1945 Obituary for Mrs. Mary Fyfe and her daughter Noreen

Former Mohall Lady and Daughter Lose Life In Tragic G N Wreck

34 Persons Die When Empire Builder No. 2 Crashes Into 1st Section

Funeral services will be held in Detroit, Mich., Friday, August 17th, for Mrs. Mary Fyfe and her 11-year old daughter, Noreen, who were enroute to Mohall to visit at the home of Mrs. Anna Short when the second section of the Empire Builder crashed into the first section of same at Michigan, N. Dak., last Thursday evening.

Traveling between Grand Forks and Minot without the aid of automatic block signals the two sections are supposed to travel 25 minutes apart.  Section number one stopped at Petersburg to give some attention to a hot box and lost some time.  Stopping again at Michigan for the same purpose, the second section was right upon them before the flagman could get far enough back to stop it.

The engine of the second section went right through the observation car on the first section.  34 persons in the observation car were killed and 56 injured.  17 of the 34 killed were serving in the armed forces.

Mohall folks became anxious about Mrs. Fyfe on Friday when she was overdue here and located her baggage in Minot.  They then called Robert Fyfe, a chain store manager in Detroit, and he flew to Michigan to identify the bodies Sunday evening. The child was in a mortuary in Lakota and Mrs. Fyfe at Devils Lake.

Mr. and Mrs. Grover Fulton and Henry Short of Mohall and Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Brown of Kenmare were at Michigan when Mr. Fyfe arrived to assist with the identification. 

Mrs. Robert Fyfe was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. D. W. Short and was baptized Mary.  She was born in Illinois on October 3, 1902 and came to North Dakota with her parents in 1910.

D. W. Short passed away 12 years ago, while Mrs. Short still makes her home in Mohall.

The deceased married Robert Fyfe in 1931.  Their only child, Noreen, died in the wreck with her mother.  Mrs. Fyfe has a grown-up daughter, Miss Marjorie Hill, by an earlier marriage.

In addition to the husband and daughter, the deceased leaves to morn her death, her mother, Mrs. Anna Short of this city; five sisters, Mrs. L. Laumeyer of Mohall, Mrs. Grover Fulton of Mohall, Mrs. Leonard Brown, of Kenmare, Mrs. George Kjos of Tacoma, Wash., and Mrs. Jack Peebles of Detroit, Mich.; three brothers, Henry of Mohall, Jack of San Francisco and Walter of Hollywood.

Burial will be made in the Fyfe family lot in Detroit.

Reprinted with the help of the "Renville County, Mohall, North Dakota" newspaper, dated Thursday, August 16, 1945.