Shattering Records

U.S. motorists have long had their own way of commemorating the nation's war dead on Memorial Day. They take to streets and highways, smash into each other, and create more dead. On Memorial Day last week, they managed to kill 159 people--a record-shattering performance that far surpassed the previous high of 109 in 1956.

Perhaps the unhappiest example of Memorial Day slaughter occurred near Cornwall, Conn. A sports car in which two young men were leaving a beer party climbed a grade along Bunker Hill on a clear afternoon, somehow skidded into the wrong lane, crashed head-on into a sedan. In the sedan, Albert Wilklow, 42, and his entire family (Wife Georgette, 37, Sons Albert Jr., 14, Frank, 12, and Daughter Paula, 10) were returning to their home in Torrington, Conn., after a day of fishing at a state park. All five died in the flaming crash. So did the occupants of the sports car: the driver, John Pellegren, 22, a Hartford hairdresser, and Peter Havey, 23, a construction worker.

In a rough week on the highways, not all of the killing was confined to the holiday itself. Among the worst accidents:

> In New Jersey, on that part of the high-speed turnpike that cuts like a six-lane ribbon across a five-mile stretch near Newark Airport, motorist are conscious of only one thing: the area stinks from industrial chimneys. But that is merely a discomfort. Far more dangerous is the fact that fog can and does descend upon the marshy meadowlands along the turnpike. To warn motorists, New Jersey has spent some $300,000 on fog horns, fog lights, etc. But nothing seems to work. Early one morning last week, the lethal soup swirled in. Warning signs flashed futilely. Samuel Baker, of Phillipsburg, N.J., slowed his Volkswagen--and sailed 100 ft. into some weeds when struck from behind by a tractor-trailer truck. Eleven other trucks and two cars crumpled together. One truck passenger and five truck drivers--one of them 14 vehicles back--were killed. Baker suffered a minor neck injury. >Construction Worker Samuel Brown was eager to get away from northern Arizona's Glen Canyon Dam--and with good reason. It was his 21st birthday, next day was the holiday and also the opening of the Utah fishing season. He was too eager. As he tried to pass a car on a curve near the town of Glendale, Utah, a truck carrying 27 tons of steel headed straight at him. The big truck smashed Brown's truck against a rocky hill. Brown, his wife Sandra, 23, his daughters Robin, 4, and Michelle, 4 months, his brother-in-law David Jepsen, 19, all died. Only his third daughter, Sammie Kay, 1 1/2, survived.

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