Daily Record from Morristown, New Jersey • 17

Daily Record, Morris County, N.J., Sunday, January 28, 2001 A17 The train was known as The Broker because it carried so many Central New Jersey residents to and from the Wall Street 'The Broker' train accident stirs emotions iv nTT- that went down the embankment. There was so much dirt and dust, I thought the train was on fire. Two of my husband's friends came to help me, and we had to climb over bodies to get out." Dwyer remembers ambulances coming to the scene, and "gawkers" from the town. She recalls being brought to a bar by her husband's friends. "I was only old enough to drink beer.

They said 'You need a I'd never had a shot of whiskey before that." She hitchhiked home, where her family was waiting with a parish priest. Calling home was virtually impossible, at a time when calls from Woodbridge still went through an operator. I til 7 '1 GANNETT NEW JERSEY This Feb. 6, 1951, aerial photograph shows the immediate aftermath of the desvastating train crash in Woodbridge that killed 85 people. That night a family doc 50th anniversary to be marked by commemorative service at 'first aid' station church BY BY RICK MALWITZ GANNETT NEW JERSEY The next day would be her birthday, so rather than take an earlier train home with her father, Pearl Goldsmith lingered at her job in New York City, waiting for her fiance, Jerry Sullinger, to call about birthday plans.

"It was his fault I took that train," said Pearl, who can now smile when she tells the story. That train, a steam-powered Pennsylvania Railroad commuter train known as "The Broker," crashed Feb. 6, 1951, on a temporary trestle in Wood-bridge, killing 85 and injuring about 500, including Goldsmith, now Sullinger, who visited the Fulton Street crash site last week with her husband Jerry for the first time since the accident. To mark the 50th anniversary there will be a memorial service next Sunday at the United Methodist Church on Main Street, which was used as a first aid station the night of the crash. The service, said the Rev.

David Houston, "is to remember those who lost their lives, and recall the fine people who helped others. That night human nature became its best." Plaque planned NJ Transit, which has used the tracks since 1983, plans to put a plaque on a brick pedestal at the Woodbridge train station. It will read: "In memory of the 85 people who perished on Feb. 6, 1951 when a commuter train derailed 300 feet south of this station, and in recognition of those who came to the aid of the injured." "Hundreds and hundreds of people were affected by this," said Dr. Ralph Scaccia of Little Silver, who was 16 when he heard his father's name as a list of the dead was read on television that night.

"They mispronounced his name, that was our only hope. But we knew it was him." Later that night a police officer came to the door to confirm the news, and three of his cousins returned from Woodbridge, having identified the body at a make-shift morgue. Memories linger "I still remember it like it was yesterday," said Pearl Sullinger. "The train was extra crowded," she recalled. "Everything was going along fine.

I was sitting with friends from my block (in Spotswood) when all of a sudden the train was rocking. My feet flew in the air, my shoes flew off. "When I woke up, dead people were lying on top of me. Blood was all over me. My collarbone was broken, my left arm was broken.

There was so much smoke in the air I thought the train was going to catch on fire. I climbed through a window and sat down in the mud. A man from the neighborhood brought me into his house and took me to Perth Amboy hospital." She also recalled how a man regained consciousness while surrounded by warm steam. "He thought he'd died and went to heaven." Elene Dwyer of Long Branch also worked with her father, who owned a printing business in New York City. "He was sick that day.

I was in the car tor gave her a shot to settle her nerves. "The next day I went to work on the train. My dad said I had to get back on the horse. It was very upsetting. In those days there was no kind of counseling," said Dwyer.

"The only counseling you had was your family," said Scaccia. George Dowden of Livingston was commuting from his job in Newark to his home in Ocean Grove. His wife Ruth heard about the accident when her mother called from Detroit. "All she said was, 'Turn on the said Ruth, who recalled CBS news anchor Douglas Edwards talking about an accident in Woodbridge. She recalled having to tell her daughters, then 5 and 3, their father was in a bad accident.

Barbara, their 5-year-old, was concerned about "daddy's new Bible, which he'd brought to work that day." At about 11 p.m., George called from a hospital to say he was OK. He suffered leg injuries, but no bones were broken. A crowded train The train was known as The Broker because it carried so many Central New Jersey residents to and from the Wall Street area. It had an unusual number of people on it because union members of the Jersey Central, a train that ran on tracks nearly parallel to the Pennsylvania Railroad line, had conducted a "sickness strike." It was also the first day the trestle was used; it had been built to provide a temporary detour while the line was being upgraded during construction of the New Jersey Turnpike. Eight days before the crash, engineers were given notice that beginning 1:01 p.m.

