SLAYTON – Community members and relatives gathered at the historic Dinehart-Holt House in Slayton Thursday afternoon to remember the fatal crash that took the lives of a dozen young men and women from the towns of Slayton, Hadley, Jackson and Fulda nearly 75 years ago.

Murray County Museum Coordinator Janet Timmerman presented the story of that tragic night with accounts from eyewitnesses and family members as a tribute to the upcoming 75th anniversary of what was called “Our Nation’s Most Tragic Accident” and is still remembered as one of the most-fatal two-car accidents in history.

April 1940 marked the second year of fighting in World War II, “Gone With the Wind” had just won eight Oscars, and Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” was a No. 1 hit.

“The country was still digging out from the Great Depression,” Timmerman said. “And in Murray County, WPA workers were building a dike to connect Lake Shetek State Park and Loon Island.”

On April 15, 1940, officials from Murray County traveled to Minneapolis to accept a plaque recognizing Murray County’s outstanding safety work and low traffic mortality in 1939, Timmerman said. And on the same day, a new doctor came to town. Dr. Pierson and his wife Maxine, a registered nurse, moved to Slayton.

“Dr. Pierson and his wife Maxine, a registered nurse, moved to Slayton… little did they know that a week later they would be called to the scene of one of the most horrendous accidents,” Timmerman said. “And that the two of them would work side by side most of the night at the Home Hospital, trying to save the lives of teenagers and knowing that seven of them were already beyond their help.”

April 21, 1940, fell on a Saturday. Gordon Meyers, 22, and six of his friends, all from Jackson, had gone to a dance in Fulda that night in Meyers’ 1934 Ford Coach. Meyers and his passengers, Leo Egge, 18, an outstanding high school athlete, Hollis Luft, 21, Carl Falk, 21, and George Larson, 20, classmates who had graduated together in 1937, Cecil Jensen, 23, and Elmer Meyer, 18, rode three in the front and four in the back. Meyers’ Ford had a V8, roll-top roof and was comprised of 2,500 pounds of solid steel. The seven young men were on their way to Slayton shortly after midnight in an attempt to make it to the bowling alley before it closed to get a few games in.

Earlier in the evening, the Tuynman brothers, Lorens, 19, and Harold, 18, of Slayton, had driven their stepfather’s Chevy to Fulda with two of their younger siblings. When they arrived in Fulda, they met up with two girls, Irene Schwab, 18, and Ruth Fisher, 15. Schwab’s mother had died a few years earlier, and Schwab was taking a rare night out as a break from taking care of her eight siblings. Fisher was a high school freshman and had snuck out of her parents’ house that night to spend time with her friends.

The Tuynmans’ younger siblings left their brothers and went to meet up with other friends, and the Tuynman brothers, Schwab, and Fisher drove back into Slayton. The Tuynman brothers had to pick up groceries for their mother and later met up with friends Wayne Gamble, 15, of Hadley, and Everett Johnson, 16, of Slayton. Johnson was only a month away from graduation and planned on attending the University of Minnesota, following his older brother Bill who started on the Gophers football team.

When midnight approached, the Tuynman brothers, along with Gamble and Johnson, got ready to take Schwab and Fisher back to their homes in Fulda. They invited another friend to ride along with them, but the friend’s parents asked him to come back home, a request that most likely saved the young man’s life.

The crash was loud like a cannon, people who had heard the impact said. A man driving north on the highway saw the impact from a quarter-mile away and drove into town to alert Law Enforcement officials.

“He said the cars stood up like two sides of a ladder and then skidded along the highway,” Timmerman said. “They found no skid marks from brakes and the impact was almost head-on.”

The curve where the two vehicles met is still tight with a high outside slant. It is now called Maple Avenue and is usually driven at 30-35 mph. In 1940, it was still part of Highway 59, prior to development and the bypass on the east side of town.

Officials later speculated that the two cars had to have been traveling between 60 and 80 mph.

