Railroad’s dark day recalled at 50th anniversary

This story originally appeared in the Daily Herald on April 24, 1996.

By Lorilyn Rackl

Daily Herald Staff Writer

It was April 25, 1946.

A sergeant, with medals on his chest and a cast on his leg, was on the last stretch of his journey home to Nebraska after fighting a bloody battle in the South Pacific.

He took a seat on the train behind a young mother, who nestled her baby in her arms.

Shortly after leaving Chicago, the train stopped just east of the Naperville railroad station at Loomis Street so inspectors could check its undercarriage.

Grabbing his crutches, the soldier made his way to the front of the rail car to get a drink of water.

The drink probably saved his life.

At the same time, on the same track, Burlington’s Exposition Flyer rounded a corner and barreled toward the stopped train at 85 mph.

Although the signal was red, the oncoming train wasn’t able to stop in time. The locomotive shot halfway through the last car of the waiting train, which “telescoped” nearly half the length of the next car. The third car from the end of the stopped train flipped over. The fourth and fifth coaches derailed.

When it was over, 47 people were dead and more than 100 were injured in what remains one of the worst crashes in the history of railroads.

Fifty years later, the looks of terror shared by victims and bystanders, the screams and moans of the injured, and the bloody images of mangled bodies still haunt those who — almost a lifetime later — haven’t seen anything to match the horror of that April day.

‘Town went berserk’

At 10:15 a.m. Thursday, several of those who witnessed one of the darkest days in the city’s history will gather at the scene to lay a wreath and pay their respects on the 50th anniversary of the crash.

“I relive it every year,” said Calista Wehrli, a 20-year-old Marine at the time of the crash who was home for her sister’s wedding.

The bridesmaids were trying on dresses a block away from the scene when an explosive crash reverberated through the small town of nearly 5,000 people.

“I ran outside,” she said. “There were people screaming and yelling — trains up in the air. People came running from all over. The town went berserk.”

What followed were hours of chaos and cooperation.

People whose typical days consisted of working at the nearby furniture factory or going to school at North Central College suddenly found themselves hauling lifeless bodies out of the wreckage and passing stretchers over their heads to a makeshift first-aid station.

Located in front of the scene of the accident, the Kroehler Mfg. Co. was transformed into an ad hoc hospital, communications center and morgue.

Elmer Dagenais, vice president of manufacturing at Kroehler in 1946, remembers how he found out about the wreck.

“I felt the building shake,” Dagenais said. “I immediately got a call from the supervisor who said there’d been a horrible accident.”

Many of Kroehler’s 1,000 employees helped the city’s small police force and volunteer fire department load the injured into ambulances, where they were shuttled off to neighboring towns with hospitals.

Other victims rested on mattresses hauled over from the nearby college.

Neighbors opened their homes, preparing food and coffee for volunteers and survivors.

It seemed as though every resident in town flooded to the scene, witnesses said.

“It was solid people, as far as you could see,” Wehrli said. “We put a man on a stretcher, and we couldn’t get him from the train to the first-aid station. We yelled to everyone to pass the stretcher over their heads.

“I was swearing — I was so mad at them for not clearing a path. He was dead by the time they got him in there.”

‘Fast as I could’

The catastrophe drew residents from all over. Stores closed down. High school students sneaked out between subjects. Classes were canceled at the college.

“I was taking a midterm exam at North Central College,” said Floyd Thompson, who is organizing Thursday’s memorial service. “I started hearing the sirens and saw people running north. I couldn’t control myself. I told the professor, ‘I’ve lived in town all my life and the most exciting thing that ever happened was when my cat died.’ He let me go.

“I ran as fast as I could,” he said. “When I got there, it was an indescribable mess — trains piled all over, people hanging out windows. I couldn’t believe what had happened.”

Despite a stint in the Marines, Wehrli wasn’t prepared for the carnage she witnessed, either.

She was physically sick more than once, and had to leave for good when workers handed her a victim’s legs that were severed in the crash.

“It was horrible,” she said. “I was in blood and water and oil up to my ankles.”

Joe Weigand, a volunteer firefighter at the time, spent a grueling 16 hours at the accident site.

He remembers entering the train’s observation car.

“There were lots of people trapped in there,” Weigand said. “They were packed up to the ceiling.”

Wehrli accompanied a woman in an ambulance to a hospital in Aurora, where she checked up on the soldier whose leg had been broken again in the wreck.

He asked what had happened to the woman and child who had been sitting in front of him.

“They were crushed to death,” she said. “If he didn’t get up to get a drink of water, he wouldn’t have been there either.”

The soldier begged Wehrli to call his parents in Nebraska, who were sure to have heard of the crash, and let them know he was OK.

‘I had to pinch myself’

The massive wreck made headlines across the country.

Longtime Naperville resident Herb Matter, who was stationed in Germany at the time, remembers picking up an issue of the Stars and Stripes.

“There it was, on the front page: Naperville, Illinois. Scene of train wreck that kills 47,” Matter said. “I had to pinch myself.”

For a short time, at least, just about everyone in America knew of the small town of Naperville.

During a visit later that year to the White House with her fellow Marines, Wehrli was introduced to President Harry Truman.

“He asked where we were from. When he got to me, I said he wouldn’t know it, it was a little town outside of Chicago called Naperville.

“He snapped his fingers and said, ‘Naperville — we just had a horrible accident there.’”

Wehrli told him she had helped in the rescue effort.

“He said he wanted to shake my hand,” she said. “Out of all the Marines there, mine was the only hand he shook.”