(The following story by Johnny Gunter appeared on The News Star website on January 22, 2009.)
MONROE, La. — Charles Roy Barnes Jr., burned by both fire and chemicals, lay in mortal pain at St. Francis Hospital and could think only of seeing his pregnant wife and 10-year-old son.
He asked his brother-in-law, Buddy Oglesbee, to make the trip to McGehee, Ark., to pick up Carolyn and David, but made him promise not to reveal how badly injured he was because she was expecting a baby at any time.
Barnes never got his wish. Although he was still alive when his wife and son arrived, he could no longer see because of the swelling.
Barnes was one of at least eight people who died when a railroad car exploded south of Monroe near Charmingdale 50 years ago this week.
The chain of events leading up to the explosion began about 11:15 p.m. Jan. 22, 1959, when 33 cars of a Missouri Pacific train derailed, caused by a “hot box.” A hot box occurs when a wheel ceases to receive lubrication and catches on fire. This hot box caused a wheel to fall off, causing the derailment.
The one car burned throughout the night, and firefighters drenched it during the day. Missouri Pacific sent in crews to help with the battle and to clear the tracks. Officials had a hard time keeping spectators back from the scene even though U.S. 165 was closed from traffic.
It just so happened that railroad officials were having a supervisors meeting in Monroe that fateful day, and Barnes’ boss asked him after the meeting to go to the wreck site to see if he could instruct to the crews trying to clear the tracks. Barnes was trainmaster for the Arkansas-Louisiana area.
“He had gotten a new suit for Christmas, and he was wearing it that day,” said Barnes’ sister, LaVon Oglesbee.
“He was a sharp, sharp dresser. He was a handsome man, and he liked looking good,” said Charlene Dunn, another sister.
The Oglesbees, Dunn and Charles Roy “Chuck” Barnes III, the son Barnes Jr. never got to see, recently got together at Dunn’s West Monroe home to examine and discuss a scrapbook put together by Chuck Barnes, who lives in North Little Rock, Ark. Barnes III was born a couple weeks after the explosion on Feb. 8.
With the 50th anniversary of the train disaster, Barnes III decided last year to become more familiar with the life of his biological father. His mother had kept a suitcase through the years, and Barnes III found it and started going through its contents learning about the father he never knew.
He was a star basketball player at Eros High School and was offered several scholarships, including ones to Louisiana Tech and Northwestern Normal College, the school he chose. However, World War II interrupted and the young man joined the Army.
During the war, he served with the 757th Transportation Battalion, referred to as the Railroad Battalion. It was involved in the Normandy invasion, where French railroads were taken over, and the 757th supplied the front lines.
After the war, Barnes Jr. came back home and started work for the railroad, a generational occupation for the Barneses.
“We are a family of railroad workers and schoolteachers,” Oglesbee said.
Their father was a railroad man. Barnes Jr. followed in his footsteps and the three daughters — Oglesbee, Dunn and Marilyn Tidwell, who lives in Dallas, were teachers before retiring. Tidwell was not able to attend the family gathering Jan. 12.
Barnes III said he never knew that his father was temporarily stationed at Camp Robinson, just a short distance from where he now lives. Barnes III said he’s an avid cyclist and has ridden his bicycle through the camp many times.
“I was riding in a place where he had once walked and didn’t even know it,” Barnes III said.
After being asked by his boss to go to the derailment site, Oglesbee said: “Junior told me he didn’t want to go because he wanted to go home to his wife, who was about to have a baby, but he finally gave in.”
The sisters said that Junior, as they called him, went to his parents’ home in West Monroe to change out of his suit into his father’s khaki pants, which were really too short for his 6-foot, 2-inch frame.
When he arrived at the site, he worked for several hours before a violent explosion occurred at about 7:15 p.m. Jan. 23. The fireball was so large that a pilot landing a private plane in East Texas, some 150 miles away, said he saw it.
Accounts in the Monroe Morning World said the searing flash burned men beyond recognition. Many of them trying to escape saw what they thought was water in a ditch, jumped in and rolled to extinguish themselves, only to find out that it was an acid from one of the tank cars.
Reports described flesh hanging from bones and the stench of burned flesh as the injured were brought to St. Francis Hospital.
The final death toll was listed at eight while another 50 were injured. Barnes died from his injuries Jan. 24. Oglesbee said the doctor told the family that he didn’t die from his burns or the acid, but a piece of metal had struck him in the back of the neck just under the skull and caused severe breathing difficulties.
People from the Ark-La-Miss responded to the emergency call for blood, forming long lines at the hospital while a volunteer pilot flew in three cases — 180 units — from the American Red Cross in Memphis, Tenn.
Barnes III followed in his father’s footsteps, working about 10 years on the railroad, but eventually became a phlebotomist and works with the Red Cross. His brother, David, is vice president of operations of the northern division of Union Pacific Railroad and is a 30-year veteran.
The Barnes brothers stepfather, John Toler, who married their mother about a year after the accident, also worked for Missouri Pacific for 45 years and retired as vice president of transportation. Small daily logs — small enough to fit in their shirt pockets — were kept by the railroad men and one of Junior Barnes’ entries notes that he met Toler at a meeting and apparently worked together that one day.
Chuck Barnes said that he would have liked to have been in Monroe on his biological father’s death, but he needs to be in Arkansas to “help celebrate the birthday of the father who raised me. He’s a wonderful man.”
Chuck Barnes, who says his stepfather and mother don’t know about his scrapbook, says he will share his scrapbook discovery with them Saturday, the 50th anniversary of his father’s death and his stepfather’s 87th birthday.