“Today, we would use our cell phone to dial 911, and an ambulance and EMTs would quickly take charge of the crash site, handle traffic and get the victims to the hospital” Timmerman said. “But in 1940 there was no ambulance, there were no EMTs.”

Ray Stevens was a passenger in his friend Clair Hendrickson’s car. They had also just left the dance in Fulda that night. The two young men were one of the first cars to arrive on the scene.

Stevens later wrote a first-hand account of the accident in which he recalls seeing Meyers’ vehicle pass him and Hendrickson on the right shoulder of the highway outside of Avoca.

“Eight minutes later our headlights revealed the same car again but this time it was upside down resting on its roof in the middle of the road,” Stevens writes. “The front wheels of the car were still spinning… the only other movement was a young man crawling on his hands and knees…”

Stevens and Hendrickson drove into Slayton and alerted the local doctor and then returned to the scene. Numerous passersby had also discovered the crash and together the they transported the six living victims to the Home Hospital.

The local mortician first arrived at the scene with his hearse, but after realizing the staggering number of fatalities, he returned with his pickup truck to transport the bodies to the mortuary.

Four of the six victims taken to the hospital died within hours of the crash.

A photographer with the Murray County Herald went to the crash site that night and took photos of the scene. First with the victims still in the vehicles to help with the coroner’s work and then with the cars empty. The latter photographs would become famous across the country and known as the images of “America’s Worst Car Accident.”

“When morning dawned, four small communities came to the realization that the loss was huge,” Timmerman said. Of the 13 people involved, only Cecil Jensen and Elmer Meyers of Jackson clung to life.

Family accounts recall the days after the crash:

Fisher’s parents thought she was safe at home when the news arrived but went up to her room to find her bed empty.

Johnson was only a month away from graduation and planned on attending the University of Minnesota, following his older brother Bill who started on the Gophers football team.

The town of Jackson reeled from the loss of six young men just after losing five others in a car accident involving a train a few years prior.

The Tuynman brothers deaths was not the first time the their family experienced loss. Their sister had died of tuberculosis only six months earlier. The boys’ bodies were taken back to Rock Valley, Iowa where they had previously lived, to be buried beside their sister.

Lorens Tuynman was a married man, and he left behind a wife and young son.

Friends had nicknamed Harold Tuynman “The Orange Crush Kid” because of his affinity for soda-pop drink of the same name. Witnesses at the crash scene and people who later saw the crushed cars said the groceries the brothers picked up for their mother were scattered across the road and throughout the car. Witnesses also remembered seeing a case of Orange Crush soda in the trunk of the car.

Within a week of the crash, the coroner called for an inquest to find the cause.

“After taking testimony from eyewitnesses, there was no evidence that alcohol was involved,” Timmerman said. “Only speed and distracted driving.”

The Auto, Life and Casualty company placed 11 THINK signs at the site shortly after the crash. The number would later rise to 12 after Jensen succumbed to his injuries seven weeks after the incident.

Elmer Meyers was the lone survivor, and was able to return home in early May. He was considered the least-injured victim with just a broken arm, a broken pelvis, cracked ribs and a concussion. Meyers didn’t recall the events leading up to the crash, just that he was asleep in the back seat and he woke up in the hospital. All he could say is that he thought they were both on the wrong side of the road.

Today, a large brick memorial stands by the crash site, with a dozen THINK signs and a plaque commemorating the victims. The woman that led the cause for a new and more permanent memorial in 2002 was 86-year-old Gladys “Maxine” Pierson, the wife of Dr. Pierson and the nurse that tried to save the lives that were lost that night. Maxine Pierson later died in 2008.

In his written first-hand account, Ray Stevens said he will always remember the crash scene and says it was the worst thing he and his friend had ever seen.

“Clair and I escaped from World War II, the Korean Conflict and the early Vietnam era without ever encountering a scene such as this,” Stevens wrote. “But many years ago… with 13 young people our own ages, to make a decision that would affect them and us for the rest of our lives. For seven, the decision had been made for, for the others we did our best.”