Graduate Student Killed Bicycling Way to Game

Struck by a hit-and-run driver as he was bicycling along the Worcester Turnpike near Southboro on his way to Princeton, Richard G. Wheeler '38, 1G died last night in the office of a Shrewsbury doctor where he was taken from the scene of the accident.

Curtis L. Clay, Jr. '41, his companion on the trip, was riding 50 yards ahead, and escaped injury when the speeding car sideswiped Wheeler, throwing him 90 feet into a ditch.

The car was traveling at "terrific speed", State Police, who are investigating the case, said last night. Wheeler's bicycle was found three quarters of a mile away from the site of the crash. Apparently the driver turned into a side road at this point and removed the wrecked bike from his front bumper.

Driver Hunted

Police found fragments of headlight lens on the spot, from which they believe they can trace the car's ownership. Clay could only identify it as a black sedan. He said he heard a crash, looked back, and by the time he turned around the fleeing car's license plates were too far off to be read.

The two students only decided to make the Princeton jaunt yesterday afternoon and left at 4 o'clock. The accident occurred at 6:15. Although both were experienced bicyclists, it is thought that Wheeler's machine was not properly lighted for travel at night.

Wheeler's body was in the morgue of the Worcester City Hospital last night, waiting to be claimed by relatives. Clay spent the night at the Shrewsbury police station and is expected to return here this morning.

Friends here notified Wheeler's nearest relative in this country, his uncle, George Kurzman, a New York lawyer. His mother, Mrs. George Turner, lives abroad in Paris. His father was killed in an automobile accident in Germany eight years ago.

Recently Escaped Accident

Wheeler narrowly escaped death only three weeks ago on a Columbus Day grip to New York when the steering gear of his car broke while he was driving at 50 miles an hour and the car overturned. He escaped uninjured and went on to New York by train.

In Cambridge he was living at 53 Mt. Anburn Street, the Advocate Building. While in College he was a member of Kirkland House, and last year was president of the House Dramatic Club. As Director this year, he had already begun rehearsals of the Club's newest production.

Eugene S. Buder '38, 1L, who was scheduled to make a bicycle dash to Princeton to win a bet, beginning at 12:01 this morning, last night called his trip off after hearing of Wheeler's death. "I intended to do it as a sporting venture," he said, "and now all the sport has gone out of it."