This is the Newspaper account of the drownings
in 1927. I will post another article below, and other articles can be found
on the
following LINK.
The following remarks are from a June 6, 1927 account
from the Plattsburgh Press Republican:
DANNEMORA'S TRAGEDY
We are told that the "Ways of Providence are inscrutible
and truly they are past understanding to the poor, weak human mind which still
must keep the faith as it gropes toward the light. How hard this is to do
only those stricken ones know-those whose hearts have been wrung with the
anguish of seeing their loved ones snatched from them just at a time which
seems brightest in their young lives and hope for the future is at its pinnacle.
.
All mourn with Dannemora in this, her hour of deepest
sorrow. If comfort were to be taken from words there is the assurance that
a load would be lifted from the hearts of those who sit in sorrow in homes
which still echo with the voices of those loved ones which but a few short
hours ago rung with happy laughter in anticipation of a day's outing and the
near approach of the vacation season.
Sympathy is in all our hearts but even that, sincere
as it may be avails little in assuaging the dumb grief which hangs like a
pall over those homes in Dannemora tonight. It is not in the stricken homes
alone, but in the whole vlllage and every neighboring place that speak with
hushed voices as though in the. very presence of death. Women and children,
red-eyed from weeping at the fate of their young friends and the grief they
know is hidden away in so many homes in the village seem stunned by that which
has befallen them.
There is probably not one of those children who is not
known to every man and woman in Dannemora. There is no such thing as stranger
in the little village. Everyone knows everyone else. Their interests are closely
knit and the grief of one is the sorrow of all. Only the day before these
children passed through the streets on their way to school to be greeted here
and there by those they met. They probably told their friends of the pleasure
they expected from the picnic of the following day. Alas, how little we know
what is before us and those who are dear to us. Bernardette Drollette who had worked so faithfully
for the honor of her class was to have been the salutatorian at the commencement
exercises a few days hence. Little did anyone think that before that
expected happy day herown valedictory would have been written in the angry
wavesof Chazy Lake. Little Kathleen Smart had warmed the hearts of
her parents and friends in the thought that her perseverence was making her
a graduate at the age of fifteen. Now their only comfort lies in the fact
that she has been graduated to that higher life and that she and her young
companions are close to the throne of the One who said "Suffer little children."
Katherine Canning, whose presence was a light in her own home, Edmond
Rowan, the promise and hope of a widowed mother, Thomas Tobin,
no longer an orphan. Bright jewels all of a celestial crown for we also have
the word of the One that, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
It is useless to say what might have been. "The moving
finger wntes and having writen moves on." What we may say or think cannot
move a finger's breadth what has happened. That is the futility of earthly
things. Fortunately in our darkest hour we have hope and faith. Without these
we would be poor, indeed. These form the only anchor to which those poor people
in Dannemora now can cling. It is the promise that their loved ones have
been called for a little time. The sorrow they are called upon to bear and
the tears that flow unhidden shall one day wash away much that we fail to
understand now.
There is, too, a teacher whose hopes were high for her
pupils and her pride in them was unbounded. Only by the merest thread did
she escape the fate that befell her pupils. She had been among them but a
year, but in that year they had crept into her heart. At the ending of the
year it was her fate to share in the awful tragedy which befell those who
were with her. Even now the shadowy hand is hanging over her, but we may hope
that at least one was spared of all those who trusted themselves upon the
treacherous waters of the lake.
Few tragedies have so touched the hearts of the people
of this county as the one which Dannemora is bowed under now. The season of
the year, the youth of the victims and the number call for all the tender
feeling which is in us all. If it were permitted we would comfort. All we
can do is sympathizeand poor as it is it is the best that humanity can
offer to those bereaved ones who sit tonight under the heavy hand of a great
sorrow.
This photo above is purported to be the recovery operation in 1927
Rod BigelowBox 13 Chazy Lake Dannemora, N.Y. 12929
< rodbigelow@netzero.net > 
