SMITH, Laura Lee
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
Source: "Obituaries - Year - 1960 Volume B" from the Covington Public Library. 11 May 1966
Two Covington men recovered the body of Laura Lee Smith, 2, while dragging for mussels Sunday morning at 9:25. The little girl drowned Thursday night with her brother, Darrell, 6, as a panel truck slipped into the swift waters of the Wabash at Attica.
Jim Noble and Fletcher Clawson, both of Covington, discovered the body floating near the east. shore of the Wabash, four miles north of the Covington boat landing. Noble said the body was floating 15 feet from the shore in eddy water along the edge of a sand bar. "We weren't specifically looking for the girl. " he said, "but we had been alerted."
The body was brought to the Covington landing, although there were several other points where the men could have reached shore. "Covington was the best place due to the circumstances." one of the men said.
The efforts of recovery teams concentrated in the general vicinity in hopes of locating the body of the boy.
Laura and her brother became victims of the Wabash when the panel truck owned by their father Vernie Smith, Rt. #2,
Attica, rolled into the river as the father was preparing to pull a boat out of the water. As the truck began to roll, two Other children, Edward, 7, and his brother, Gary, 4, leaped out.
The father dove into 15 feet of water in an attempt to rescue the two trapped in the truck and succeeded in taking them out of the vehicle. However, the swift
current tore them from his arms as he attempted to swim to shore.