Ill Health Drives Soldier to Suicide

Pennsylvania, 1920

Using a stocking garter as a noose, Stewart C. Russell, a World War veteran, committed suicide Saturday night at the home of his wife's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sanford O. Metz, near Orrtanna. Worry over continued ill health is believed to have been the cause for the deed.

Russell, who had served overseas during the war and won his lieutenant's commission on the day of the armistice, had left the family only twenty minutes before his wife found the dead body lying on the bed, the garter around his neck and fastened to an army belt which he had flung over the bedpost.

His home was in Pontiac, Michigan. He was in Camp Colt, Gettysburg in 1917, and married Miss Gladys Metz, an Adams county school teacher at that time. After his return from the war, the Red Cross had been interested in his condition and he had been promised an operation in the hope that it would relieve his suffering. A military funeral was held on Wednesday.

–New Oxford Item, New Oxford, PA, Dec. 9, 1920, p. 4.