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| SMITH HILL Red = Martha & Ben Smith // Aqua = Fay, Trey, & Benjamin Smith // Red = Jean Mason // Yellow = Jay |
On May 12, the day before Mother's Day, 1990, I was washing my hair in the kitchen sink. I had all the windows open because it was hot. Benjamin was playing somewhere. There was an airport just north of us on the Oklahoma side and the Altus AFB was close as well, so we often heard plane noises, as well as trains. I heard what sounded like a jet engine, very loud, not normal at all. I shut off the faucet and listened and it was a horrible metallic screeching noise. I ran to the back door which faced north because I thought a plane was crashing, but there was nothing.
I then ran to the front door and I saw a train moving slowly along the track. I could only see the top half of he locomotive because the track dipped down after the crossing so it would be able to go under Hwy 287 a little further down. There was what appeared to be a huge cloud of smoke above it. I couldn't imagine what was going on, but I had a bad feeling. I towel dried my hair and got Benjamin and we set off on foot down to the crossing. By the time I got there, the train was stopped and was blocking the crossing. There were several cars on the other side and there were emergency vehicles there as well, one in particular on the bluff above where the engine was. As I got closer and came around the bend, I saw something lying on the ground near the track. It was a little boy.
I picked up Benjamin and turned him away. It was a little boy about Benjamin's size, wearing blue jeans, and a white shirt with a brown belt. He was lying face down in the dirt. Benjamin saw him, though, and kept asking me, "Why is he lying there Mommy? Why is he lying there?" By this time, I had a sense of what had happened. I told Benjamin that the little boy was taking a nap because it was hot. Benjamin, bless him, kept asking more questions, "Why is he in the dirt?"
I walked further down the track and saw my worst nightmare. There was a car in front of the locomotive. At that point, a police officer called over to me to stop and not go any further, so I walked back to the crossing. My head was buzzing. I kept looking at that little boy. He didn't seem real.
Suddenly, I saw Trey looking through the railroad cars at me and waving and yelling. I walked closer to the train and a police officer push him aside and asked me if I was okay and if I had seen what happened. I told him that yes we were okay and no I didn't see what happened, but I heard it. He said they would come talk to me later.
I was able to talk to Trey and apparently, there was something on the radio about a train hitting a car at the Harrison Street crossing, that there was a small boy killed, and that it was a brown car. One of Martha's friends heard it and immediately called Martha, who was in Colorado with Ben at the time. Martha called Trey at his shop and told him to get home. We lived on Harrison Street, I had a brown car, and Benjamin was a small boy. Obviously, Martha and Ben were frantic. Eventually, I passed Benjamin between the cars and Trey took him to the shop. I wanted him away from the scene.
I sat on the ground and stayed near the little boy. Someone called to me and handed me a blanket through the cars and asked me to cover him up. I didn't even know his name, but I couldn't help picturing that being Benjamin.
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| Car (red) and Train (black) on Track |
After some time, the engineer uncoupled the cars so the crossing was open, and I was able to drive across. I went to the hospital, which was very close by. As I pulled up, a medical helicopter was just taking off. Someone said it was the bigger boy who had severe head injuries. I asked if they knew who the people were and they wouldn't say.
I went home after that. I was terribly shaken. I think I was still in shock. I stopped at the bluff and looked down. The train was still there, of course. But so was the car. It was mangled so badly that it was almost unrecognizable. There was just one part that wasn't, the back seat behind the driver. I crossed over the track. I wanted to walk down the track, but there were police guarding it so I went home. I just kept walking around aimlessly. I thought I knew who had been in the car, but I wasn't sure. I kept seeing that little boy lying there, with those clean blue jeans and that clean white shirt, face down in that red dirt.
Eventually, we found out who was in that car. This is what happened.
The driver was Janna Hardage, who was a local school teacher. She had gone to the Masons' house to pick up Tiffany to take her to a school concert. In the car with her were were her 2 sons, Colby and Connor. Tiffany's sister Tammy and her mother Jean had already left for the concert. Janna picked up Tiffany and they crossed the track on their way to the school. Then Tiffany realized she had forgotten her purse and begged Janna to go back and get it, as they were still very close to the Mason house. Janna was not happy about it, but she turned around and drove quickly back. She looked both ways at the crossing (per her statement) and the next thing she knew, there was a terrible impact and the car starting moving sideways. When she looked back to see if Connor was okay, she realized he was gone! The car seat was there but he was gone. His window had been open because it was so hot. She looked for her son Colby and saw him lying on the back seat. Tiffany, in the passenger seat, looked unhurt but was not moving. Janna herself didn't appear to be hurt. She said that when the car stopped moving, she tried to get her door open to go look for Connor, but she couldn't. She couldn't hear anything because of the screeching of the train pushing the car along the track. As soon as the train stopped, the engineer was able to gt her out of the car. By then, the first ambulance had arrived. It just happened to be at the hospital about 2 miles away, and they heard the noise. It was also called in by people working at Celanese, right beside the crossing.
The little boy on the track was Connor Hardage. He was ejected from his carseat on impact, and throw out through the window. He died of head trauma. The boy who was airlifted was Colby Hardage. He had severe head injuries. Apparently he was flown to Dallas, where they performed some experimental surgery on him, successfully I think. The person in the car was Tiffany, Benjamin's babysitter and our neighbor. At impact, her aorta ruptured and she basically bled to death in the car. She died before they could remove her from the car.
AFTERMATH
After I got home, I was in shock. I couldn't sit down. I couldn't do anything. I called Trey and fell apart. Trey called the police to see if anyone had notified John Mason in Lubbock that his daughter was dead. Apparently the Police Chief had done so and had told him that as long as he stayed out of trouble, they wouldn't pursue the arrest warrant they had for him, they would turn a blind eye at the funeral as well.
