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West Palm Beach
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Recently we visited the West Palm Beach Police Department, where in the lobby is a plaque that honors officers who died in the line of duty.
In the past, we’ve listed those across Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties who were slain. We decided to go down the West Palm Beach list and also honor those killed in accidents.
William Morgan Payton, Feb. 9, 1924: While he tried to break up a domestic argument on Third and Division Streets, the husband got hold of his pistol and shot him twice.
Jack E. Wadlington, March 31, 1935: He was struck by a car as he directed traffic after the city’s Seminole Sun Dance parade. He’d just returned to work after being struck by a car weeks earlier.
Lewis Allen Conner, Aug. 7, 1937: The father of seven was fatally shot by a convict at his home when Conner and another officer came to arrest him on a breaking and-entering charge.
Festus Alvah Tatum Jr., March 28, 1959: The traffic officer was thrown from his motorcycle during a funeral procession. Al Tatum Field, on 54th Street near Broadway, is named for him.
William H. Fletcher and David R. Van Curler, April 6, 1967: As Fletcher responded to a possible robbery at a bank at 45th Street and Broadway, the suspect wrestled away his gun and shot him. He then shot Van Curler off his motorcycle as he raced up. The assailant died in a mental hospital.
Clarence Leo “Lee” Wagner, Feb. 10, 1967: As Wagner rode down South Dixie, lights and sirens on, a Palm Beach Post editor entering the company parking lot following a dinner break turned in front of Wagner’s motorcycle.
Robert Dennis Edwards, Jan. 21, 1984: His cruiser struck a car driven by a Delaware man at 36th Street and Dixie Highway.
Brian H. Chappell, Aug. 22, 1988: The motorcycle officer was shot by an escaped prisoner he’d pulled over. A park on North Flagler Drive at 54th Street is named for him. His confessed killer remains on Death Row.
Thomas Morash, Oct 17, 2003: The motorcycle officer was killed when a car pulled into his path on South Dixie Highway near Southern Boulevard.
Thanks to staff researcher Michelle Quigley.
Tags: death, police, West Palm Beach
Valesha Woodley of South Carolina wrote to us of her aunt, Ruthie Mae Woodley. On May 18, 1963, Ruthie — then 12 — was one of 42 farm workers jammed into a bus.
Minutes later, it was at the bottom of the Hillsboro Canal.
Ruthie Mae, who now lives in Georgia, scrambled out. But her mother and two brothers drowned.
In all, 27 bodies would be pulled from the dark water.
It’s believed to still be Florida’s greatest loss of life in one vehicle, greater than the 26 killed in 1980 when a Greyhound bus shot off Tampa Bay’s Sunshine Skyway bridge, sliced by a freighter.
The 1963 crash brought focus to farm workers, already considered among America’s most vulnerable and exploited.
About 6 a.m. at Belle Glade’s “Bean Ramp,” 42 bean pickers boarded the Poor Boy Slim’s bus to head down State Road 827, now Brown’s Farm Road. It was just 18 feet wide, with no guardrail.
The converted 1946 school bus has 32 passenger seats; no law then said how many could be crammed in.
An anxious pickup driver tried to pass. Slim — real name Edgar Lee Anderson — tried to slide right to let the truck through.
But as the truck passed, its rear bumper locked with the front of the bus and the joined vehicles slid 32 feet before they broke free.
The bus tumbled down the shoulder and splashed into the canal, 60 feet wide and 18 feet deep.
“Everybody was screaming and hollering on the side of the road,” retired Florida Highway Patrolman George Emerson recalled in 1993.
About 90 minutes after the crash, a tow truck pulled out the bus, 22 corpses still inside. A boat dragged the canal for the last five. The dead passengers ranged in age from 6 to 65.
Manslaughter charges against the truck’s driver, dragline foreman James Tulley Sconyers of South Bay, were dismissed, but he was convicted of illegal passing.
Families of seven victims filed suits but a jury ruled for Sconyers. “Slim” was charged with driving with a suspended license.
In 1983, Congress passed the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, which increased insurance required for vehicles carrying workers and made both crew leaders and farmers responsible in some cases.
A migrant woman prepares to get on a labor bus at the Belle Glade loading ramp in March 1977. Fourteen years earlier, 27 farm workers died when a similar migrant bus was traveling down an 18-foot wide road and slid into the Hillsboro Canal. (Special to the Palm Beach Post)
Tags: agriculture, death, migrant workers
Memorial Day is a time to honor the many brave Americans killed while serving in the military.
L.J. Parker, archivist at the Lake Park Historical Society and a frequent contributor to Post Time, points out two residents honored with road names: Ellison Wilson and Donald Ross.
Forgotten, Parker notes, was one more from Lake Park: Richard van Munster.
The Palm Beach High grad worked in his family’s construction firm before joining in March 1942 at Morrison Field, now Palm Beach International Airport.
He was a second lieutenant and a B-24 Liberator copilot with the 787th Bomber Squadron, 466th Bomber Group, when his plane went down in bad weather in the English Channel Aug. 12, 1944. He’d been in England all of two weeks.
Munster was seen, injured, sitting on the wing of the plane, but was not seen again.
His marker is at the American cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. He received the Purple Heart and the Air Medal.
He never saw his son, Richard, born in March 1945.
Richard, a longtime Riviera Beach commercial fisherman, now lives in Panacea, in Florida’s Panhandle.
He suspects some city leaders might have wanted to name something for Richard but that his grandfather probably declined.
