The OPP would like to honour the memory of one its officers killed in the line of duty and is making a public appeal to track down his relatives.
Const. Willis J. Jacob was killed on Oct. 3, 1958 while on traffic patrol on Highway 11 at the old “Orillia bypass.” Jacob was just 34 when he died; his wife was expecting their first child at the time of the crash.
“We want to name a bridge after Const. Willis Jacob and we have exhausted every avenue available to us to track down his relatives,” said Sgt. Peter Leon, the OPP’s media relations coordinator for Central Region. “The veterans’ association is really the driving force behind this initiative but the OPP fully supports it.”
Leon said the plan is to rename the bridge near the accident – where Highway 11 meets Highway 12 near Forest Home – in memory of Jacob. “We’d love to be able to involve the family and to have them present when we do the tribute,” said Leon. “That would make it even more meaningful.”
Jacob joined the OPP in January of 1955 and worked at General Headquarters in Toronto, before moving on to serve in Alliston and Wasaga Beach. In 1957, while working at the Barrie detachment, he joined the OPP’s newly-formed traffic unit.
On the evening of Oct. 3, 1958, Jacob was on routine patrol on Highway 11, on the north-bound side. This particular stretch of road was a divided, four-lane highway to the north and an undivided two-lane highway to the south of the Orillia bypass.
Gravenhurst’s Stan Simpson was the driver of a vehicle, without its headlights activated, traveling southbound on the divided portion of the highway, when he lost control of his car and slammed into a road sign before crossing the undivided portion of the highway into the north-bound lane. The vehicle, dragging the sign, narrowly missed two vehicles before crashing head-on into Jacob’s OPP cruiser. Both drivers were killed instantly.
By all accounts, it was a horrific crash. A Toronto Star article described it this way: “According to witnesses, Simpson was driving without lights as (his car) swerved out of its lane. The broken highway direction sign was found near where Simpson’s car came to rest. The impact hurled both cars (to) opposite sides of the road. So badly demolished were they that rescue workers encountered considerable difficulty extracting the bodies. Police and onlookers said they had (never) seen two vehicles so completely destroyed. ‘They couldn’t have been worse damaged if a train had hit them,’ one onlooker said.”
According to The Star’s story, the location of the accident was dubbed a “death trap by police for several months. In crossing the Orillia bypass, the Trans-Canada highway is carried on an overhead bridge beneath which and for some distance to the north, the bypass is a four-lane highway. Just south of the overpass, it narrows in a two-lane highway and at this point of congestion, numerous less-serious accidents have occurred during the summer months.”
For Leon, learning details about the crash was a stark reminder of the dangers officers face. “Here was a guy doing his job, on routine traffic patrol, trying to keep other motorists safe and he lost his life,” said Leon. “His was the ultimate sacrifice. It’s a tragedy.”
He said naming the bridge in Jacob’s memory would be fitting. “You can plant a tree in someone’s memory and Mother Nature can destroy it,” Leon explained. “But a bridge is a permanent thing – it will likely be in place forever. Even if a bridge is replaced, the hope is a replacement bridge would continue to carry that dedication.”
Leon said Jacob’s widow gave birth to a boy, Willis Jacob Jr., several months after the crash. If anyone knows the whereabouts of the family’s relatives, contact Leon at 705-330-3713 or by email: [email protected]
