The Pittsburgh Press (January 11, 1941)
HIGH SCHOOL GIRL DIES AFTER LEADING CHEERS
New Wilmington, Pa., Jan. 11 –
17-year-old Mae Frew, peppy cheerleader for New Wilmington High School, jumped up from her bleacher seat and led the students in a rousing locomotive as the first quarter of a basketball game with Bessemer High School ended last night.
She dropped dead of a heart attack as the last echoes of the cheer were ringing through the gymnasium.
The crowd thought the girl merely had fainted. But after she was carried from the gym by her brother, Ernest, and others, she was pronounced dead by a physician in a nearby room.
School authorities tried to keep the news of her death from the spectators, but the report soon spread through the gym.
The result was one of the weirdest settings for a basketball game imaginable.
The last part of the game was played in utter silence, except for the sobbing of the girl classmates in the gallery. Many left before the end of the contest, which New Wilmington won, 46 to 28.
Mae, a junior herself, had played basketball as a member of the girls’ team before the high school abandoned that sport. She was more than six feet tall, and “healthy looking,” acquaintances said.
Her father, David P. Frew, is in the insurance business in New Castle. Another brother, Howard, is in an aviation school in Dallas, Tex.