Hendricks - Robert Dale
Source: Crawfordsville Journal-Review, Crawfordsville, Montgomery County Indiana, 8-Dec-1958 1: 7
A 6-year-old boy who didn’t like to keep his school bus driver waiting walked across snow-driven US 136 west of here Monday morning and was killed instantly by a semi-trailer mail truck as his fear frozen parents watched. Robert Dale Hendricks, son of Mr. and Mrs. Dale Hendricks, Rt. 4 Crawfordsville, was in his first year at Mt. Zion School. He always liked to be waiting by the side of the highway across from their home four miles west of Crawfordsville when Clarence (Jimmy) Walters drove up in his school bus. Monday morning at about 7:15 o’clock the bus wasn’t even in sight yet, but Bobby, impatient to being the new school week, decided to cross the highway, made slippery by an overnight snowfall. He waited while two eastbound cars passed, then walked into the roadway. His mother was in the front yard and his father in the doorway. They screamed at him to look out for the truck, but he apparently didn’t hear. “He was in the road when I saw him,” said Albert Carl Goodson, 56, Veedersburg, driver of the huge mail truck which delivers mail between here and Danville, Ill., on a daily star route. “I swerved and missed him with the tractor, but the trailer jackknifed.” Goodson, visibly shaken by his experience, told a neighbor, Robert Smith, “I just can’t imagine what I’ve done. I have a 13-year-old boy of my own. This is killing me.” He said he had been driving the mail truck only this year but had never been in an accident previously in nearly 40 years as a driver. He was so broken up he vowed to bystanders that he would quit driving. Little Bobby was struck by the right rear dual wheels of the trailer and tossed about 55 feet to the side of the road. His father rushed out of the house and carried the lifeless body of his son into their modest frame home. “He never drew a breath after it happened,” he told Smith later. “But I can’t blame the driver.” The truck skidded and spun sideways about 150 feet west and went off the road pointing back toward Crawfordsville. It nearly struck a fence on Smith’s farm. The accident was investigated by the sheriff’s department, state police and the coroner. An early theory was that the two east-bound cars stirred up such a swirl of snow that Bobby didn’t see the white truck approaching and walked out into the road thinking it was clear of traffic. Judith Smith, 11-year-old daughter of the Robert Smiths, was watching for the school but out the west window of the Smith home. She knew Bobby well and had babysat with him frequently, the last time only Saturday. She saw the truck strike him and yelled, “Bobby’s been hit” to her parents. Inside the Hendricks home friends and neighbors were clustered in the kitchen, trying to comfort Mrs. Hendricks, who was weeping desperately. They talked in whispers as ambulance attendants gently lifted Bobby’s body off the bed in the bedroom and carried him on a stretcher to the ambulance. Walters, the bus driver, also lives in the neighborhood. The group in the Hendricks home, talking about anything just to there wouldn’t be complete silence, were saying what a good river he was and how punctual and how good with the youngsters. Officers held Goodson blameless. The truck he was driving is owned by Mary and George Lindley of Crawfordsville and leased to the government as a mail carrier. The fatal accident was the 17th in Montgomery County during 1958, adding more blood to the record set last month when the deaths of four person in a single accident raised the yearly total to 16, an all-time high. Robert Dale (Bobby) Hendricks was born May 18, 1952, in Culver Hospital, Crawfordsville. His parents are Dale and Marjorie Armantrout Hendricks. Mr. Hendricks is employed at the Vern Campbell tin shop. He was a first grade pupil at Mt. Zion School and attended Sunday school at the Mt. Zion EUB Church. Survivors, in addition to the parents, include a sister, Rosemary, at home; the maternal grandmother, Mrs. Agnes Armantrout of Crawfordsville; the paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Chester Hendricks of Rt. 1 Waynetown; an aunt, Mrs. Robert Patton of Crawfordsville; two uncles, Paul Hendricks of Crawfordsville and Clyde Hendricks of Lakeville, and several cousins and great-aunts and uncles. He was preceded in death by an aunt and uncle and his maternal grandfather, Ralph Armantrout. Funeral services will be conducted Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Bright Funeral Home by Rev. Henry H. Karg, pastor of the Mt. Zion EUB Church. Friends may call at the funeral home after 4 p.m. Tuesday. The place of 4 p.m. Tuesday. Interment will be in Oak Hill Cemetery.