HIS LONG FALL WAS FATAL.
Charles Pepperdine Dies From Result
of Commerce Building Accident.
Death came early yesterday morning to Charles Pepperdine, the young man who twice in ten days fell from scaffolding sheer down the face of the walls of the Commerce skyscraper. Two borthers who live here were with him at Wesley hospital when he died. His chief concern in the midst of his suffering was that his mother down at Bowling Green, Mo., should be spared the knowlege of his condition. He was her eldest and favorite son. His last drop Saturday morning from the thirteenth story to a substantial skylight in the well of the building above the second floor had mutilated his limbs, and a rope he held to had burned his arm to the bone.
Pepperdine's mother and father, who usually live in Kansas City through the winter, went back to their old home at Bowling Green three weeks ago. The men of the family are brick masons and it was in pointing up the work of the Commerce building that Charles Pepperdine was engaged, both on May 6 and last Saturday, when he fell. He was in the habit of laughing at danger and when the first Commerce accident occurred, he and the brick washer who was with him, joked each other as they hung to a rope between the sixth and seventh stories.
Saturday one of the two men stood up on the ladder platform and forced it out from the building. A guard rope which both men grabbed for had become detatched and the dangling ropes they caught after falling did not do uch to check their descent.
Coroner Thompson will hold an autopsy on the body of Pepperdine this morning at 9 o'clock and the remains will be taken to Bowling Green for burial.
L. F. Trout, the other victim of the fall, is said to have a fair chance for recovery. There has been no decided change in his condition.
