Answer Man: I seem to recall an accident that occurred about 40 years ago when a worker fell inside the water tower on South Glenstone Avenue and died. My children were very young at the time and we could never pass that water tower without them mentioning it. Am I remembering this incident correctly? Or is my memory of this just of an urban legend? – Colette Gideon of Springfield
I initially could find no record of this,and neither did a researcher at the Springfield-Greene County Library.
But Colette did a little more digging and came up with a last name of “Whitehead.”
On a hope and a prayer, I headed to a small room off of the newsroom. We store things like the artificial Christmas tree in there, as well as dusty collections of the Official Manual for the State of Missouri and the Britannica encyclopedia.
It’s often where I take my 3 p.m. nap.
Most importantly, this room is where we keep our morgue of clipped stories on people – indexed by last name. The newspaper stopped cutting stories out of the paper and filing them in the early 1990s. We now rely on an electronic morgue.
I looked for files with the last name “Whitehead.” I was joyous when I found several.
But it wasn’t until I flipped to the very last one when I find what I was looking for – first name “Ralph, Died 4-5-78 (Fall).”
I had the answer!
Make no mistake, I realize this is a sad story and that one person’s curiosity is another person’s tragedy – even 40 years later.
Our clip file contained one story published the day after the death.
In addition, Joel Alexander, spokesman for City Utilities, found another story from this newspaper. This one was published on the afternoon of the day of the death.
Ralph Whitehead was a 56-year-old foreman with the St. Louis sandblasting firm of Busch and Latta. He lived in Pevely.
City Utilities had hired the company to sandblast the 1.5-million-gallon tank in preparation for painting. The water tower is located on the northeast corner of the intersection of South Glenstone Avenue and East Monroe Terrace.
During the course of the sandblasting job, Whitehead was living with his wife Inez at the Monterey Motel, once located at 619 S. Glenstone Ave.
Two other workers were in the tank when Whitehead died. I was unable to reach either, presuming, of course, they are still alive.
Willard Bloodsworth, of Granite City, Illinois, told police Whitehead, who was his friend, climbed a ladder to the top of the tank to breathe fresh air.
According to Bloodsworth, Whitehead, a 25-year veteran sandblaster, either was climbing down or was stepping onto a scaffold when he fell 75 to 80 feet.
Jack Nichols, then 32, also was working in the empty tank.
Nichols had worked for Whitehead only a week but told the newspaper Whitehead was one of the nicest people he had ever met.
“He was real happy-go-lucky; very easy to get along with,” Nichols said.
“We were just getting ready to knock off for lunch. He was standing on the scaffolding waiting for us to move a board. I heard a commotion and looked up and I saw him fall.
“I’ve been trying to figure out why or how he fell,” Nichols said. “It was very dusty in there; the lighting was poor. I guess he wasn’t watching what he was doing. It was so dusty.
“It happened so fast. When I looked up, he was already halfway down. He was falling along the ladder. I couldn’t believe he was falling.
“All I could think of was him grabbing the ladder, but it never happened.”
Whitehead struck the bottom of the steel tank head-first and died instantly.
According to the other news story, a fire department rescue team had to climb to the top of the tank and enter through the same opening where the men had climbed through earlier that day.
The body was lowered by rope through a hollow center support shaft.
I found an obituary for Whitehead’s wife, who died in September 2003 at age 78. It listed two sons – Clifford and Carl, who both lived in Pevely. I was unable to find them.
In trying to track down Jack Nichols, who would be 72, I knocked on the door of a man of about the same age who resides in Republic.
But this was Jack Nickols (different spelling.)
He was not the man I sought, but he told me years ago he and many others had heard the story about the death inside the water tower.
I called the Kansas City office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency created in 1972. My thought was that there might have been an OSHA investigation into the work conditions in the tank.
A spokeswoman found no such record.
(These are the views of Steve Pokin, the News-Leader’s columnist. Pokin has been at the paper 51/2 years and over the course of his career has covered just about everything – from courts and cops to features and fitness. He can be reached at 836-1253, spokin@gannett.com, on Twitter @stevepokinNL or by mail at 651 N. Boonville, Springfield, MO 65806.
Steve’s articles: http://www.news-leader.com/topic/f471bbef-b023-4ca2-b031-eda137400290/pokin-around/)
