Norman “Norm” Patterson Jr., 52, of Lubbock, Texas, vice local chairperson of LCA-020 and a member of Local 9 (Slaton, Texas), passed away Jan. 5 after a battle with cancer. A member of our union since 2006, Brother Patterson was a conductor for BNSF, and he had s [...]
Our union lost another member late last month in an accident. Tyrone Davis, 40, of Local 584 (Meridian, Miss.), passed away the morning of Dec. 23 in Tupelo, Miss., after an on-the-job accident. Known as “Mr. T” by co-workers, he had been a SMART-TD member since A [...]
Brother Miguel “Mike” Gaitan, 64, an active SMART Transportation Division member out of Local 1241 (Richmond, Calif.), passed away Friday, December 11, 2020, from COVID-19. An engineer with BNSF, he joined our union in February 1995. “Fellow employees state [...]
Brother Paul M. Payne of Mount Vernon, Ohio, a member of Local 1397 in Columbus, and a father to five children, lost his life in an accident the morning of Nov. 22 at the CSX yard in Fostoria, Ohio. Brother Payne, a conductor for eight years, was at work setting out a cut of [...]
David Eldon Hiatt, a retired general chairperson of GO 377 (Canadian National/Grand Trunk Western), passed away November 11, 2020. He was 73 years old. “I looked up to Brother Hiatt, he was what I strived to be like once I became a union officer,” said current GO [...]
Our union is in mourning after losing Jose “Joe” Alfaro, a member of SMART Transportation Division for more than 15 years, to the COVID-19 pandemic on Nov. 13. He was 58 years old. Brother Alfaro was a member of Local 18 in El Paso, Texas, and worked as a trainman/brakeman fo [...]
Edward J. Carney, 87, of Ft. Wadsworth, Staten Island, N.Y., died suddenly Saturday, Nov. 7. Carney began his railroading career on the Staten Island Railroad, a subsidiary of the B&O Railroad, in June 1955. Over the course of his 40 years of railroad employment, he worke [...]
Our union is in mourning after losing two of its active members this week: one in a work-related fatality and one in a traffic accident. Ryan Sandy, 37, a member of Local 662 (Richmond, Va.) and a former local chairperson of LCA-201C, was killed in an on-the-job accident at 2 [...]
Gary F. Babiarz, a member of SMART Transportation Division for more than 45 years and retired general chairperson of GCA-449 (Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad, passed away Sept. 23, 2020, at age 66. Brother Babiarz joined the union in January 1974 and was a GC from 2015 to 2019. [...]
The union has received notification in recent weeks of the deaths of three former vice presidents of the United Transportation Union. Five-term UTU Vice President Peter Patsouras passed away on Thursday, Sept. 10. He was 76 years old. Joining the union in August 1965, he was [...]