Frederick James Berwick, 50, 216 West 15th Street, Scottsbluff, an accounts collector, was instantly killed about 11 p.m., Saturday when he was struck by an automobile driven by Dale De Rock, 18, 1310 6th Street, Gering, as he walked along the Gering-Scottsbluff highway.

Berwick sustained a fractured skull, a broken neck and compound fractures of both legs.

Berwick, who came here in 1911 and was employed in the First National bank for several years, was Ford dealer at Bayard for about 18 years before returning here a year and a half ago. Since his return here he had been employed by the Mack company, Montgomery Ward and the Webber Furniture company.

Identification was first established by papers in his pockets, J. H. Mack head of the investment company, and John Hammond, manager for Montgomery Ward here, later verified the identification.

De Rock said that he was driving north, toward Scottsbluff, to go to work at the Scottsbluff sugar factory.

“I didn’t see the man until I hit him,” De Rock told state highway patrolmen.

“The body lay on the shoulder of the highway. Some other people were already there when I got to him. He didn»t move at all.”

The youth said that he had been sleeping before starting for work. He said he was alone at the time of the crash.

His story was verified by Mr. and Mrs. Jake Lackman, Gering, Route 1.

“We were driving south,” Lackman said. “I saw the man walking in the road—it seemed to me that he was almost in the middle of the pavement.

“My wife saw him too. We both realized that he was going to be hit. ‘God,’ my wife said, then the car hit him. The body flew up over the hood and slid off the car. We stopped.

“The boy who was driving the car stopped and came running back.”

Mrs. Lackman said that two others, a young man and a young woman, also saw the accident. She related that the couple were in a car following Lackman’s machine.

“They also stopped and told me that they saw the man in the highway,” Mrs. Lackman said. “They said they saw the car hit him and saw the body go up over the hood. They drove off again and I don’t know what their names were.”

Lackman said that the youth was n“ot driving very fast.”

The right headlight on De Rock’s machine was smashed, the hood and right fender wrinkled and the windshield shattered.

Both of Berwick’s legs were snapped below the knee, apparently by the impact of the front bumper.

One shoe was torn off by the crash and a heel was ripped off the other shoe.

Where Berwick had been before the accident, why he was walking along the highway or where he had left his automobile, a 1932 seday, remained unknown early Sunday.

His wife, Florence, employed recently at the North Broadway grocery, said that he usually came for her when he finished work.

Having a “hunch that something was wrong” she and two other women friends started looking for him. “And to think, all the while he was dead,” she said later. She did not know of the accident until about two hours after it occured.

Born at Farnam, Nebr., June 8, 1889, Berwick is survived by his father, James of Dickens, and two sisters, Mrs. Adrian Walker, and Mrs. Marian Fulk, both of Wallace.

The body was taken to Read’s funeral home here.—The above article was taken from a Scottsbluff paper.

The Farnam Echo 36(7):1 Thursday, October 19, 1939