Feb. 6 trains were to slow to 25 miles per hour through Wood-bridge. They normally traveled at 60 miles per hour. However, because steam-powered trains had no speedometer, it was up to the engineer to estimate the train's speed. Before the train left Jersey City, conductor John Bishop said to engineer Joseph Fitzsimmons, "Eleven cars and everything regular and don't forget your speed at Woodbridge." George Dowden recalled when the train passed the Woodbridge train station, "It was going its normal speed." An investigation by the Interstate Commerce Com mission (ICC) concluded Fitzsimmons did not slow down.

About one mile from Woodbridge, Bishop was alarmed at the train's speed. He tried to reach an emergency cord, but standing passengers were in his way. At 5:43 p.m. the train crashed. The engine made it over the temporary trestle.

Behind the engine was the tender car, with about 10,000 gallons of water, which provided water to the engine's boilers. It is believed the centrifugal force of the water shifting in the tender car caused the car to tip, dislodge from the engine and fall from the tracks. The first and second cars fell on their side, while the third and fourth cars crashed into each other. Most of the deaths occurred in these cars. At that moment, Helen Nagy Kele-man, then 11, was watching "Flash Gordon" on television in her Fulton Street living room.

When she heard the noise she went to the front window, screaming when she saw cars on their side. Her father thought she was reacting to something on television. That night Woodbridge Mayor Albert Grein-er used her family's telephone to provide live commentary for radio station WCTC. Sudden heroes Among the first to arrive at the scene was Frank LaPenta, now the head of the Historical Association of Woodbridge. When he arrived he saw the cars spilled along Fulton Street, but had no idea the gravity of the situation.

"There was an eerie silence. The only noise was the engine hissing. Then I noticed a dead body," LaPenta said. Joe Nagy was nursing a beer at Little Joe's Tavern on Second Street when several dazed and muddied passengers came into the bar. He remained at the scene until 2 o'clock the following afternoon.

He recalled how he grabbed the torso of a dead woman, only to discover her body had been torn in half. "I said, 'I gotta go John Fenick, at the time a Rutgers student, was driving from his home in ing places on the sidewalk, in the street, on the porches of the neat, one-family homes on Fulton Street." "The response of the people on Fulton Street was beautiful. They loaned us sheets for bandages, gave us hot water, Vaseline, whatever we needed," said Sister Mary Louise, who heard the sound of the at what is now the St. Joseph's Seniors Residence on Strawberry Hill. Don Karantz of Woodbridge, who lived several blocks from the scene, recalled seeing a pickup truck on Main Street, thinking its cargo were mannequins from Christensen's department store.

"Then I saw blood dripping and realized, 'My God, they're dead He recalled how the rear cars were on the tracks, as if nothing was wrong. "Walk up the street and it was Armageddon," said Karantz. Fred Houck of Point Pleasant, a passenger in the 11th and final car, walked away from the crash. During a routine physical four weeks later he learned he had suffered a fractured skull, according to his daughter, Helen Burke. Houck organized The Survival Club, which sought to promote rail safety and memorialize the dead.

On the first anniversary of the crash he requested the Pennsylvania Railroad halt The Broker to memorialize the event. The railroad refused. Houck nonetheless threw a floral wreath of 85 flowers off the moving train on Feb. 6, 1952. The following April the ICC concluded the accident was caused by "excessive speed on a curve of a temporary track." Manslaughter charges were brought against the railroad by Middlesex County Prosecutor Alexander Eber.

They were withdrawn when he estimated it would cost taxpayers $2.1 million to bring the case to trial. In an interview one year after the accident, Fitzsimmons told the New York World-Telegram and Sun, "Many nights I go to sleep crying. If I wasn't sure I wasn't to blame, I'd have been in Marlboro (the former state mental hospital) long ago. All those people dying! You can't ever get it out of your head. You can't get it out no matter how you try." Sewaren to Perth Amboy, where he tended bar.

He heard the township's emergency whistle, and followed a fire truck to the scene. Fenick, who later became a doctor and mayor of Carteret, recalled his most vivid memory was of a man trapped, crying for help. Fenick looked for a few men to help pry the victim loose. "I got back 10 minutes later and he was dead." One person inside the train described the confusion to the Perth Amboy Evening News: "People were clawing and punching each other to get clear of the wreckage. I saw one woman go down on the floor.

