“Name that Year” is designed to put your knowledge of Tracy and its newsmakers of the past to the test. Each week, we will publish a news item that ran in a past edition — maybe it was a major event, or a story about a Tracy resident — it’s up to you to determine in what year that particular news item hit the pages of the paper:
• THE SPIRIT OF TRACY’S BOX CAR DAYS CELEBRATION WAS SADDENED THIS YEAR when a 24-year-old Hadley woman was struck and killed by lightning while playing in a local softball tournament.
Funeral services for Laurie Mahon Moffitt were held Wednesday morning at Hadley Lutheran Church with interment following in the Hadley cemetery.
Mrs. Moffitt was a member of the Peoples State Bank softball team of Slayton, which had taken the field Sunday morning against the Balaton Blue Denims team in the first round of the women’s tournament sponsored by the Tracy Area Jaycees.
Witnesses said Mrs. Moffitt was playing right field when a lightning bolt struck her where she stood, producing what was described as a ball of fire, then a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared, shocked team members and others found her lying on the ground. The incident occurred shortly after 10 a.m.
Besides the several witnesses at the game, Betty Lehar, who lives across Highway 14 and west from the softball fields, said she was looking out her window after the lightning bolt struck and saw the smoke on the field. She guessed what had happened when she saw the players rushing over and told her husband, Charles, who immediately called the Tracy ambulance.
Mrs. Moffitt was taken to Tracy Municipal Hospital by ambulance crew volunteers Jim Peterson and Ron Johnson, where she was pronounced dead by Dr. Wilfredo Apostol.
According to Ron Radke, who was chairman of the Jaycee committee which organized the tournament, the teams had played under conditions which alternated between rain and mist for about two innings when the incident took place.
• Last week’s answer: Tracy American Legion moved into its now-vacant building on 4th St. in 1996.
