MASSACHUSETTS: Distant Shore

Swimmers at Green Pond outside Millers Falls, Mass, paid no attention one afternoon last week when 18-year-old John Hawthorne began splashing and calling, "Which way to shore?" as he labored through the water, only 30 feet from the beach. Finally a youth named Norman Gerber headed for him. But young Hawthorne went under. By the time Gerber found him and towed him to shore, he was dead. His weeping sisters, Elizabeth, 13, and Barbara, 9, who had brought him to the pond but had stayed on shore, explained why he had acted so oddly. John Hawthorne was blind.

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