TABLE ROCK ARGUS, Table Rock, Nebr. Nov. 21, 1919.(pg.8)

Wilsonville, Nebr., Nov. 16, 1919. Dear Frank- In this letter I will try to give you further particulars about Mr. Longwell, as I know you are interested in knowing anything concerning him and the tragedy at Corpus Christi. It is probably wondered why no obituary was printed; I have wondered to, but I think it is because Art and I have both been too busy to fix it up, however, at another time after I get the date of a few events in his life will send you a short article in that form. From letters to me of recent date Art says: "Well, Dorr, the Red Cross are taking up all bodies that were not buried in cemeteries and bringing them to Rose Hill cemetery, so Friday they brought father's body in, and I bought a lot and he had services over his open grave, but they did not open his casket. If not otherwise directed they are burying them in a row clear across on the east side of the cemetery. They say the number will reach 1,500. The other day I was working on a young man from Portland (Texas) and he said he had helped bury a good many. I described my girls to him and he said he was confident he had buried Jennie himself. He described her ring and I believe it was her. He said she was buried in a steamer trunk two miles this side of White Point. So John Hill went over after her; he used to live beside us and said he could identify her. Well, he brought her back, but said he could not tell for sure. The box was nailed up and they wouldn't open it; we buried her beside grandpa, and we'll just have to hope it is her. The other little girl, of course, was never identified. I got four markers- one for each- and had their names and birth and death dates cut in, and across the top, 'Flood Victim'; I placed one for Rosalind, just as though she was buried there."

Arthur is now in Los Angeles where he expects to make his home.

I stood on their vacant lot where but two years before when I left them a happy family; his was a cozy bungalow and furnished as you, remembering Arthur and Pa, would imagine it would be-Pa's room striking you as that occupied by a Godly man, the tenor of the household being the same, with little children playing with him the one perhaps greatest pleasures of his being the love for children,-"for of such is the kingdom of heaven"; that is the way you would picture him, with little children, and he taught them about Jesus, the one he followed all his life; we know he is with them now and has earned the reward that was to be his for being faithful; and Arthur is a christian man, and the little family will all be together-some day. And as I stood on their lot that day, which was vacant but for the brick fireplace, which lay piled as the house tore away with the rushing waters, it seemed that away off toward White Point, and coming in over the rippling surface of Neuces Bay, were the sound of voices, and they were not the voices from terror and suffering; but those from a peaceful world where sorrow and suffering are unknown. Out into the bay, deposited by the fury of that storm of but a few days before, and as far as the eye could clearly see, were bedsteads, ruined automobiles and other articles which were in shallow water where water was now standing that had never before been, and this bay was full of debris, household furnishings and family records were destroyed which will never be found; and from this chaos,the after math of a terrible visitation, we have the memory of a man who was God's man; a man who in the years I have lived as a member of his family, was my ideal of these things that are worth while and that mean so much; in all those years I have never heard him utter one word that bordered on the vicious and unclean; his mouth was as clean as his heart. As a boy I used to step in his tracks in the snow; I wish I could follow his footsteps now. What I might say in this little tribute to Mr. Longwell, you would say, for you loved him too. He was one man you never heard a disparaging word said against-and what a joy it must have been to him to know he was living among so many friends. Dorr Tressler

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