Our Lady keeps a 24-hour guard over all of her charges. Our Lady is perched on top of a mosleum in the heart of Odd Fellows Cemetery in New Haven, Indiana. Our lady knows all of the stories, and all the dirty secrets, but guess what…she isn’t telling. She has been watching her charges for years and will continue to watch in the future.
The stories she could tell and the truths that we can only speculate might have happened. One of the secrets that she has is what really happened in the Great Grabill Train Wreck. She has charge over an even dozen of souls killed in one day. This was a major event, and it is said that both FDR, and Hitler mentioned it in their speeches. It was a tragedy of major proportions.
12 souls are buried in a single mass grave, all killed in the same day. Our lady is the only one that knows what really happened. The rest of us will simply have to speculate what could have happened. There are a number of things that could have contributed to the accident.
Our Lady begins her story. Killed that day was Marion McBride Jr 42, his wife Katie age 41, and 10 children aged 14 to newborn. One was a baby that was born at the scene. The family lived a mile north of Grabill, and were desperately poor. They drove a 1927 Essex sedan which was given to them by his sister. She gave them the car so he could get to his job with the WPA. They drove to Fort Wayne that day to visit her sister, and probably get a good meal.
The accident happened Friday, January 24, 1936, in the early afternoon. There was a blizzard that day and it was still snowing. At least 6 in of snow. He had called the county highway department and requested help in getting home later that day.
As I said Our Lady is the only one who knows exactly what happened that day. They were hit by a passenger train coming from the south, strewing bodies for half a mile. The car was cut in two and could not be recognized.
One witness said the car was stopped, and another said it was still moving. The engineer said the car was stopped on the tracks. One witness said the windows were fogged over and it was impossible to see out. There is quite a grade at that crossing so the car could have stalled. There was a depot beside the tracks which made it impossible to see toward the South until you were on the tracks.
Something else caused a bit of gossip. The gentleman had stopped at a gas station a block away, and bought 20 cents worth of candy for the children. This seemed unusual as they discovered that there was no food in the house. There were only three beds, in a small shack. Again our lady is the only one that knows what really happened, and again she is not telling.
That weekend 5,000 people, viewed the bodies in open caskets, at the Gospel Temple in Fort Wayne. Buses ran continuously from downtown. At the funeral Tuesday, there were 4,000 in attendance. They were buried in a mass grave at at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. The ground was so frozen it took dynamite to open a hole. There were so many people at the grave site, that loved ones had a difficult time pushing through the crowd. There was a 13th victim as the engineer died next the day from a heart attack.
Several of us men at coffee one morning, decided we would like to see the grave. We drove to New Haven, and found the cemetery, but were unable to find the grave. Our lady wouldn’t tell us, and it is a huge cemetery. By that time it wasn’t important anymore. We’ll just have to be content to let the lady watch over her charges in the large cemetery, and keep the secrets of her people.
–James Neuhouser
