http://www.cooganresearchgroup.com/crg/index.htm

11 January 2014

COOGAN story 

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appearing in "Illinois State Journal" [IL], 16 OCT 1943:

KILLED BY CAR ON WAY TO MAIL LETTER TO HUSBAND IN SERVICE

En route to a neighborhood mail box to send a letter to her soldier 
husband of three months, attractive 27-year-old Mrs. Mary Catherine
Coogan Vestal, 1629 East Edwards street, was injured fatally at 8:30
p.m. yesterday when struck by a car at Sixteenth and Cook streets.

Assistant State’s Attorney Thomas Hoopes, after questioning 17-year-old
Charles Keeney, new Berlin, driver of the car, ordered him held under
$1500 bond on a manslaughter charge.

Mrs. Vestal, a former typist for the Illinois Bell Telephone Co., was
walking southward across the intersection, State Officer William
Williams said, while the car was traveling westward.

Officers Charles Klaphake and Ernest Preval said that Mrs. Vestal
apparently was standing on the white marker in the center of the street,
waiting for eastbound traffic to clear, when she was struck.

Her body hurtled over the hood of the car, her head striking the
windshield.  The officers said that Mrs. Vestal was carried 72 feet by
the car, which traveled more than 100 feet farther after she had slipped
from the machine onto the  pavement.  She was taken to St. John’s
hospital where she was pronounced dead.  Coroner W. L. Dragoo said death
was due to a skull fracture.  Klaphake filed the manslaughter charge
before Police Magistrate Conway.

Relatives of the victim said she had just left home to walk to a mail
box at Fifteenth and Cook streets to mail the letter.  They said she had
returned to the city only last Friday from Tullahoma, Tenn., where she
visited her husband, who then was sent on maneuvers.

Williams quoted Keeney as saying he was traveling 30 miles an hour and
did not see the young woman until the car struck her.  Mrs. Vestal’s
purse was found a foot from the sidewalk margin line.

Mrs. Vestal and Pvt. Edward Vestal were married July 21 at Sacred Heart
church.  The husband is the son of Mr. And Mrs. Charles Vestal of
Smithshire, Ill.

In addition to her husband, the young woman is survived by her parents,
Mr. And Mrs. James Coogan, with whom she was residing; two brothers,
James F., Lincoln, and Corp. John Coogan, U. S. army; three sisters,
Jane, Regina and Rose Marie, all at home; grandfather, James Coogan,
Lincoln.  She was a member of  Sacred Heart church.

The body was removed to the Kirlin & Egan funeral home.

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