EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region’s history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.

On April 3, 1919, Warren police Chief Frank H. Flowers was with Youngstown Police Chief Watkins driving back to Youngstown with an unknown woman on Niles Avenue between East and South Homewood Avenue SE.

Flowers was sitting in the tonneau of a Packard car. An unknown vehicle was broken down on the right side of the road with a man working on the car. Watkins went around the left side of the disabled vehicle and misjudged a fast-approaching westbound Mahoning Valley streetcar. Watkins’ Packard car then struck the streetcar just behind the front seat. The impact threw Watkins and Flowers’ car off the road and hurled Flowers out and threw him into the air about 20 feet, after which his head struck the ground, breaking his neck.

Watkins was pinned beneath the steering wheel unable to move and the uninjured woman ran down Homewood Avenue SE screaming. Several people went over to Flowers as he lay on the ground on his back with his head in a pool of blood. An ambulance arrived on scene and Flowers was still breathing. Both were rushed to City Hospital, but Flowers died before he arrived there.

Thousands of Warren citizens, city officials and police officers from all over Ohio attended Flowers’ funeral at First Presbyterian Church in Warren. He is buried at the Western Reserve Mausoleum on Niles Avenue SE in Warren.

He was 51 at the time of his death and served on the Warren Police Department for 25 years.

Flowers was born on March 23, 1868, in Vernon Township, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Flowers, who were pioneer residents of Trumbull County. He moved to Warren when he was 21 and joined the police department, serving two years as a special policeman for two years before being appointed to regular patrol.

During the term of Mayor M.J. Sloan, Flowers was appointed police chief, succeeding Chief William Griffin. He married his wife, Hannah Flowers-Hamilton, in 1890 and she died a few months prior to his accident. A son, Harold Flowers, survived them. He was serving in the United States Army in France during World War I at the time of his father’s death.

Flowers’ name was placed on the Ohio Fallen Officers Memorial Wall in London, Ohio, on May 1, 2008, and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., on April 21, 2009 (Panel 10, E-26).