Category: Memorial Corner
Local 1241 member passes from COVID-19
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 [...]
Local 1397 member killed in on-the-job accident
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 [...]
Former GC Hiatt passes away
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 [...]
Local 18 member passes from COVID
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 [...]
SMART-TD mourns the passing of Edward J. Carney
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 [...]Two members lost in accidents
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 [...]Retired GC Gary Babiarz passes away
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. [...]Retired UTU vice presidents Patsouras, Easley and Pearl pass away
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 [...]