and his two-year-old sister Laura to their deaths on a Thursday evening.
The father was alone in a boat at the time, searching the river as he has almost every day since the two children were lost in the swift current of the Wabash. He came upon the floating child near the east bank. He was caught to some driftwood and had apparently come to the surface as the high waters were receding.
The father gently lifted the child out with a rain coat and came back to town to get the funeral director.
The child was found in a spot that had been gone over many, many times in the past two weeks. His clothing had apparently become caught on the driftwood.
Little Laura Lee was found on the Sunday following the tragic accident by two men just north of Covington.
The other two Smith children, Eddie Allen, 7, and Gerry Lynn 5, managed to jump out of the rolling truck just before it rolled into the water and sank. The father had jumped in the truck in an attempt to rescue the other two but the swift current of the Wabash pulled them away from his arms as he struggled to surface with them.
All four children had been playing in the back of the panel truck while the father was at the river bank dipping water out of a boat he had purchased. The truck was parked at the landing and when it started to roll the father yelled at the children to jump. But two of them didn't get out in time.
Services for Darrell were at 2 p.m. today at the DeSutter Funeral Home. Burial followed in Riverside Cemetery. Ronny DeLong officiated.
Source: Obituary from a collection of Fauniel Hershbarger, a life-long Fountain County Indiana resident
ATTICA – A grieving father, after searching for two weeks, found the body of his six-year old son Saturday afternoon. Darrell Glen Smith drowned May 5, along with his sister, Laura Lee, age 2, when their father’s truck rolled backward into the Wabash River. Vernie Smith had taken his four children with him to the Monroe St. landing to remove a boat from the river. While attaching the boat trailer to the truck, the truck slipped backward into the river. The elder Smith got two of the children out of the water, but Darrell and Laura were swept away before he could get to them. When rescuers pulled the truck out their bodies were gone. Divers searched and river and men dragged the area for days. Fishermen found Laura Lee’s body about four miles north of Covington on May 8 – about 10 miles downstream. Vernie Smith never gave up searching for his son’s body. He had been on the river nearly every available minute. Saturday afternoon at 2:15 he found the body, floating along the bank about a mile south of where the truck had gone in the water – across from the Williamsport landing. Vernie and his wife, Alice, have two other sons, Eddie Allen, 7, and Gerry Lynn, 5. They live at Rt. 2, Attica. – jlr