Shared Grief and Tragedy: Eamonn Wholley’s Untimely Tragic Death and NJ Transit

This was written by Francine Moccio-Anastasopoulos 

Our son, Tony Anastasopoulos, was struck by a NJ Transit train on August 19, 2002, and it was recently the tenth anniversary of his death. Tony would be 28 years old this year.  Instead, at the age of 17, similar to Eamonn Wholley, also an MHS senior, he died in the street on Valley Road: struck in the head by a NJ train that sent him reeling off the Valley Road trestle, down onto the pavement below. Two eyewitnesses said that they thought someone had “flung a white towel off the trestle.”  When I heard this, I realized of course, that it was Tony they were talking about -- my son was wearing a long white short-sleeve tee shirt that night when he left our house to meet his girlfriend and another female companion.

Walking home from Charlie Brown's (a former favorite eatery in town), to our house on Beverly Road, the teens intended to first pick up a video at the former Blockbuster store (now Boiling Springs Bank) in Watchung Plaza.  Our whole family had just returned to the US from Greece on August 18 after spending one month celebrating a wedding of a dear close friend on the island of Crete. On the way from Athens to Newark, the flight stopped in London, and we went to the Madame Trousseau Wax Museum where Tony’s antics pretending to be a wax figure and suddenly “moving” added some bon vivant to our trip. Nonetheless, we were all anxious to get home to our beautiful town -- “Montclair.” At Newark, we picked up our bags, but Tony’s bag was missing, the flight assistant assured us it would be found and delivered later that evening. Once inside, the Anastasopoulos household rang out like a cacophony of noise:  incessantly ringing different cell phone tunes -- text messages, and ringing door bells, simultaneously.

These stirrings surrounded us – and their familiarity -- finally made us feel the nostalgic relief of returning to Montclair; seeing friends and neighbors and just being "home."  It filled us with the type of joy that’s both maddening yet exuberant.  As we scurried around to unpack, answer phones, and collect mail, we were totally unaware of the NJ Transit Boonton line train readying itself for its last ride of the day – a “memorable” journey departing Hoboken at 8 pm, with local stops in Montclair and onto its final destination – Boonton (the pre-direct NJ Transit service).   As the train left the Hoboken station to arrive at one of its many stops along the route - Watchung Plaza in Montclair – it arrived at the station around 8:30 p.m.  In 2002, trains were not permitted to run through Montclair on the weekends, and the sparse train service and an extant empty town of vacationers, made the teenage children confused:  it was Sunday night; they thought when trains aren’t running -- not a weekday evening, Monday, August 19.

As the children left a restaurant, Charlie Brown’s (a former popular eatery located just behind the row of shops on Valley Road), they decided to sit for a while in Anderson Park to enjoy the balmy August breeze before walking home to Beverly Road. Still regaling stories of “Greek” dances, and “awkward” moments teens experience at times on family vacations, Tony, according to one of his female companions – was showing off his newly acquired command of Greek folk dances he learned that summer.

The  balmy August night, the quiet and still deserted town of Montclair made it seem like – from the perspective of the children --  to take the (what we now know) “the well-traversed” “shortcut”  from the many open train track entrances inside Anderson Park to Watchung Plaza. Once in the Plaza, the descent from the tracks to the parking lot is totally open and unguarded; the hill that descends through some brush easily leads one to the Plaza entrance.  According to Tony’s two female surviving companions, after the three teenagers gleefully exchanged jokes in Andersen Park prior to entering the tracks unaware the three teens, ironically, sat on a bench which (post- accident) is dedicated to two young high school boys who were struck and killed by a NJ Transit train – in August 1986 and one or two months after we moved to Montclair from Park Slope, Brooklyn.   Meanwhile, the 8 pm Boonton-line train steadily departed Hoboken and was bearing down on its regular stops headed for its tragically fateful destination to Watchung Plaza.

Occasionally, I still walk up the embankment near the Valley Road trestle, sitting and often staying on the side on the grassy knoll.  The only change NJ Transit has made is to have – two days after Tony’s accident in 2002 --  a “No Trespassing” sign. However, there have been no meaningful changes made, such as a platform space to step aside on the trestle in case of an emergency, if the train is coming; and  there have been no efforts to even protect workers. Instead, NJ Transit has exacerbated the likelihood of pedestrian killings by increasing the acceleration of the direct line to midtown Manhattan; thereby, running a monstrous iron horse “killing machine” through a small town, where people stroll with baby carriages and young toddlers run away from caregivers unaware of the danger of the open and unguarded tracks. 

On several occasions, I have observed the area where the Watchung Plaza parking lot buttresses the train tracks: it also remains totally unblocked, and NJ Transit has not made any changes or even showed a “good faith effort” to block access of pedestrians onto the train tracks.  What I have found is consistent evidence that the area on the embankment leading up to the Watchung Plaza station where the train makes its curved turn to the Valley Road trestle and which is covered by shrubs - has become a “partying” hangout.  On several occasions, party goers (most likely from the previous evening) leave a trail of activity: discarded old soda cans, crumpled potato chip bags and beer cans, strewn about the tracks and lying adjacent to them.

