| Sources |
- [S927] Obituary.
#
Mother of 3 Drops Dead During Meet
#
Oct 1948 , Bremerton, Kitsap County, WA, USA
#
Louise Eskridge Stoffel, 32 years old, a member of one of Bremerton's best-known families, dropped dead shortly after 9 o'clock last nght as she addressed a meeting of the Haddon Pre-School unit of the Parent-Teacher association.
The wife of Vaughan G. Stoffel, a saw-filer in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and co-owner of a neighborhood grocery store, she was the mother of three children, ranging in age from nine months to five years.
Her untimely death came as a deep shock. In excellent health, she had never suffered a serious illness. With her husband, she returned a week ago from a 10-day vacation trip spent in British Columbia and later visiting her husband's relatives in Portland.
About an hour before she was stricken, Mrs Stoffel had walked the three blocks from her home at 1333 1/2 N. Lafayette Ave., to the Lulu D. Haddon school where she was to attend the PTA meeting. Her husband, meanwhile, was refereeing a basketball gave in Craven Center of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
A few minutes after 9 o'clock Mrs. Stoffel had arisen from her seat at the meeting to submit a report on her activiities as magazine chairman of the organization. She had only spoken about a minute when she added: "I feel faint."
Mrs. John Elliott, 1519 N. Camrian Ave., who was sitting near by, pushed a chiar over to her and was able to support her as she sat down. Mrs Stofel lost consciousness immediately and fellow members worked frantically in an attempt to revive her from what was first thought to be a fainting spell.
Mrs. Elliott went to the nearest telephone and called the police department for aid. Meanwhile Mrs Elizabeth Creelman, a close friend of the stricken women, called her husband, Dr Raymond C. Creelman, who was attending a movie.
Within a matter of minutes a police car manned by Sgt. Richard A. Matthews and Patrolman Rex McKeehan, who were cruising in the neighborhood, had reached the scene. Meanwhile, a call for assistance had been flashed to the fire department and Delmer E. Stone sped to the scene in the city first aid car.
In the car, staffed with Deputies Orville Schlosser and Allen Johnson and cruising in the neighborhood, they had picked up the call on their radio when they went to the school room to lend assistance.
Additional help, in the person of Fireman Darrell floyd, arrived a few minutes later. Off duty when the call for help was received at the fire station, he was summoned from his home by Dispatcher Bill Lowry.
Fellow-members attending the meeting called the woman's home to summon her husband as soon as she became ill. A brother of the husband, Gerald V. Stoffel, 717 Naval ave., his partner in a neighborhood grocery, had just closed the store for the evening and had stopped by the family home for a visit with his mother, Mrs. Agnes M. Stoffel, who makes her home with her son Vaughan. On receipt of the message he immediately contacted Vaughan in the shipyard.
Stoffel reached his wife's side while the physcian, firemen and policment were still making a futile attempt to revive her with the recuscitator, but she never regained consciousness.
Diagnosis of her illness was a coronary heart attack. The attending physician expressed the belief that death was instantaneous.
A native of Topeka, Kansas, where she was born on Nov. 9, 1915, she moved to Bremerton with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. J.R. Eskridge, at the age of three.
Attending the Washington grade school and then Bremerton high school, Mrs. Stoffel, then Louise Opal Eskridge, was graduated as valedictorian of her class in 1933. She then worked at the highschool in a secretarial capacity for the ensuing four years, going from there to a position in Washington, D.C..
A year later she returned to Bremerton and joined the accounting department in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in a supervisory capacity. She worked in that position until 1943.
Possessed of a wealth of friends, she was interested in the work of a number of organizations, serving as an officer in the Haddon Pre-School unit and as an active participant in the affairs of the Missioin Circle of the First Baptist church's Women's Missionary Union.
|
1915 - 1948 (32 years)