Frank Snyder, December 1939

This is the second part of a story. It is best to read Uncle Al's Knife first, and then this post. That post tells how I found my great-uncle Al's Swiss Army knife. Al's brother Frank was my grandfather. I wrote about Frank's son, my father, in Lessons From My Father's Life.

My Dad, Grandfather Frank, & Uncle Vernon

Frank Snyder was 34. He was a machinist at the Tryco Products Company in Westfield, Massachusetts. He lived on Eldridge Avenue with his wife, Emily, and their two sons. Vernon was 10. My father, Gordon, was eight.

My father remembered Frank's voice from a day in traffic, when he was five or six. A big car came roaring past every car, in the wrong lane. Frank said something like, 'Look at that crazy driver go. Oh my God, it's Al.'

I recall seeing paperwork that said Frank was born in Germany. I do not know when he came to the United States, or how. His parents, Julius and his wife, lived on Park Street, near the river. Frank had five brothers and three sisters.

On the eleventh of December, 1939, Frank spent most of the afternoon on the Westfield River in a boat with his brother August, who was 22. My family called him Augie. They gathered driftwood and new lumber that floated down from the dam at Woronoco, past their parents' home. My family said they gathered it to burn, to keep warm.

Rain had swollen the river. Near the Great River Bridge the water poured over the remains of the old Horton dam and spun into whirlpools among blocks of cement and granite. The brothers turned for shore by the Lynch Lumber Company yard. August stepped out. As Frank was about to follow, his foot slipped and the boat rolled over. The paper said he apparently did not cry for help. In a second or two he was gone. The river threw the boat against the rocks and shattered it.

Newspaper Clippings

August ran for help, and no one he met could give any. Many families had no telephone at home in 1939. He kept running, across the bridge and down the south bank, nearly a mile, to Park Street. His brother-in-law, Daniel Reader, drove him to police headquarters. August was so shaken he could barely tell the police what happened. My father, who was eight that day, later spent 33 years with the telephone company.

The acting police chief took charge. The firemen supplied spotlights. The police dragged the river for nearly two hours while three or four hundred people lined the bridge and the bank behind the lumber yard. August and an officer rowed downstream and found the boat a quarter mile from the bridge. They towed it to shore near the end of Fowler Street. They never found Frank.

The search went on the next morning. The police told residents to stay off the river, where the current was swift, and to report any clothing they saw. The headlines said 'Westfield Man Believed Lost in High River' and then 'Snyder Body Unrecovered.' Police, Boy Scouts, and volunteers combed the banks for several miles below the dam. In June, a badly decomposed body was found in the Connecticut River near Glastonbury, Connecticut. The police checked it against Frank's description. Other bodies came out of the river over the years. None was ever identified as Frank. Three years after the drowning, a newspaper wrote that the river still held the secret of where he was.

Emily was a widow with two small sons. The Depression was still on, and then came the war. They had a small chicken farm. It gave them just enough to survive. I do not know whether Emily received any public aid.

When I was a kid I saw a photograph of Frank on my grandmother's bureau, in her bedroom. I do not know where it is now.

Frank's brothers Al and Pooley, who owned the junkyard in Pottstown, never talked about it. Augie never talked about it either, and he was the one in the boat. I wish I had asked.

Vernon, Frank, Grandmother Emily, and Dad

One day in December 1978 I talked with my grandmother. She told me that time of year brought back memories. When I got home I wrote down what she said. I no longer have the notes. Then I sat at a microfiche reader at UMass and found the newspaper articles. I gave them to my father. He saved them. Save everything was the plan in our family. It came from the Depression. I found them in a folder in my parents' house. The clippings were laid out together on one page.

Uncle Al's knife is in my safe. I have a note with it that says whose it was. The river kept Frank. My father kept the articles. Someone kept the knife sharp for years. Now we have to keep all of it.

Thanks to my brother John for sending over the pics.