Constance (“Connie”) Struble is seen in her eighth-grade graduation dress outside Echo Lake School where she received her elementary school education through eighth grade. During a winter in the 1940s she was sleigh-riding on Germantown Road and died when her sled collided with a delivery truck. (Photo by Ann Genader) (
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Life in rural West Milford during the 1940s usually followed a simple routine. The family unit was powerful with daily activities continuing in an uncomplicated pattern. Fathers worked at the Pequannock Soft Rubber Company in Butler; mothers were homemakers and children attended one of the nine rural two-room schoolhouses in local villages. After the school day ended children enjoyed spending their free time in the woodland/ lake environment. Depending on the section of the township the family lived in, the father drove the mother and children in the family car to either Butler, Pompton Lakes or Warwick, N.Y., on Friday evening or Saturday morning to shop for groceries for the week. The families attended Sunday morning church services at one of two Catholic Churches or one of about eight protestant churches located in township communities. After returning from church the family gathered around the dining room table for Sunday dinner prepared by the mother. A ride in the family car took them to surrounding areas, a favorite being an airport on Hamburg Turnpike in Wayne (no longer there) where they watched small planes take off and land.
The afterschool sleigh rides on main roads every winter were a highlight in many kids’ weekly routine. Popular locations included the hill at the end of Awosting Road where it connects with Greenwood Lake Turnpike; Echo Lake Road (known today as Macopin Road) and Germantown Road with a steep hill starting near the end of St. Joseph Church property heading west and ending somewhere along the bottom of the mountain. Macopin Road, before it was rebuilt, and widened, had a much steeper hill from what is now Wood Street down to the Town Tavern. It was a much steeper, longer riding sledding distance than now.
There were no safety concerns in the 1940s about kids sleigh riding on main roads after their school day ended at 3 p.m. Families only had one car and every day the father drove it to work in the Butler mill where the closing bell to end the workday rang at 4 p.m. No other vehicles usually traveled the roads at that time, so kids had plenty of time to sleigh ride before the fathers arrived home from work around 5 p.m.
Barbara Welti VanDerSluys, now living in Warwick, N.Y., remembers the days when she and friends Pat Moran, Frank Phillips, Marge Wilson Hackett and Ann Wilson rode on a large sleigh down Awosting Road and across Greenwood Lake Turnpike into the parking lot of Phillips Inn (now Jessie’s Country Kettle.) There was little or no traffic to be concerned about. One of the kids in the group would stand on the main road to be sure no vehicles were coming and gave signal that it was safe to continue down the hill and across the main road into the parking lot.
One day things went terribly wrong for a group of Germantown Road children who were sleigh riding down the big hill after their day at Echo Lake School ended. One of the riders on a single sled was Constance “Connie” Struble, who had graduated from eighth grade the previous June where she was a student since kindergarten. A newspaper delivery truck that wasn’t known to have routinely traveled up the hill at that hour was going east on Germantown Road hill, apparently coming from Route 23. Connie and her sled collided with the truck and she died. She was the daughter of Louis and Betty Struble and her siblings were Louis Struble Jr., Gerald Struble, Hope Struble and Majorie Struble. The tragedy shocked people across the entire township. People immediately stopped sleigh riding on main roads without any legal action prohibiting them from doing so. Connie is buried in St. Joseph Cemetery in a family plot. Realizing the need for a local emergency organization the West Milford First Aid Squad was formed soon after Connie Struble’s death.
