James Vernon Walker

Payette Enterprise
Thursday, July 13, 1916

YOUNG WALKER PASSES AWAY

James Vernon Walker, aged about 15 years, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Walker, died at the home of his parents on Seventh Avenue North, Wednesday afternoon, after a painful illness of about six weeks. The funeral will take place at 2:30 this afternoon from the Methodist church, the pastor, Dr. G. W. Barnes, officiating.

The peculiar circumstance connected with this boy's death is the fact that about six weeks ago, while chewing a kernel of dry corn he laughed at some amusing remark and sucked a particle of the corn into his left lung, from the effects of which he coughed more or less, but suffered no particular pain until about two weeks later when he was taken down with a pain in his lung and continued to decline in spite of medical treatment and the most careful nursing. Drs. Woodward and Woodward, who had the case in charge, sought to relieve the patient's suffering by an operation in which portions of ribs were removed on each side of the lung, but without success, as gangrene had set in and the case was found to be hopeless.