When my son - Tony - was first killed, the NJ Transit spokesperson issued a "press release" that said “children were playing on the tracks" after that another press release was released to the media by Transit that Tony’s accident might have been a “suicide” because the train driver blew the whistle, and the engineer and several eye-witnesses said my son and his female companion didn’t attempt to jump out of the train’s way.  The NJ Transit engineers are trained to make a schedule -- no matter what -- and  anyone on the tracks (what NJ Transit states is “their property,”), including workers, had better get “out of the way” of the train -- the company objectifies its customers, commuters, local pedestrians, children, and its workers as:  “trespassers.” 

From the eyes of NJ Transit CEOs and the company’s continued endangerment of pedestrians these “trespassers” are not worthy to interrupt the company’s train schedule. By not implementing a policy of reasonable train speed through densely populated towns like Montclair, NJ Transit has illustrated a total lack of regard for human life. Because antiquated Railroad Act laws -- still extant from the 18 pr00s -- the company holds a great deal of political power; this allows them to neglect to exercise caution and reasonable preventive measures -- to the fullest extent possible – ton ensure pedestrian safety.  This is true, especially in places like Montclair, where pedestrians, bike riders, children, and/or adults-- may find themselves in a dangerous situation by the tracks for reasons other than what the company describes as simply “wanting to trespass” or “commit suicide.” 

The driver of the train that killed Tony purportedly told a friend that the NJ Transit was trying to besmirch Tony’s reputation; thereby, the company could downplay the outcry of public sympathy that followed his accident, and for the other traumatized victims. The NJ Transit Police were called in to “clear the scene” bar anyone even police from getting near my son, so that they could investigate themselves and “decelerate” any possibility of escalating demands from the Montclair public for real safety measures. “Damage control” was the only mantra NJ Transit wore at the scene of the accident and in the press. This atypical industrial giant “misfit” left our son to die in the street alone, without even having the decency to call his parents so that we could go and possibly comfort him in his last minutes of life; or even to say “goodbye, I love you.” 

Days after Tony’s accident, NJ Transit floated another scenario about the cause of the accident; shortly after the “suicide” attempt story proved unconvincing because Tony was not alone, he was with his friends, a NJ Transit spokesperson reported to the television news stations that children often play a game of "chicken" on their tracks. In Tony’s case, when the driver of the train saw him struggling desperately to pull his female friend’s foot out of the narrow wooden wedge gap of the trestle passage, the engineer was even more convinced kids were “playing a game of chicken.” They would, he thought, jump out of his way when he came close. Where he thought the children could jump, until this day mystifies me. Even NJ Transit workers have been killed, and injured because there are no platforms or small space to stand aside and clear an even unexpected and unscheduled train. An elderly engineer who lives by the Valley Road tracks in town relayed to me that the railroads built trestles with big wooden blocks spaced apart in the late nineteenth century in order to “save money” and they have not updated any aspects for safety. 

Whatever the NJ Transit driver thought he testified that he did see “something moving back and forth” but he accelerated the train anyway from its idle position at Watchung Plaza, around the bend, and moved to a speed of 40 mph when he reached the part of the trestle where the children were caught.

Nonetheless, NJ Transit feels it is only responsible to blow their whistles. If the so-called “trespasser” does not “get out of the way” then it is his/her responsibility to move or “get hit.” Tragically, (and we do not know yet what happened in Eamonn’s case, but this simple-minded self-serving policy, was not the circumstance in our son’s death). The choice Tony had to make:  either leave someone stranded for a certain death – as the overwhelming iron horse barreled directly toward her, he could have then ran and jumped to safety since he was only 3 steps away from the grassy embankment. But I understand from knowing Tony that this did not cross his mind even as option.  Tony knew he either had to get her foot free or stay with her to the end -- to leave someone to die would – for him -- be like dying anyway.

Tony knew the value of human life at the young age of 17 -- as I am certain Eamonn did. Eamonn, like Tony, and countless other teens in New Jersey, killed by NJ Transit – know that the preservation of a human life is our community’s top priority. A human life -- which comes and goes only once – there was only “one of a kind” of Eamonn, Tony, and many others, they were unique I am certain with dreams, faults, plans, futures, and even funny quirks. Through the years that have passed since Tony’s death, I have come to know Montclair teenagers and I know this:  they, even at their young and tender ages, with lack of experience, are more responsible and understanding about the value of human life than the economic mighty and politically powerful NJ Transit; and Montclair children know more about their responsibilities as members and citizens of a “community” than any NJ Transit CEO, spokesperson, CEO and/or administrator will ever know.  

