The DAM BEAVERS 196th Company, Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1937 Bernie Drew
TRAGEDY ON A SUNDAY MORNING

Three Mile Hill (near present day Butternut)  east of downtown Great Barrington, Mass. was slick, the Sunday morning of December 16th, 1934, when the Civilian Conservation Corps Chevrolet from 196th Company rounded the narrow curves to descend into the village for Father Martin Murphy’s 8:30 Mass at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church. Men squeezed into the cab and clung to benches in the ton-and-a-half dump body. Another truck was several minutes ahead, a third lagged behind.

“As the truck driven by William Pillier of Revere neared the foot of the Three Mile hill road it started to skid on a road surface covered with light snow and ice,” The Berkshire Courier reported.

“The driver, the investigators believe, applied the brakes and the machine swerved from one side of the road to the other. It struck one of a line of cement piers set on the side of the highway, careened to the opposite side of the highway and struck another post, coming to a stop some 500 feet or more from the point where the skidding first started. The truck had reversed its direction and was headed almost directly up the hill. In striking the posts it has been damaged considerably and there was one flat tire which the officers believe resulted from the accident.”

Men riding in the low-sided open truck body were flung to the ground as it wobbled out of control. Two flew 25 feet down a 15-foot embankment.
Survivors comforted the injured. Some ran to the nearest home to summon help. The third truck arrived. “Roland Lavoie, hospital orderly, was riding in the following truck of the convoy. His coolness, presence of mind and efficiency under the circumstances was commented upon by local physicians and his work was highly praised by the Great Barrington hospital staff,” 

Barrington motorcycle officer Henry T. McCarty and neighbors showed up to shuttle the injured to Fairview Hospital. Two were pronounced dead at the scene. Curate James Donaghue rushed from St. Peter’s to administer last rites. Two others were declared dead at the hospital, the fifth died early the next morning. Six men were seriously injured but survived.

The press declared it the worst tragedy in the Civilian Conservation Corps’s history. Its sober spectacle was certainly worst in the town’s history.
“According to the early arrivals, the highway was like a battle field with the dead, dying and critically injured scattered about,” The Berkshire Evening Eagle described the grim scene. Thank you to Alec Gillman DCR Interpretive Coordinator and Mike Esposito for performing this remembrance ceremony.

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