Five minutes after he had been sent from his seat in the second grade room of Hulit school, Canton, to the cloak room because he had been naughty, 9-year old Loyal Widger, was found dead, hanging from a clotheshook Monday afternoon.
Reprimanded by his teacher, Miss Genevieve Shepley, because he had been “talking out loud, gotten out of his seat and punched another child with a pencil,” the boy was sent to the cloak room of the school at 3:10 o’clock, just five minutes before class was to have been dismissed.
Suicidal intent is not believed by authorities to have been the motive of the tragedy. They theorize that the youth was caught by his neckerchief while playing on the coat hooks. Death was believed due to strangulation, although the child was some nine inches taller than the hook from which he was caught.
Another “visitor” in the cloak room was little Jerry Collins, 7-year old son of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Collins, who said he saw Loyal hanging but thinking he was only playing, did not help him.
As some of the pupils went into the cloak room, Loyal was still unnoticed, the tragedy being discovered by Miss Shepley, who collapsed when she saw the boy’s body.
The boy was born in Canton September 8, 1931, a son of Loyal and Lena Lehmann Widger and is survived by his parents, and seven brothers and sisters: William, 15 years old; Melina, 13; Catherine, 12; Maxine, 10; James, 6; Linda Lou, 4; and Judith Ann, 2. His father is an employee of the Canton works of the International Harvester company.
Miss Shepley, the teacher, is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Shepley, her father being a member of the Canton board of education.
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