Chilling memories time cannot erase
50 years later, Bayonne marks train disaster

Sunday, September 14, 2008
BY JUDY PEET
Star-Ledger Staff

Fifty years ago tomorrow, on a clear September morning, Central New Jersey railroad train No. 3314 out of Bay Head bound for Jersey City inexplicably hurtled off an open drawbridge into Newark Bay.

The first four cars plunged into the water just west of Bayonne. The fifth car, half of it submerged, dangled precariously over the edge of the bridge while the bay echoed with the screams of those trapped inside.

Forty-eight people died, including retired Yankees all-star George "Snuffy" Stirnweiss, an Allied Chemical director, the mayor of Shrewsbury, an Army secret courier and a 4-month-old baby named Paul.

Investigators never determined why train engineer Lloyd Wilburn, 63, blew past three warning lights, didn't see the center section was raised for a passing boat and never hit the brakes until the train was fewer than eight feet from the open draw.

It was and still is one of the worst train crashes in the history of the Northeast. It brought out the best and worst in rescue workers. It contributed to the financial ruination of many New Jersey and New York bookmakers and to the sudden expansion of the family of author Kurt Vonnegut.

Tomorrow, the Bayonne Historical Society will hold a memorial for the lives lost in the wreck of 3314, but for those who were in Newark Bay that day, the memories will never die.

Here are some of those stories.

The Freightman

George Barry wouldn't have even been on 3314 that morning in 1958 if his sister-in-law's breast milk hadn't turned sour.

Then age 32, he had worked for CNJ for nine years. A freightman works in the yard, moving cars. Normally Barry took a different train from his North Plainfield home to his job in Jersey City, but he had stayed overnight in Elizabeth to help his brother while his wife was in the hospital. Barry hopped the 3314 at 9:57 a.m. because, "it was the first train I saw when I got to the tracks in Elizabeth.

"We had only been going a couple of minutes. Suddenly we started bumping along like a car with a flat tire. I knew we de railed, but I didn't know why," said Barry, now 82.

Barry looked out and realized, horrified, that the drawbridge was open. His first instinct was to jump off the speeding train be cause, "when the drawbridge is open, a concrete counterweight drops across the tracks. A train hits concrete, it's accordion time."

He headed for the door, but it was blocked by people. He turned toward the back of the train and braced himself on the wall. Instead of a crash, the rear of car No. 932 started to rise as the front end slid into the bay with a splash. Water began rushing into the car, which was upright in the bay. Barry was underwater, pinned by bodies and running out of air.

"It was dark and people were drowning around me, but I had a wife, three kids and one on the way. I couldn't leave her alone. I pushed real hard and used the seat arms as a ladder. Suddenly my head broke free halfway up the carriage.

"I remember looking back at the people still in the water," said Barry, who escaped with a few cuts. "I wanted to go back and get them, but I didn't have enough strength. I think about that a lot."

The Passenger

On her way from Lavallette to visit friends for lunch in Manhattan that day, Alma Wulfson savored her first moment of freedom since she had given birth to her first child nine months earlier.

"Suddenly the train was wobbling. Everything fell off the overhead racks. People yelled and my world went black."

Wulfson woke up at the bottom of Newark Bay, choking and terrified. Her life flashed before her, not her past, "but the future where I would be dead, my husband would remarry and my daughter would call some other woman "mother." I think that made me so angry it gave me the strength to get to the surface," said Wulfson, now 81.

She surfaced to a bay stained red and littered with bodies.

"I remember how surprised I was that my clothes were gone; the water pressure that blew me out of the car ripped them off," said Wulfson, who emerged from the crash with only a bad knee. "Of about 30 people in that first passenger car, only myself and another guy survived. I wondered why for a while, but then went on with my life."

The Rescuer

Edwin Quinn was a teenage apprentice seaman when the call came into Coast Guard station on Staten Island that day.

"I wasn't even supposed to be there, but they needed every available pair of hands," said Quinn, now 70, who retired in 1998 as commanding officer of the Coast Guard Station at Sandy Hook. "I wanted to dive in to get people, but it would have been stupid, with the current and all the other boats around. It's just when your adrenaline gets pumping, and you keep thinking there might be one more person alive.

"I spent 41 years in the Coast Guard. I've been to disasters with FEMA, including Katrina. But that day in Newark Bay was the worst."

The Double Tragedy

James Adams usually took an earlier train, but he was late that day because his wife was in the hospital. He drowned, and two days later his wife Alice died of cancer, leaving their four sons orphaned.

The youngest, an infant, went to live with cousins. The three older boys were adopted by Alice Adam's brother, author Kurt Vonnegut, who already had three children of his own. In his novel "Slapstick," one of Vonnegut's characters is hospitalized and her family hides the fact that her husband drowned. She finds out when another patient gives her the newspaper account of a train wreck. She dies the next day.

The Bookies

Front-page news photos showed the car hanging from the bridge, its number clearly marked as 932. That same number hit the next day in the numbers racket at 600-to-1 odds, according to newspaper reports at the time. The loss to the metropolitan numbers bank was estimated at $50 million. Many fled to avoid paying.

The Boyles and the Bridge

The Boyle family first sacrificed to the Newark Bay railroad bridge in 1889. The boom of a schooner smashed into the bridge house, killing Michael Fin lay, Gregory Boyle's great-great grandfather.
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In 1958, Greg Boyle was a 17-year-old student at Marist High School in Bayonne whose father Francis was a local orthopedic doctor and assistant Hud son County medical examiner.

"I was driving to school when all the sirens in town went off at 10:01 a.m.," Boyle said. "That was the last I saw of my father for a week."

Francis Boyle rarely left the waterfront. He helped the injured and certified the dead, a job that became more difficult when some of the rescue volunteers pilfered money and identification from the victim's pockets.

He kept a massive file of photos, clips and letters about the wreck.

As the anniversary of the disaster approached, Greg Boyle, a retired teacher, offered to arrange a memorial collection for the Bayonne Historical Society.

He found details he'd forgotten or never known: Shrewsbury mayor John Hawkins was carrying $250,000 in negotiable bonds that were recovered from the train; Army courier John McClos key was allegedly carrying a top- secret missile guidance device that was never recovered, or at least nobody admitted it.

The oldest victim was William Riddle, 84. The youngest was in fant Paul Jurgelowicz, who died with his mother. Three of the sur vivors also had survived New Jersey's worst train disaster, the 1951 wreck that killed 84 in Woodbridge.

Reports from state and rail road investigators following the crash were notably incomplete. They said operator error probably caused the crash, but had no explanation why. Engineer Wil burn had high blood pressure but the autopsy said he died of drowning. Rumors that he had been drinking that morning were not addressed. Reports concluded the equipment worked so the engineer was likely at fault.

The counterweight on the bridge would have blocked the train from going into the water, but it was not down because the bridge wasn't all the way up. Even so, the train was going 42 mph, and hitting the counterweight would have been equally devastating.

Fifty years later, the cause hardly matters, Boyle said.

"The railroad is now NJ Transit and the bridge has been gone for 20 years, but in Bayonne, nobody ever forgot the day No. 3314 went into the drink," Boyle said.

There will be a memorial service 9:45 a.m. on the waterfront near where the bridge stood. It is now a walkway behind the A&P on Seventh Street and Avenue A. Boats will sound their horns at 10:01 a.m.

Maps and memorabilia related to the wreck will be on display at the Bayonne Pubic Library from noon to 6 p.m.. Another memorial at 6:30 p.m. in the library courtyard will be followed by discussions of the wreck and the rescue.

Judy Peet may be reached at jpeet@starledger.com or 973-392- 5983.