1997 — July 29, Dump Truck Hits Pickup Truck, Albion, Concord Township, MI — 11

—  11  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  FARS 1975-2010 Fatality Analysis.

—  11  New York Times.  “In Michigan, Many Rally to Pay for Burials.” 8-4-1997.

 

Narrative Information

 

July 30: “Concord Township, Mich. – A dump truck pulling a bulldozer collided with a pickup truck at an intersection in south-central Michigan on Tuesday, killing 10 people, including eight children in the pickup.  Three other children in the pickup were critically injured.  The driver of the dump truck was not hurt.  All the children involved appeared to be under 10.  The survivors were flown by helicopter to the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.  Three boys, aged 6 months, 3 and 5, were listed in critical condition.” (Altoona Mirror (PA).  “Michigan Collision Leaves 10 Dead,” July 30, 1997, p. 4., col. 1.)

 

Aug 4, NYT: “Elaine Marie Jackson will be buried on Tuesday, her 25th birthday, in the same coffin as her 3-year-old son, Jeremiah. Her 8-year-old twins, Luke and Isaiah, will share another coffin. Beside them, in two more coffins, will be her daughter Sierra, 6, and her 9-year-old son, Terry Lee Jr.  That is the way it will be, Terry Lee Jackson Sr. said, his voice soft and thinned by pain, because, even with the whole town pitching in, he does not believe he will be able to pay for his wife and their five children to each be buried on their own.

 

“After all, there are others to be tended to in this southern Michigan town of 10,200, with its trim main street and its small college, its railroad tracks and its old iron foundries, not all of them still up and running and belching out their pungent plumes.

 

“Another mother and her children must be buried: Letechia Scott, only 19, and her sons Terrance, 3, and Terron, 2. And there are the boys’ cousins, 10-year-old Ashley Orange and 5-year-old Edward Orange.

 

“The two mothers and 11 children were riding in a pickup truck last Tuesday, coming back from a hot summer afternoon of swimming at Swains Lake.  Eight of the children were in the back of the GMC pickup, under a fiberglass shell.

 

“Mrs. Jackson, the driver, ran a stop sign on a dirt road, Schultz Road, the police said. A dump truck heading south on paved Bath Mills Road rammed into the pickup truck, spinning it around and flattening it before careering off the road into a cornfield.  The two women and eight children died instantly; a ninth child died at the hospital. Two others, DeAndre Scott, Letechia Scott’s 8-month-old baby, and Adam Orange, 9, Mrs. Scott’s cousin, are still hospitalized in critical condition.

 

“As far as the police can recall, the accident was the deadliest in Michigan history. It has state legislators debating whether to outlaw riding in the back of a pickup, as one state, New Jersey, has done.

 

“More trenchantly, it has seared this working-class community, which is poorer than 90 percent of the towns in the state. Most people in town know a Jackson, a Scott or an Orange, family names that have been familiar for generations in the streets of the town and the fields around it.

 

“A lot of people also know the dump truck driver, Joseph H. Caldwell, 27, who works for his father’s small trucking company and was the only person not injured in the crash.  Mr. Caldwell, who has a good driving record, is a volunteer firefighter who always worked and never caroused, friends said, and stayed at the crash site for hours helping to find the bodies of the children.  He is so devastated he can barely talk about the accident, friends said, though he has paid visits to at least one of the victims’ families.

 

“”I saw him down at Frosty Dan’s getting a chili dog, and he seemed kind of within himself,” said Jason Shultz, a former high school classmate. ”He’s one of the better people, I guess, around here. He doesn’t deserve this, really.”

 

“Unfathomable events have the poignant, and sometimes awkward, effect of intermingling lives that do not often touch.  And so in Albion, coffee cans and cottage cheese tubs have been turned into collection baskets, the Kmart has donated funeral clothes for the victims, and on Saturday, the Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge drew almost 400 people for a spaghetti dinner with bands playing and an auctioneer taking bids for power saws and tote bags. It was $3 a person to get in, but lots of people paid more.

 

“This is significant in Albion because the Jacksons, Scotts and Oranges are very poor families, and their hard-luck lives left them struggling on the fringes of the community.

 

“Mrs. Scott, who had her first child when she was 16, got a job six months ago as a waitress at the Big Boy, a kind of a cross between a Denny’s and a 1950’s drive-in. Her husband, Terron Scott, 21, is in prison on a drug charge. Family members say he will be allowed out to attend the funeral.

 

“Mrs. Jackson was driving on Tuesday with a suspended license because of unpaid tickets for speeding and failing to yield the right of way.  She and Mr. Jackson have been together since she was 15, when they had their first child.  Mr. Jackson, 33, known as Fox, worked as a welder in a foundry for a time, but later went to a rehabilitation center for a drug problem, he said.  He got out of the center three years ago, and had not been working much since then, but said he knew he needed to look for work.  Meanwhile, the family got by on welfare.

 

“The families also stand out in Albion, residents say, because the women in the crash were white and their husbands are black.  Because of this, some people in town were surprised that the Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge, whose members are mostly white, was holding the fund-raiser. ”These kids were half-and-half, but it doesn’t matter,” said Charlotte Gibson, the Eagles bartender, who organized the event. ”Everybody can relate to losing kids.”

 

“They know it is overwhelming for Letechia Scott’s mother, Linda Orange, who shuttles the 45 miles to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, holding a vigil for her grandson and her nephew. ”That is what keeps me going,” she said. ”Waiting for them babies to come home.”

 

“And they know that the Jacksons lost their sixth child, 4-year-old Tyree, two months ago, when he was killed by a neighbor’s car while playing in the street. Then, some elementary school classes had pitched in so Tyree’s brothers and sister would have clothes to wear to his funeral.

 

“”Me and Elaine was always talking, even before Tyree died, how we’d like to have us a nice house, you know, with a fence around so the kids could play in the back,” Mr. Jackson said, his gaze frozen, his voice flat. ”I might not been perfect, but I loved my family”.”  (New York Times.  “In Michigan, Many Rally to Pay for Burials.” 8-4-1997.)

 

Sources

 

Altoona Mirror, PA. “Michigan Collision Leaves 10 Dead,” July 30, 1997, p. 4., col. 1. Accessed at: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FullPagePdfViewer.aspx?img=70183826

 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Partial Data Dump of Crashes Involving 10 or More Fatalities, by Year, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) 1975-2009 Final and 2010 ARF. Washington, DC: NHTSA, pdf file provided to Wayne Blanchard, 1-26-2012.

 

New York Times. “In Michigan, Many Rally to Pay for Burials.” 8-4-1997. Accessed at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/04/us/in-michigan-many-rally-to-pay-for-burials.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm