The St. Louis Post-Dispatch today tells the tragic story George F. “Fred” Kiesel.
Kiesel lived in one of the rooms at the Wayside Motel, one of the few surviving vintage motels along old Route 66 in the suburb of Marlborough. The Wayside is across the road from the famed Coral Court Motel, which was torn down in 1995 to make way for nondescript housing.
His big hobby was the Wabash Frisco & Pacific Railroad Association, a group that built to-scale trains on a foot-wide track in Glencoe, Mo. He was one of its founders in 1939 and gave many volunteer hours to man the ticket booth. The group’s Web site has a tribute to Kiesel on its main page.
Kiesel was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver Sunday as he was walking near Watson Road. Kiesel apparently was heading to one of his favorite hangouts, a White Castle restaurant a few blocks away.
The driver is still at large.