The Denison Press
Wednesday July 8, 1936
pg 1

SMALL CHILD IS KILLED INSTANTLY

Willis David Spratling, 7-Year-Old Child Dies Instantly After tragedy;
Crushed as He was Leaving Traveling Program

Willis David Spratling, 7-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Spratling, 531 West Heron street, was instantly killed early
Tuesday afternoon near his home when struck by a car as he was leaving a traveling program unit.
The child was said to have been knocked into the path of another youth's car, Leo Tracy, a neighbor, when the listening
children scattered after the program had finished at 3:40 p.m. and the driver of the car had backed his machine to leave.
According to eyewitnesses, the child's body was passed over by the Tracy machine and his chest crushed.
Tracy picked the child up and rushed him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. He is believed to have
been either killed outright or died within a few blocks of the accident enroute to the hospital.
C. C. Spratling, the child's father, was an eyewitness to the tragedy and held the child as they sped toward medical
attention.
The flour traveling bus had just completed a musical advertising program and were preparing to leave when the tragedy occurred.
As the children scattered to avoid the path of the backing Tracy car, they were said to have accidently pushed the Spratling child to the ground in the path of the Tracy automobile.
The child was born in this city May 26, 1929 and had received his schooling at Peabody, where he was a second grade student, and a member of the Calvary Baptist church.
Surviving are the parents, grandmotohers, Mrs. W. H. Spratling of Fort Worth and Mrs. D. C. Barkley of Cross Plaines, Texas; three brothers, Cecil of Galveston Bruce and Frank of Denison; and six sisters, Misses Jun, Bonnie and Ferne of Denison; Mrs. Ruth Lacy of Denison, Mrs. Stanford Harrell of Denison, Mrs. Haskell Luck, Denison.
Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. today at the Short-Murray chapel with Rev. L. R.. Lamb of the Calvary Baptist church
officiating. Short-Murray, funeral directors, will direct.