Tragedy almost struck the Springsteens of Freehold a second time on a September day in 1933.

But a young Douglas Springsteen, later to become father of Bruce Springsteen, was lucky that day. He escaped serious harm when he was hit by a car on West Main Street in Freehold, according to a recently uncovered 85-year-old article from the former Freehold Transcript.

The accident happened six years after his sister, Virginia Springsteen, was killed when her tricycle was run over by a truck on a Freehold street in 1927.

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“Douglass (sic) Springsteen, nine years old, of 87 Randolph Street, narrowly escaped serious injury or even death at 7:15 Friday evening when he ran into the side of a car driven by Albert Emmons of 41 McLean Street and was knocked down,’ states the article from the Sept. 29, 1933 edition of the Freehold Transcript. “Examined at the office of Dr. Frank Niemtzow, it was discovered that Douglass (sic) had suffered nothing more than a bump on his head and a severe shaking up.”

Douglas was with his grandmother and Bruce’s great-grandmother, Mrs. “Nana” McNicholas, at the time. They were going to the movies.

“Emmons, feeling a thud, stopped and found the boy lying on the pavement and took him to the doctor’s office,” says the article, uncovered recently by Carl Beams when he was researching info for the upcoming centennials of the Freehold American Legion and Freehold Borough separating from Freehold Township.

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Virginia was five when she was killed on her tricycle by a truck backing out of a gas station on Mclean Street.

“They almost lost him,” said Freehold historian Kevin Coyne of the Douglas accident, which he noted that he was not previously aware of. “They had already lost their daughter five, six years before and then they almost lost their only remaining child. Can you imagine that women’s heart when they told his mother he was hit by a car. I’m amazed she survived the news.”

Alice Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen’s grandmother, spent two years in bed after the death of little Virginia, according to “Born to Run.”

“We live here beneath the lingering eyes of my father’s older sister, my aunt Virginia, dead at five, killed by a truck while riding her tricycle past the corner gas station,” Springsteen writes in “Born to Run.” “Her portrait hovers, breathing a ghostly air into the room and shining her ill-fated destiny over our family gatherings.

“Hers is a sepia-toned formal portrait of a little girl in an old-fashioned child’s white linen dress. Her seemingly benign gaze, in light of events, now communicates, ‘Watch out! The world is a dangerous and unforgiving place that will knock your ass off your tricycle and into the dead black unknown and only these poor, misguided and unfortunate souls will miss you.’“

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Her loss affected the family for generations.

“For my grandmother, I was the firstborn child of her only son and the first baby in the house since the death of her daughter,” said Springsteen in “Born to Run.” “My birth returned to her a life of purpose. She seized on me with a vengeance. Her mission became my ultimate protection from the world within and without. Sadly, her blind single-minded devotion would lead to hard feelings with my father and enormous family confusion.”

Much of that “family confusion” is laid out each night in “Springsteen on Broadway.”

The 9-year-old Douglas Springsteen escaping serious injury in 1933 shows the mercurial nature of life. Had tragedy struck the Springsteens of Freehold a second time that day, their world, and ours, would have been quite different. Bruce Springsteen turns 69 on Sunday, Sept. 23.

Fate may be at play at the very moment you read this, in ways that may remain undivined. What fate can’t alter is the belief that each day, and each birthday, is precious.

Chris Jordan: cjordan@app.com. Twitter: @chrisfhjordan