Beverly Sherman Werschkul is a member of an exclusive club …one that not many of us would care to be a member of …she is one of a small number of people who have plunged into Lake Crescent and lived to tell about it.
Dale Steele, Diane (DD) Cowles, Gary Lind, and Beverly Sherman ages 20-22 from Seattle and Sedro Woolley were en route to Chimacum from Forks on Jan. 24, 1960. At about 2 a.m. they went off the road at Meldrum point, at about MP 223. All escaped from the same window, and the vehicle sunk. Divers at the time could not locate the car it was too deep.
Recently Beverly overheard a conversation Tim Haley, of Olympia, was having and she heard the word “Forks.” She struck up a conversation and shared her story regarding crashing into the Lake in January 1960. She also shared that she was hoping to write a book about the experience and had some missing names that she wanted to add when she did so.
Tim helped her with one name …the name of the doctor who stitched up her leg ..seventeen stitches in all and that was Dr. Leibold. But there were more names of people that helped them that night and Beverly was looking to fill in the blanks.
So, Tim’s wife Mary Helen (Soderlind) Haley sent what Beverly shared, to me at the Forks Forum, to see if I could be of any help.
Beverly had shared the following;
This past June I decided to write a book on our adventures with/in Lake Crescent which includes the accident, our lives after, and my desire to find ‘our’ car when I read the fascinating story about the Warren Car in 1929 in several newspapers in spring of 2002. (The Warrens went missing in 1929 on a trip to Port Angeles.)
In the spring of 2003 when the Warren project was being pursued by Dan Pontbriand, Chief Ranger at Olympic National Park and a diver, and others including underwater cameras, I was interested. They found the Warren car in 2003, and I just had a feeling that our car was not far away from theirs. I had petitioned Ranger Dan in April of 2003 for assistance and finally Sept. 1, 2003, I was invited to come to Lake Crescent to help find our point of entry with the ROV (cameras). The following Labor Day weekend the driver, plus extensive media people from everywhere came for the first dive. It would take several more efforts over a year to use a gaff hook from the boat with the ROV and divers to hook it on the lip of the trunk to pop it open and reveal my large suitcase and other personal items of the others in May of 2004.
The accident January 1960
After we were up on the highway, after our accident, we walked down the middle of the road for about an hour before the first car passed. They stopped but could not take us because they had all of their kids in the car and no room for us. Then a little bit later an older car, pre-1950s, maybe a Kaiser, stopped and two loggers put us in their car, wrapped us in blankets, and gave us whiskey. I did not realize the extent of all my injuries and they took all of us to the hospital. That’s when I met Dr. Leibold who sewed up my face and my right foot.
Dale, DD, and Gary and I had all got out of the lake on our own. The next day they returned to the lake with a skin diver to determine if anything could be found. Our car was at 200 feet and in 1960 a diver could only go down about 125 or 130 feet.
A man named Joe Polk was a good friend of Dale and Gary’s and I think that he was attending college at Western in Bellingham. Joe had a friend from Forks I think named John, who was a Golden Gloves boxer and gave the guys clothes to wear after the accident.
The guys that picked us up did not seem too much older than we were at the time so they might be mid-80s or late 80s. I sure wish we had asked their names!
If anyone reading this can help Beverly fill in the names she would greatly appreciate it. Who were the two loggers and who was Joe Polk’s boxing friend? The four had also visited the home of Lue and Les Pooler in Sappho before they headed onward to Chimacum. Please contact the Forks Forum if you can help.
Christi Baron, Editor
