Wreath recalls Naperville train crash's 70th anniversary
It was 70 years ago when two trains collided on what's now known as the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad line in the then-small town of Naperville, killing 45 people.
The crash, though tragic, faded a bit from Naperville's collective memory until a sculpture dedicated two years ago by the public art nonprofit Century Walk Corp. brought it back to the forefront.
At 1 p.m. Monday, the anniversary of the crash, a handful of people gathered at the sculpture to reflect.
"I visit the crash site just about every April 25," said Naperville resident Jim Christen, a member of a committee that commissioned the 2014 sculpture by Naperville artist Paul Kuhn. "There seems to be people there all the time."
Christen, 81, visits the site because the crash always has intrigued him. As an 11-year-old in St. Louis, he saw a newspaper story about a crash along the same train line he and his family would take to Chicago. He clipped the story and built onto it with years of research, which eventually became "raw material" for author Chuck Spinner's 2012 book "The Tragedy at the Loomis Street Crossing."
The book tells the stories of the people who died, and the sculpture, called "Tragedy to Triumph," remembers the injured and deceased as well as those who came to their aid.
Sculpture committee members decided to lay a wreath at the sculpture Monday in honor of the crash's anniversary. While they gathered in the afternoon, Christen said they placed the wreath by the sculpture early in the morning so commuters could see it.