Funeral services will be held at the Shaw & Sons Funeral Home in Yakima, Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. for Ems Walter Wright, 52, Yakima barber and a former Ellensburg resident. Interment will be in Terrace Heights Cemetery there.
Wright was found dead in his automobile Sunday about 36 miles north of Yakima on the Wenas Road. Yakima County Corner Dr. Ralph W. Shirey said the death was a suicide caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. A garden hose was attached to the car’s exhaust and looped into a window.
A fisherman, John Jackson of Ellensburg, spotted the car parked in brush off the highway near a creek. Formerly a barber here, Wright moved to Yakima 14 years ago. He was a driver for a lumber company there for several years before returning to his barber trade. He recently had operated his own shop. He was born in Miller, Missouri.
Surviving are his wife, Mrs. Laveta Wright; two daughters, Mrs. Myrtle Lee Friendly of Seattle and Miss Elsie Wright of Yakima; two brothers, Orville Wright of Sunnyside and Joe Wright of Ellensburg, and two sisters, Mrs. George (Marie) Ferguson of Ellensburg and Mrs. William (Helen) LaFon of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Ellensburg Daily Record, July 9, 1959
Contributed by: Shelli Steedman