The Kids…The Breadman…The Cop…

Camden Courier-Post, September 7, 1974

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The Kids...The Breadman...The Cop... FOR CAMDEN PEOPLE the date Sept. 6, 1949 is like the day Pearl Harbor was attacked or the day JFK was assassinated. They remember where they were. They remember their emotions. “Has it been 25 years, already?” they ask, amazed at how fast time has flown. Scores of people were affected personally and their memories are even more vivid. They were survivors, witnesses, policemen and newsmen. Some are dead but many are alive. Alive like William Joyce, now a Cherry Hill policeman. Joyce was 12 at the time. That morning his father gave him and a brother money for haircuts. Of course, they would walk several blocks to Clark Hoover’s barber shop on River Avenue. They liked to sit on the horse. But the Joyce boys were naughty that day. They didn’t go to the barber. They hung around the neighborhood to play. So, William Joyce is still around to remember. Roxy DeMarco of Pennsauken is still around...still driving a bread truck. He was at the intersection of 32nd Street and River Avenue that morning making deliveries to the bar and food store. He saw the slaughter. He ducked into the rear of the truck to avoid an Unruh bullet. He scooped up two children and drove off. Ex-policeman Harry “Barney” Tracy is still alive and working in security at Camden City Hall. In his mind’s eye he can still see Howard Unruh coming down the backstairs of his apartment to surrender. “A lot of people criticized us for not killing him,” says Tracy. “But the way he surrendered...well, he had no fight left. We shouted stick your hands up higher. He did it. How the hell can you shoot a guy that has no fight in him?” Here are the recollections of others who can’t forget “the walk of death.”

FOR CAMDEN PEOPLE the date Sept. 6, 1949 is like the day Pearl Harbor was attacked or the day JFK was assassinated. They remember where they were. They remember their emotions. “Has it been 25 years, already?” they ask, amazed at how fast time has flown.

Scores of people were affected personally and their memories are even more vivid. They were survivors, witnesses, policemen and newsmen.

Some are dead but many are alive. Alive like William Joyce, now a Cherry Hill policeman.

Joyce was 12 at the time. That morning his father gave him and a brother money for haircuts. Of course, they would walk several blocks to Clark Hoover’s barber shop on River Avenue. They liked to sit on the horse.

But the Joyce boys were naughty that day. They didn’t go to the barber. They hung around the neighborhood to play. So, William Joyce is still around to remember.

Roxy DeMarco of Pennsauken is still around...still driving a bread truck. He was at the intersection of 32nd Street and River Avenue that morning making deliveries to the bar and food store. He saw the slaughter. He ducked into the rear of the truck to avoid an Unruh bullet. He scooped up two children and drove off.

Ex-policeman Harry “Barney” Tracy is still alive and working in security at Camden City Hall. In his mind’s eye he can still see Howard Unruh coming down the backstairs of his apartment to surrender.

“A lot of people criticized us for not killing him,” says Tracy. “But the way he surrendered...well, he had no fight left. We shouted stick your hands up higher. He did it. How the hell can you shoot a guy that has no fight in him?”

Here are the recollections of others who can’t forget “the walk of death.”