Newark, OH Bomber Crashes Into Apartment, Sep 1942

FREEPORT MAN DIES IN BOMBER CRASH IN OHIO.

Newark, O., Sept. 9. -- (AP) -- Salvage workers cleaning up the wreckage of a two-motored bomber that smashed into an apartment house found today the remains of what they believed to be a ninth victim.
Eight bodies -- six occupants of the plane and two women civilians -- already had been recovered from the debris of yesterday's mid-town crash. Neither army nor local authorities were able to establish at once identity of the last body.
Second Lieut. LAWRENCE STERMAN LAWVER, 29, son of Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Lawver, 609 West Pleasant Street, a graduate of Freeport high school, where he was prominent in athletics and debating circles, was one of eight occupants of a United States bomber from Wright Field, Ohio, killed Tuesday when their bomber spun crazily from the sky and plunged into a residential section of Newark, Ohio, a city of about 30,000 inhabitants, according to press dispatches received here.
First word that Second Lieut. LAWVER had been killed in a crash was received by the parents about 4 o'clock Tuesday afternoon when a telephone call came from another son in the service, Major Kenneth Wilbur Lawver, stationed at Patterson Field, Fairfield, Ohio, who told only that his brother had been killed and that the body was being brought back to Freeport.
Another brother, Lieutenant Commander Rowland Clifford Lawver, is in the United States military services, being stationed on the U.S.S. Griffin, now believed to be in the Southern Pacific war zone in the vicinity of Australia. The family received a letter from him only yesterday, stating that he was well.
Besides Second Lieutenant LAWVER others killed in the crash of the B-25 bomber, of which LAWVER was co-pilot, were listed by Wright Field, according to press dispatches as follows:
Col. DOUGLAS M. KILPATRICK, 33, of Houma, La., pilot.
Lieut. RUSSELL E. NEWLIN, 30, of Indianapolis, Ind.
Pvt. CHARLES WATSON, of Dayton, Ohio, who was attached to Lunken airport at Cincinnati, Ohio, and who was on a leave trip to the east.
Corp. R. A. ARENS, 21, of Dayton, Ohio, a coast artilleryman on leave.
O. A. PECON, of Dayton, Ohio, a civilian ground crew chief.
Salvage workers were today searching the wreckage of an apartment building, where the plane crashed, for two of the occupants of the plane.
The bodies of two women pedestrians had already been recovered, and it was thought two other persons might have died in the crash.
The bodies recovered were those of MRS. DOLLY CAMPBELL, about 70, of Newark, and MRS. JUNE WESTON, about 60, also of Newark. MRS. WESTON owned the two story structure into which the bomber crashed. MRS. CAMPBELL was returning to her home from a shopping trip and was killed while walking past the building.
With one wing broken the bomber hedge-hopped over Newark's business district and struck the WESTON building, which was demolished as a gasoline tank ripped loose from the plane and exploded.
A few seconds before the crash, which occurred two blocks from the business center, of Newark, two crewmen jumped to their death when their parachutes failed to open.
The body of one plunged through a roof and down to the second floor of the house of Dr. Louis Mitchell. The other fell on the Baltimore and Ohio depot loading platform.
The latter was that of Lieut. LAWVER, according to officials of Wright Field at Dayton, where the plane had taken off in the morning.

Freeport Journal Standard Illinois 1942-09-09
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!