Allen Strassell
Obituaries
Eagle Valley Enterprise page 1 - June 7, 1951
Allen Strassell Drowned in Colorado River Thursday
A nineteen year old Bond boy is believed to have drowned in the Colorado River near Bond last Thursday afternoon.
A three day search failed to locate the body of Allen Strassell, son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Strassell, Bond ranch people which began when the boy failed to return home Thursday evening from an attempted rescue of a band of horses stranded on a small island in the Colorado. Mrs. Strassell told Sheriff Wilson that her son left the home ranch 2 miles northwest of Bond late Thursday afternoon in a pickup and was to get his horse in a pasture near the river to cross to the island. He was last seen near the Colorado with his saddled horse which was found the next afternoon by railroad workers near Burns 12 miles downstream,dead.
The search was conducted from river bank Friday and Saturday with no results. The boy's father Henry J. Strassell was enroute to a government job in the arctic and was reached just before he was scheduled to leave Minneapolis, and returned by plane, joined at Toledo by another son, William.
Mr. Strassell and another son, Robert narrowly escaped death when they attempted a search from midstream using a wood structure boast which capsized with them in the spring swollen water on Sunday.
The Strassells lost another son before moving to Colorado when 6 year old Duane was killed in a pedestrian auto accident in Clinton, IA.
There are two daughters in the family, Mrs. Bill Thompson of Bond and Marion Marsh of Alabama.
Grand Junction Daily Sentinel page 10 - June 2, 1951
