Norfolk, Va., June 23—Two youthful sons of North Carolina went home last night to rest there through eternity, two more martyrs to the cause of aviation that science might advance.
Adventurers of the air, victims of a crash, George Howard Hudnell, 24, and Claude J. Coley, 19, were en route, the one to the old home at Oriental and the other to Rockwell, the home of his forebearers.
With solemn services, surrounded by chums of childhood days, funeral rites will be said and the bodies, broken by the terrific force of their fall in East Camp Monday, will be laid to rest this afternoon. Two mothers’ hearts ae grieving, two sweethearts are nearly prostrated, and hundreds of friends of the youthful popular here and at home, are sorrowing.
Hudnell died shortly after the crash Monday, but Coley lingered long enough for his mother, Mrs. Sally B. Coley, to come from Charlotte and to reach Norfolk in time to sit a few brief moments beside her only son, to hold his hand, to kiss him tenderly, and to watch death steal over his unconscious form.
It was a long, wearisome race that the mother had with death, and she barely outran the dread spectre, arriving at Protestant Hospital less than an hour before her son died. She is a widow and no other children survive.
Hudnell’s father and mother arrived late Monday night and accompanied the body of their son home. Mrs. Coley took the body of her son home and was accompanied by several of his friends from Norfolk.
Coley, who owned and piloted the plane in which Hudnell was a passenger when it crashed to earth, died from the effects of a punctured lung and did not regain consciousness long enough to give a lucid explanation of the crash. He had said something about his engine going bad, and it is believed that this, with a broken strut, was responsible for the fall.
Coley and Hudnell, both employees of the Virginian-Pilot composing room, were air enthusiasts and started a pleasure trip to Elizabeth City. They had hardly taken off when the crash ended forever their flying activities. Coley had resigned his position as linotype operator to take up and continue in commercial aviation. Hudnell would have completed his apprenticeship as linotype machinist next September.
Disregarded Pleas of Friends
The young men had failed to listen to the entreaties of friends, relatives and sweethearts, and continued their flying activities, undaunted by the crash that only eight days before, on Sunday, June 13th, claimed the lives of Lieut. Harold B. Stiles and Herbert S. Fentress. The earlier accident occurred only a few hundred yards from where the bruised and battered forms of the flying printers were pulled from the wreckage of their plane Monday.
Both ill-fated machines were of the JN or “Jennie” type, old model army training planes. The one piloted by Lieutenant Stiles belonged to the national advisory committee, and the craft owned by Coley had been purchased from a commercial aviator who in turn had purchased it from the government.
From page 2 of the Concord Times, June 28, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068271/1926-06-28/ed-1/seq-2/
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