CityView Magazine

10 April 2021 BILL KIRBY JR. A leap of faith onto a boxcar BY BILL KIRBY JR. T alk about faith, well, Billy Waddell and David Harvey were two youngsters who, more than 50 years ago, took a leap of faith like none other. Call 'em, if you will, the boxcar boys. Or the boxcar stowaways. "I think about it sometimes," said Harvey, 67, who lives in Southern Pines. "I saw some photos online and it flooded me with emotion. It was just like yesterday." e tale began on that spring aernoon 55 years ago, when Harvey and his boyhood pal found themselves at the old Sullivan Wholesale beer distributing business along Country Club Drive in north Fayetteville. "We went on a tour of Sullivan Wholesale, and they showed us the warehouse," Harvey said. But as the boys were about to straddle their bicycles and head for their homes near Eutaw Village, they noticed the nearby railroad tracks and a boxcar – destination Milwaukee and the Jos. Schlitz David Harvey recalls the 12-day journey in a railway boxcar 'like it was yesterday.' Brewing Co., more than 900 miles from Fayetteville. "As we were walking out, Billy said, 'What do you think about going to Milwaukee?' He was 13, and I was 12. I said, 'Well, I haven't been there.' So that's what we did." ey returned to the railroad tracks the next day – April 9, 1966. "We le our bikes in the woods," Harvey said. And into the boxcar they hid. "We thought we'd be there in a couple of hours. But they locked the doors. Billy said, 'Be quiet. We'll get in trouble if we get caught.' We sat there for two days, and then we were on our way." David Harvey and Billy Waddell, students at the old Belvedere Elementary School, found themselves trapped in a railway boxcar full of cases of empty beer bottles. Meanwhile, their parents were frantic and beside themselves about their missing youngsters. ey had reported the missing boys to local law enforcement and feared foul play. "ere was a good jolt," Harvey said, referring to when the train began its journey toward Milwaukee with the stowaways aboard. "We wanted to get out of there. We were getting hungry. I wanted out. We both had a panic time. But we calmed down." e boys, Harvey said, shared an Army sleeping bag they had brought along, and the dregs from stale beer bottles. "I remember having the dry heaves," Harvey said. "I tore off one of the box tops of the beer bottle cases and ate it," he says. "It stopped my dry heaving." But these were two youngsters in fear. "We were scared for our lives," Harvey said. "We slept, told jokes and did a lot of praying. I was thinking it could be the end of us. ere was a time when I gave up and said, 'God, take me.'" 'I Started Praying' David Harvey remembers that April 21, 1966, morning when the doors to the boxcar were opened by a switchman at the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. "ey popped both doors of the boxcar," he said. "It was pretty early in the morning. I saw a bright daylight. I just started praying when I saw the light. I fell to my knees and started praying to God Almighty." e railroad switchman couldn't believe his eyes. "How'd you guys get in there?" he asked the boys, who had spent 12 days trapped in the railway boxcar that had just arrived from Fayetteville to the beer distributorship. e boys gave their account of how they had come from Fayetteville, North Carolina to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "ey thought we were lying," Harvey said, remembering the authorities who converged on the railway yard. A Milwaukee newspaperman called the Fayetteville Police Department to inform local authorities that the missing boys had been discovered in a boxcar. Pat Reese, the late Fayetteville Observer reporter, wrote that David Harvey and Billy Waddell were safe. "Hungry, tired, dirty," Reese wrote. But safe. "We slept, told jokes and did a lot of praying," David Harvey says about the time 55 years ago when he and his boyhood pal hopped on a railroad boxcar headed for Milwaukee, and found themselves trapped for 21 days.

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