The next day, Mother's Day, John came to see us. I will never forget what it was like, seeing him standing in our yard, looking at the train, and crying. It was heart wrenching. We all cried a lot that day. It was while he was there that they moved the train.
I called in sick on Monday because I wanted to go to the funeral home to see Connor. In fact, I couldn't stay away. I went 3 or 4 times on Monday. On Tuesday I went back to work but all I did all day was draw diagrams of the crossing, where Connor had been lying, etc. Dr. Gilmore, the Director of the Research Center came and talked to me and said that if I wanted to take some time off, it would be fine. In fact, he recommended it. But I didn't want to. It would have made it even easier to obsess about it.
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| Example of Diagram Trying to Make Sense of It |
One day that week, I was interviewed by the police. I showed them where I had been washing my hair, where we had walked down to the track, etc. They kept asking me if I had heard the train whistle. I had to tell them I couldn't remember. When you hear it so often, you tend to block it out. Plus, I was washing my hair at the time. I just couldn't give them a yes or a no. It wasn't until I had gone over it in my mind probably hundreds of time that I realized that I hadn't heard Critter howling, which would definitely had been audible even with the water running. If Critter didn't howl, did that mean the whistle didn't blow? It was important because there was a wrongful death lawsuit against Burlington Northern in the works. I had to write a detailed statement.
The day after the accident, as I was coming home from town, I saw piles of flowers at the mailboxes at the crossing. Every day, people came and left flowers. They sometimes parked by the crossing. Sometimes when I was combing the tracks, I would talk to them. I understood, because I have done that myself at scenes of tragedies. I just never expected to be living near one. I put a notice in the Vernon Daily Record thanking everyone for the flowers and promised as long as they kept coming, I would take care of them. After that, people started leaving flowers in vases and plants. Every day, Benjamin and I would walk to the mailbox with water and take care of them. It helped me, actually.
About a week after the accident, Benjamin starting having his Ugly Man nightmares. That's also when his friend Shelfis arrived (see separate posts).
I'd lie awake at night reconstructing the scene in my head, over and over. When Janna was driving around Celanese, did she hear a whistle and decide she had time to cross? She said she didn't hear a whistle. But were the kids chattering and she didn't notice it? Why would the engineer not blow it when he knew the train was a little hidden behind the Celanese buildings? My gut feeling was that he had blown it, but there was the Critter thing.... The people at Celanese had the same problem I did, they tended not to hear it anymore.
A few weeks later, Benjamin and I were walking up and down the track when a pickup parked by the mailboxes. A man got out and started walking toward us. it was Mike. He said he sometimes came and did the same thing I did, walk the track. He told me that Colby was recovering slowly but they were optimistic he could have a normal life. I told him about the 'memorial' I had of items I had recovered and asked if he wanted to see it. He said yes so we got in his pickup and went to the house. I told him to take anything he wanted. He found a keyring and took it; He said it had belonged to Colby. My heart went out to him.
Janna took a leave of absence from teaching for the 1990-91 school year. I found out later that she and Mike were divorced a few years after the accident. She had no visible scars but two children, one of them her own, had died in her car, and her other son was seriously injured. She has scars.
Later, I heard that the engineer of the train had previously been involved in a death through no fault of his own. After this happened, he retired. He was suffering from PTSD, not surprisingly.
About a year later, Benjamin and I went to an EMS demonstration and talked to one of the paramedics who had responded to the scene and who had worked on Tiffany. He said she was awake while they were working on her. He could tell she had a very short time to live unless they could get her to surgery but she was pinned in the car. He said they all knew she wasn't going to make it, and all they could do was reassure her. It was a painless death, he said she just went to sleep. He said it was so traumatizing that he took a 3-month leave of absence from EMS. I am eternally grateful that she didn't know she was dying and that she wasn't in pain.
Every time I saw a Burlington Northern train for years after that, I checked the number on the locomotive, just in case. It was burned into my brain. It actually did go by a couple of times and it gave me a chill.
We moved to Denver about 5 months later, in October 1990. I kept looking at trains, but never saw that locomotive again.
About 18 months after the accident, I was interviewed over the phone by a lawyer involved in the lawsuit. I also had to send them a written statement (see below).
This is my opinion of what happened. Janna left the Mason house after picking up Tiffany. She turned around in the Celanese parking lot after Tiffany said she forgot her purse. Because there was arguing in the car about being late for the concert, Janna probably didn't think much about a train coming. She wasn't used to the crossing like we were. She left the parking lot driving as fast as she could and didn't look down the track like we always did, as she wasn't really tuned in to it the way we Smith Hill residents were, plus she was distracted. She starting to cross the tracks at the same time the engineer realized she was there. He probably didn't see her until she was almost at the crossing because of the Celanese buildings. By the time he hit the brakes, it was too late to make any difference. A train going 30 mph takes a long time to stop. Whose fault was it? I don't think Burlington Northern and the engineer were at fault unless he did not blow his whistle. Obviously, the driver was at fault for not stopping at the crossing and looking.
I found out later that the suit had been settled, with Burlington Northern accepting 25% responsibility and Janna being held 75% responsible. That fits with what I think happened.
I still look at trains, even though I can't remember the numbers. I think I forgot it on purpose. But I always stop at every rail crossing.
Ironically, the train track is even closer to me than it was in Vernon, and I have 2 crossings nearby. Instead of upsetting me, it comforts me in a way. I always stop at every crossing and look both ways. If anything, I am over cautious. But I have reason to be.
I also stopped celebrating Mothers Day. I told Benjamin that if he wants to send a card or something to me, that's fine. But for me, it just brings back very traumatic memories of John Mason crying over his daughter, and the screech of that car being pushed down the tracks.