“I’d like to see it. I really would,” Richard said. “He was a fisherman, too.”
Lt. Munster’s brother, Walter, who also served in World War II, later lived in Coral Gables and died at 95 in December.
Ellison Wilson, a member of the family who founded Lake Park, was a gunner on a tank in the Third Armored Division in the Battle of the Bulge. He was killed when it struck a land mine.
Donald Alexander Ross, the first Lake Park resident killed in World War II, died on Dec. 18, 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge. He was the son of Marjorie Ross, a longtime principal of Lake Park Elementary School.
Many presume, wrongly, that the road was named for famed golf course architect Donald Ross, especially since it runs near Seminole Golf Club in North Palm Beach, one of Ross’ most famous courses.
Richard van Munster in a photo taken in April 1944. His plane went down in the English Channel on Aug. 12 that year. Munster’s marker is at the American cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. (Special to The Palm Beach Post)
Tags: death, place names, World War II
Last week we told you about the 16 Palm Beach County law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty. Here are those from St. Lucie County (none are reported in Martin.)
As always, let us know if we’ve left someone out.
May 22, 1915: Sheriff Dan Carlton (above), 43, St. Lucie County. The county’s second sheriff was shot and killed by the night marshal on Pine Street in downtown Fort Pierce. He shot and wounded the marshal, who was convicted of manslaughter and got five years in prison.
July 17, 1966: Sgt. Willie B. Ellis (above), 43, Fort Pierce Police. When Ellis and officer Clifford Minus responded to a domestic call, the husband, Eugene Emerson, shot Ellis five times and Minus twice; Minus survived. Emerson was sentenced to life; he died in prison in 2003.
Jan. 12, 1987: Sgt. Jimmy Wouters (above left), Lt. Grover Clifton Cooper III (above right), Fort Pierce Police. When five Fort Pierce officers and three St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputies conducted a drug raid on a White City mobile home, Dan Hunt opened fire. Cooper, 31, and Wouters, 33, were killed and officer Robert Spring was shot in the back but survived. Hunt also died.
Jan. 19, 1991: Sgt. Danny Parrish (above), 29, Fort Pierce Police. After he stopped a car going the wrong way on a oneway street, the driver, 18-year-old Billy Leon Kearse, wrestled his gun from him and shot him more than a dozen times. Kearse is on Death Row.
Two others merit inclusion: U.S. Prohibition agents Robert Moncure and Franklin R. Patterson were shot Jan. 19, 1930, in West Palm Beach while trying to serve a warrant on alleged rum runner George W. Moore. Moore was, remarkably, acquitted but later went to prison on a federal conviction.
And we include Christopher Reyka (above) of Wellington, a deputy for Broward County who was gunned down Aug. 10, 2007, outside a Pompano Beach drug store. His murder, sadly, remains unsolved.
A correction: Last week’s column should have said Palm Beach County deputy Frank Genovese was killed June 3, 1982, not Dec. 3.
Susan Cooper, widow of Lt. Grover C. Cooper, who was killed in a shootout during a Fort Pierce drug investigation, cries at his funeral in this photo from January 1987. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
For more information:
Officer Down Memorial Page
National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial
Tags: death, police, St. Lucie County
May 15 is National Peace Officers Memorial Day. In 2002, we listed Palm Beach County’s murdered lawmen.
The good news: In eight years, the list hasn’t grown. But we take time to again honor them. As always, let us know if we’ve missed anyone.
Aug. 27, 1921: Palm Beach County deputy George C. Douglass was shot trying to arrest a theft suspect near South Bay.
June 1, 1923: Palm Beach officer Joseph Nelson Smith was shot by turtle poachers.
Jan. 9, 1924: Deputy Frederick Baker was shot in a raid on the Ashley gang near Hobe Sound. Feb. 9, 1924: West Palm Beach officer William Payton was shot.
Oct. 6, 1924: Kelsey City (now Lake Park) deputy town marshal Walter S. Stroman Jr., was shot trying to make an arrest.
Aug. 7, 1937: West Palm Beach officer Lewis Allen Conner was shot by armed robbery suspect.
Jan. 15, 1953: State corrections officer Grant Dohner was shot during an escape attempt at road prison west of South Florida Fairgrounds.
April 6, 1967: West Palm Beach officers William Fletcher and David Van Curler were shot by a bank robber.
Jan. 24, 1971: Pahokee officer Samuel Stephens was killed by two armed robbers.
Aug. 10, 1974: Delray Beach police officer John D. Kennedy was shot in his patrol car.
Aug. 14, 1974: Riviera Beach officer Meredith Runck was shot at a domestic disturbance.
Dec. 3, 1982: Sheriff’s deputy Frank Genovese was shot during standoff at Greenacres home.
Sept. 14, 1984: Florida Highway Patrol trooper Fred Groves was shot in suburban West Palm Beach.
June 24, 1987: Glades Correctional Institution guard Fred Griffis was shot during a botched escape attempt in West Palm Beach.
Aug. 22, 1988: West Palm Beach officer Brian H. Chappell (above) was shot by an escaped prisoner.
Aug. 22, 1989: Sheriff’s deputy James Dickinson (above) was shot at a Royal Palm Beach home.
Feb. 26, 1993: Sheriff’s deputy James “Rocky” Hunt was shot west of Lantana investigating four suspicious people at an ATM.
Next Week: T-Coast heroes.
The March 2, 1993, funeral for Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy James ‘Rocky’ Hunt drew about 1,500 people to the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in West Palm Beach.
Tags: death, notorious crimes, police
