My wife and I enjoy watching murder mysteries, such as Dateline and 48 Hours. Last week we saw a program about the murders of four young teenage girls at a I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt store in Austin, Texas. It was awful. A man raped the girls, shot them all in the head, then burned the store on his way out. I couldn’t help but think about an incident near Creedmoor where four young girls were tragically killed, four sisters, no less. Let’s “look back” this week to this sad day in 1937.
Just like hundreds of other families in Granville County, Edgar and Clyde Hester rose from bed on August 10 of 1937 to harvest another field of tobacco. Most families in Granville County made their living from this staple crop. It was a life of hard work, but the Hesters were successful at it. This day, like so many other days, the tobacco would be harvested as a family affair. This day, which began with bright sunshine and optimism, sadly would end with the Carolina blue sky turning into a dark vicious killer.
Maurice, Vivian, Mary, Edith, and Joe were in the tobacco fields helping with the crop. Annie was away from home working elsewhere. About 4:00 p.m., thick black clouds appeared and a slight gust of wind stirred the hot, dry dust of the field. A few drops of rain fell from the sky and before long torrents of water were falling on the heads of the Hester children, their father Edgar, Roy Mangum, and Eugene Rogers. The son, Joe, and the three other men went to a nearby wagon to prepare some shelter. The four young Hester girls huddled together under guano sacks with their arms around each other. Suddenly, without warning, a lightning bolt shot from the ominous sky, striking the Hester girls. They died as they so lovingly lived, together as always. One lightning bolt, and four lay dead…