Mother’s Day Massacre

Is this really true?

My mother 16 years old (1941)

One of my earliest memories of my mom is riding a train that caught fire. I was four years old, and my brother, Randy, was six. It was Christmas Eve, and my mother, Leila Thompson, the younger of one sister and farmer parents was taking us to her rural hometown in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, across the Allegheny Mountains from Pittsburgh. Coming down the mountain, the brakes on the train burned out. Thick…