Dear Vance: Is it true that years ago someone committed suicide by leaping from the top floor of the Sterick Building? — j.b., memphis.
courtesy benjamin l. hooks central library
DEAR J.B.: No, that’s not true. Or if it is, I’ve never come across any account of such a tragic event, and something like that — especially when downtown’s tallest building was considered “The Showplace of the South” — would have certainly made the news.
It’s possible, though, that you have confused the Sterick Building with another downtown structure, because back in 1941, just two weeks before Christmas, a woman indeed tumbled to her death from the eighth floor of the Medical Arts Building (today the Hickman Building). But whether she did it on purpose, or it was an accident — well, that’s something that even the experts could never decide.
The victim’s name was Thelma Louise Lloyd, and she came from a fairly well-known Memphis family. Her father had recently retired from his real estate and construction firm. Her brother, L.N. “Bobby” Lloyd, was the assistant trust officer at Union Planters National Bank and had made a name for himself as the star quarterback for Southwestern (now Rhodes College) back in the day when that school was known as a football power. He later served as an official with the Southeastern Conference.
Lloyd herself had been born in 1902 in Pembroke, Kentucky, but had moved to Memphis with her family when she was a child. She lived with her parents in a cozy bungalow at 2254 Monroe, and after graduating from Central High School here, she attended Ward-Belmont College in Nashville and Tennessee State College in Murfreesboro.
I’m not sure if she earned a degree from either school. My knowledge of this woman comes entirely from old newspaper clippings, which claimed she was “well-known in the interior decorating field” and for a while had worked at the Marshall Field Company in Chicago. In the late 1930s, she returned to Memphis and took a job as an interior decorator with Seabrook Paint Company, located downtown at 52 South Second.
She was popular, had many friends, served on the social committee of the Nineteenth Century Club, and “had been identified with other social groups.”
So what happened on the morning of December 9, 1941? Although her brother admitted she had been in ill health for several months, he didn’t tell reporters what, exactly, was wrong with her. Even so, he said she was “apparently in good spirits.”
Lloyd was seen catching the bus that would take her to work downtown, but instead of heading to Seabrook, witnesses recalled her stepping off the bus and walking directly to the Medical Arts Building, several blocks away at the corner of Madison and Fourth. There she took the elevator to the top floor, and the elevator operator told police she “went directly to the restroom from his elevator. She did not seem nervous or excited.”
The time was approximately 11:40 a.m. Newspaper accounts vary on what happened next. The Commercial Appeal claimed that “apparently nobody saw the plunge” but a Press-Scimitar story reported that Lt. Wilbur Miller of the Memphis Police Department said that “two men whose identity he had not learned had seen her falling.” Does that really matter? Minutes later, downtown workers came across her “crumpled body” in the alley behind the Medical Arts Building. Lloyd was rushed to St. Joseph Hospital by ambulance, unconscious, but died within a half hour.
Police were baffled. The woman’s purse was found on the washstand in the bathroom, but there was no suicide note and nothing to suggest she had planned such a thing. In those days before air-conditioning was common, many office buildings had windows that opened. Police admitted it was possible that Lloyd had rested against the windowsill and then fallen backward out the window. That’s too terrible to think about.
The Commercial Appeal concluded that the death was “apparently a suicide,” but the medical examiner was not convinced. On the young woman’s death certificate, he noted “injuries received from fall” but in the space for the cause of death — accident, suicide, or homicide — he didn’t check any of those boxes, but instead typed, “undetermined.”
None of this made sense. What was she doing on the top floor of the Medical Arts Building? Did somebody really place a bench in front of an open window? Why was her purse left behind? Thelma Lloyd was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery. She carried the answers to those questions to the grave.
Yes, I realize this sad topic may depress some readers. It depresses me. But let’s face it; not all of our city’s “history mysteries” are entirely happy ones.
Got a question for Vance? Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
