True Tales Excerpt: Forgotten Tragedy

The medical examiner from Stoughton examines the wreckage of a crushed car. (Boston Globe Archives)

The following is an excerpt from “Forgotten Tragedy,” the latest installment of True Tales from Canton’s Past by local historian George T. Comeau.

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As Ida Chippendale locked the door to her apartment at Windsor Gardens in Norwood, she tucked the umbrella under her arm and walked through the light mist to her new Thunderbird. Ida always drove a new T-Bird every year, and she took great joy in keeping it in pristine condition. A small woman, barely five feet tall, she wore a smart dress and a new coat that was highly fashionable. At 54, Ida was on her own these days. Just three years prior, Ida’s husband, Frank, had passed away and the loss had been hard to accept. Frank was an amazing man, an All-American from Columbia University who played football in the Rose Bowl and had settled into his adult life as a bank examiner. Ida was living comfortably in Norwood and for nearly 25 years her commute to Post Office Square in Boston was an unremarkable part of her day. The joy was being in the T-Bird on the open road.

At the same time that Ida was leaving the house, in nearby Westwood, Norman Howard began his commute to South Braintree. The mist was now a fog as he climbed into his Volkswagen and headed towards Route 128. Despite the overcast day, Norman was happy to think about tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner. The whole family would gather and his brother Donald would carve the turkey as they reminisced about holidays past. Thanksgiving would never come for Ida or Norman. They would die tragically that morning in Canton.

Route 128 is an old road, dating to around 1927. It was called called the “Circumferential Highway” and followed existing roadways from Gloucester to Hull through Boston’s suburbs. Today it always raises some confusion as to which way it heads, and what to call it. For some time the road had lost the designation as 128 when the junction of Interstates 95 and 93 were being planned. In the early 1960s the Massachusetts Highway Department subsequently restored the designation of Route 128 and reinstalled signage on the segment of what was known as the Yankee Division Highway designated as I-95. The change was partly in response to public protest and partly due to the fact that an Amtrak and MBTA commuter rail station adjacent to the highway at the University Avenue interchange in Canton bears the name Route 128. The station is located at the first interchange north of what’s now the junction of I-93 and I-95 in Canton.

From a topographical standpoint, take a look at the section of 128 between Ponkapoag and the MBTA/Amtrak Station. The highway dips down to the lowest point of the Neponset Valley. The area is surrounded by the meadows and marshes of the Fowl Meadows, and the Neponset River flows under the bridge near the train station. On that day in 1964, early in the morning the fog was thick and heavy and the air filled with the smell of the peat fire that had been started carelessly by hunters in the days before. Quite simply, the fog “dropped like a curtain” at the bridge over the Neponset.

It all began around 7:15 a.m. when a Belmont plasterer, in his blue and white Ford truck, headed to the south shore and encountered the wall of fog with less than six feet of visibility. A tap of the brake later and a large tractor trailer fully braked and a third car — a 1956 Chevy sedan — was immediately crushed under the tractor trailer. What happened next is unthinkable. More than 100 cars crashed into each other in a chain reaction that was unparalleled in the history of the highway or the commonwealth.

It is not hyperbole to describe the scene as utter chaos. The Boston Globe described the crash in a headline as a “Half Mile of Horror.” The newspaper immediately sent reporters to the scene. “Rush-hour traffic streaking through thick gray fog … brake lights ahead … the screech of a vehicle out of control … a crash … another … another … another.” There was fire, fog, and the stench of fuel in the air. “The thud and thump of metal … splashes of splintering glass … cries of the injured … flames through the fog … the fingers of fear at the throat … the cacophony of collision after collision after collision … then silence …

See this week’s Citizen for more on the Thanksgiving eve traffic accident of 1964. Fall Subscription Promo: $30 for 1 year or $50 for 2 years for new in-town subscribers. Click here to subscribe today.

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