Death of Rockne

A heavy fog hung over Kansas fields near Emporia one morning last week as Edward Baker, farm boy of Bazaar, set forth to feed his cattle. Along about ten o'clock he heard an explosion, then a crash. Soon afterward, in a nearby pasture, Edward Baker came upon the flaming carcass of a ten passenger Fokker of the Transcontinental & Western Air line. Its eight occupants lay dead or dying. . . .

Thus came Death to Knute Kenneth Rockne, famed 43-year-old coach of Notre Dame University's football team. Coach Rockne had boarded the plane that morning at Kansas City, California-bound.

Born in Voss, Norway, Knute Rockne was brought to Chicago by his family when he was five. While an undergraduate at Notre Dame, where he helped work his way through by scrubbing dormitories, he won applause as a football player. Slight of build, spindle-legged, he starred as an end in 1911, captained the team in his graduation year (1914). First assistant director of athletics (at the same time instructor in chemistry), then director, Coach Rockne brought nation-wide publicity to his university in 1924 when the "Four Horsemen" assumed first place as a conquering backfield.

During 1929 and 1930 Coach Rockne's eleven never lost a game, won 19 straight. Few days before his death, Mr. Rockne had accepted a position as sales promotion manager of the Studebaker Corp., whose factory is located at South Bend, Ind., home of Notre Dame and its coach.

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