(The following story by Josh Kleinbaum of the Glendale News-Press and Leader appeared on the Los Angeles Times website on Febraury 1.)
GLENDALE, Calif. — When Thomas Ormiston brought his BMW 320i into Walter Asatourian’s car repair shop in Glendale, the two often discussed Ormiston’s railroad life.
Asatourian would ask the Metrolink conductor about the possibility of a train crash, especially after reading about wrecks in the newspaper.
Asatourian couldn’t ask his friend about the most recent train crash. Instead, he took time off work Monday to pay his respects.
“He says, ‘Accidents will happen,'” Asatourian said. “I said, ‘Aren’t you worried?’ He’d say, ‘No, it’s OK.'”
Ormiston, who lived in Glendale on and off for the past 20 years and worked on trains since 1972, died Wednesday in a three-train wreck that began when a commuter train hit an SUV parked on the track by a suicidal man, police said. Ormiston was the conductor on Metrolink 901. He was 58.
The wreck killed 11 and injured nearly 200 people. Juan Manuel Alvarez, the 25-year-old driver of the car, is facing 11 counts of murder.
About 450 people, many of them in the railroad industry, gathered at Forest Lawn’s Church of the Recessional in Glendale Monday to say goodbye to Ormiston at a memorial service. He will be buried at Sunnyvale Cemetery in his home town of Oklahoma City.
Friends and family members reminisced about Ormiston at the hour-long service, talking about his ornate knife collection, his love of the banjo, his water fights with his six grandchildren and his years on the railroad.
“There was an affinity that not just employees had for Tom, but passengers, too,” Metrolink Chief Executive David Solow said. “There may be better words, more profound words, but I think the passengers said it the best: Tom was our friend, and we’re going to miss him.”
Throughout the memorial service, railroad-themed banjo music interspersed the eulogies. Ormiston worked for Southern Pacific, Amtrak and Metrolink, and officials and co-workers from all three companies gathered Monday. With the church packed, about 150 people stood in the courtyard outside the church, listening to the eulogies on loudspeakers.
The Rev. Leon Frost read a poem titled “America Revisited,” which Ormiston wrote. Frost ended the service by reading letters from Ormiston’s six grandchildren, who called him Papa Tom.
“I’m sad that you are dead,” Frost read, “because the guy parked on the track.”