Buddy Lee Strieker, an officer of Local 219 (Hannibal, Mo.) for the vast majority of his 24-plus years with our union, died as a result of a switching accident on April 7 in Louisiana, Mo. He was 56 years old. Brother Strieker was vice local chairperson of LCA-001A and the se [...]
SMART Transportation Division Local 934 member Curtis A. Deines, 52, a member of our union for more than 20 years, died before dawn on the morning of March 19 after the SUV he was being transported in was involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle on U.S. Highway 2 [...]
A Local 1544 (Maywood, Calif.) member lost his life as a result of injuries while performing service early March 3. Brother Taj Ellis, 46, of Chino, Calif., was making a set-out in La Mirada Yard in Orange County, Calif., at 12:30 a.m. when he was fatally injured. He had been [...]
Angel Lomeli, a 14-year member of our union, passed away Jan. 5, 2021, from COVID-19. He was 48 years old. Brother Lomeli was a member of Local 1846 (West Colton, Calif.) and worked as a trainman for Union Pacific. “God gained the absolute best angel today, we miss you, [...]
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 [...]