Painter Dies As He Runs For Help

This is the death notice for my mother’s father, Walter Anthony Dreffs.  He died on December 3, 1958.  The family story is that Grandpa died running through a field with a bucket of water, and his children joked that he “kicked the bucket.”  I never knew it was because he was the one who set fire to the house!  What a tragedy!

Painter Dies As He Runs For Help
SAGINAW, Dec. 4 (AP) – House painter Walter A. Dreffs, 58, of Milwaukee, died of a heart attack Wednesday while running for aid after his blow torch set fire to a house.
He had been using the torch to remove paint.  The house, owned by Miss Frances Dreier, suffered an estimated $2,000 damage.

Published in The News-Palladium, Benton Harbor, Michigan on 04 December 1958, page 20.

I’m still not clear on how this ended up in a newspaper in Benton Harbor when he was painting the house in Saginaw.  He lived in Zilwaukee which is near Saginaw, not Milwaukee as the article states.  Ironically, this is an Associated Press article and I couldn’t find it in The Saginaw News.