I think she was trampled to death." The United Methodist Church was used by the Red Cross and Salvation Army, and Bell Telephone installed six telephones at the church. A call was made to Camp Kilmer in Edison for army blankets and first-aid kits. Appeals on radio and television brought volunteer doctors from as far as Philadelphia. That afternoon Cathleen Mc-Corma-ck had completed her shift at Perth Amboy General Hospital when she heard the plea for volunteers. Nine months earlier the hospital had treated 194 people injured in a munitions explosion in South Amboy.

Not satisfied with its performance that night, it adopted a disaster plan. "We were very well organized that night," McCormack said. Survival Club Another factor aiding rescue was that many at the crash site were recent World War II veterans, many having been witness to the horrors of war and having the skills to administer basic first aid. One of the nephews who identified Frank Scaccia had been a prisoner of war, and another nephew had been assigned to a mortuary unit that identified war dead. Bob LaPenta, Frank's brother, had an army surplus ambulance modified for personal use.

That night he made several hospital runs. According to an account in the Perth Amboy Evening News: "The entire area became a make-shift morgue. Postured in attitudes of frozen horror, the bodies were provided temporary rest Pet health insurance an option for animal lovers to consider Plans can provide peace of mind yet experience also can be cumbersome BY NICOLE M0RELLA GANNETT NEW JERSEY For more information: Veterinary Pet Insurance: 800-USA-PETS, www.petinsur-ance.com Premier Pet Insurance: America's Most Wired Public University Now in its 5th year: Updated and NEW courses in the WebMaster Certificate Programs based in California, was founded in 1981 and insures about 200,000 animals, said Michelle Desai, marketing and public relations specialist. In the last 10, 20 years since we started people have been treating their animals as family members, she said. Veterinary Pet Insurance gets most of its clients from referrals, but now is working with veterinarians and placing magazine advertisements to spread the word about the option.

Even if you have a healthy pet you should still get the insurance, she said. You just never know what is going to happen. Veterinarian Bruce Levinston of Bridgewater Veterinary Hospital said he recommends pet insurance to his clients but only a small percentage use it. He said the more people that have pet insurance, the better care animals overall will receive. Year after year we expect it will become more the norm, he said.

After spending close to $5,000 on medical bills for her first standard white poodle, Lorraine Zdeb of Millstone invested in pet insurance. She said it was a good thing she did because her next standard white poodle had the same disease and Zdeb was able to get back half the money she spent. Zdeb now has five dogs and two cats and also runs a pet-sitting business. She recommends Website Design WebAuthor Dreamweaver 4.0 Flash 4.0 Photoshop 5.5 SMIL Multimedia Server Management A Certification Training Web Manager Windows 2000 Server Advanced Web Programming Advanced Sun Java ASP Expert Java Beans Java Perl Visual Basic Cisco CCfJ A Training Cisco Networking Cisco Routers It cost Bridgewater resident Lillian DeLazzari more than $2,000 to fix her dog's ruptured disc several years ago. Pappy, a white Samoyed, had trouble walking as he got older and until he died last year, DeLazzari was paying between $300 to $400 annually for his care.

It adds up to quite a bit of money, she said. It is almost more expensive to take a pet to a veterinarian than it is to take a person to a doctor. The rising cost of pet care has prompted many owners to look into pet insurance, said Tom Kurtz, president of Premier Pet Insurance. Vet costs have increased about 10 percent a year since 1986, he said. Even with this rise in coverage, of the more than 110 million pets in the United States only about 1 percent are insured, Kurtz said.

Very few people know that pet insurance exists, he said. DeLazzari said she had heard of pet insurance when Pappy's surgery came around, but it was new at the time. Veterinary Pet Insurance, pet insurance to all of her clients. I've been trying to get it (the word) out as much as possible, she said. Pet insurance is a way of giving the owner peace of mind about medical decisions, Zdeb said.

You don't have to terminate an animal's life because you can't afford to make it bettor, she said. But not everyone says pet insurance is a positive experience. Frank Stoudt, a veterinarian with Martinsville Animal Hospital, said some of his clients have tried the service but found the process cumbersome. It's not simple. I have had a couple people that have dropped it out of sheer frustration, he said.

Miniature schnauzer owner Bobbi Winters had problems even finding a company to cover her dog. She was told by companies that they would not cover the breed when she looked into it several years ago. Winters wound up paying $6,000 to $7,000 for her dog, which died of cancer last year. All courses ere available via instructor-led distance learning, or in Newark, Piscataway, Mt. Laurel, and Uncroft, N.J.

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