NJ Transit Needs to Be Accountable for Community

It is a little known fact, that if NJ Transit dubs a fatality a “suicide” Washington DC does not require an examination of the black box that is kept in the engineer’s space. All of the “yarns” of NJ Transit regarding everyone that is hit by one of their trains, has invariably, committed “suicide” on “their” tracks; and stories spun in the public relations department of  Transit, the “insider” investigation of accidents by NJ Transit police, and reports of investigation outcomes prepared by NJ Transit CEOs and General Counsels are absurd. Without an independent investigation by a neutral party and commission, these self-serving so-called “investigations” are worthless. NJ Transit is “covering up” their refusal to ensure pedestrian safety for the purpose of shielding the company and its stockholders from liability.  No one in their right mind could possibly believe that – for example:  the NYC police department could investigate itself, I think Serpico and whistleblower police have proved that repeatedly; nor can the NJ Transit “police” conduct a neutral and honest investigation leading to a credible and integral accident report.  It is simply non-sensical.  

NJ Transit has been negligent and they have been allowed to get away with this. If someone jaywalks, and a car can possibly stop, but decides, that they will go anyway even if it means running someone over, and the person the car hits is injured or dies, there would be culpability. But the courts, media, and judges have shielded railroad giants from the ordinary responsibility expected from all its citizens in a civil society.

My husband and I (at great grief and cost to us) sued NJ Transit to challenge the law of “strict” immunity that they have enjoyed since the 1800s.  We won the Appeal, which we feel has led the way for additional litigation by plaintiffs killed or maimed by negligence of Transit. Unfortunately, it is only with a heavy anvil of greater  liability for the company, and increased accountability to the public for independent investigations of fatalities, and the company's compliance of sending the "black box" recorders in every train to Washington D.C., in the case of a fatality, will NJ Transit abandon its "custom" and "tradition" of negligent arrogance, intimidation of eye witnesses, and dehumanizing "spin" of pedestrian fatalities as  "trespassers infringing on their property" and who therefore deserve "what they got."  Moreover, there are several actions NJ Transit can take to decrease the likelihood of fatalities and accidents:  the exercise of increased training for engineers, independent investigations, especially fatalities, deceleration of train speeds in densely populated community centers, updating antiquated trestles, and implementing more effective precautions to hinder the use of tracks as "shortcuts." Blowing whistles louder and longer every time they kill someone on the tracks will not suffice any longer; if NJ Transit really grieves for its victims, then the company's commitment must be meaningful demonstrated by immediate and tangible changes which indicate that it places the value of human life above its own self-interest and profits.   After our son’s accident, and while he was still lying on Valley Road, employees from NJ Transit were sent to the homes of the two female companions to question them. NJ Transit representatives actually threatened these “traumatized” young women and their families with fines, and lawsuits because they were “trespassers” on their “property.”

Our family only lives down the block from one of the girls – yet, no representative from NJ Transit knocked on our door to tell us that my son was dying and/or to offer to take us to him. The accident occurred at approximately at 8:45 p.m. but we were not notified by the Montclair police until 11 a.m., after our son - Tony - had been taken to the Newark morgue. We weren’t allowed by the scene, NJ Transit took it over, closed it off even to Montclair police, and herded witnesses into ambulances, interrogating them. The company had to “get its public relations story straight” for the purpose of shielding NJ Transit from any liability.  I saw my son being taken away in a black body bag on NBC news, before we were even notified that NJ Transit closed up the scene of the accident and removed his body without our knowledge. The following day, one of Tony’s friends who lives by the trestle, found his silver bracelet with his name on it that I had given him for his birthday – it was smashed to pieces, just like our lives.

 NJ Transit believes it should be rendered privileges rendered to the old “Czars. Prior to our groundbreaking Appeal and lawsuit against the company, NJ Transit held “strict immunity” from liability – if you were “on their tracks” you were a “trespasser” and if you didn’t “have the brains” one spokesperson stated, “to get out of the way of a train” then the company should not be held accountable.  

If Ms. Patty McCormack’s statements to the press are sincere, the new school superintendent will act now to ensure the safety of our children from the NJ Transit Railroad. One way is for the Superintendent with the PTA Councils joining together with the MEA and the Montclair Board of Education, local politicians, media groups and others, and circulate a petition signed by Montclair residents – demanding that NJ Transit be held accountable for pedestrian safety precautions and for specific, and tangible outcomes and measures to evaluate the results of these safety reforms. Emanon, Tony, the two boys who were hit in Montclair in 1986 and the countless other children killed by these trains -- at the very least – don’t the loss of their lives, present a chance at restitution by Transit, to prevent such tragedies in the future?  With a heavy heart for the family of Eamon Wholley, we grieve with you, beside you, and we, as parents and Montclair residents, understand what you are going through. We are here to support you and cradle you in our arms.

For the Wholley family, this is a grief that cannot be spoken, and a pain that goes on and on. We tried very hard to prevent it from happening again, but we need to act now, as a community to reform this powerful company. We are calling on our school board, the Town Council, and our legislators to help reform rail safety regulations that will keep our children safe from these thunderous, iron monsters from speeding through our town.

After Tony’s accident, I went up the embankment of the Valley Road trestle to wait for the Monday night, 8 p.m. Boonton line from Hoboken due to arrive at Watchung Plaza station. I stood close by to where my son and his female companion were trying to free her foot. I wanted to feel what they must have felt when they saw the train start from an idle position, and then sped up toward the trestle. When I felt the thunderous vibration of the train at such an enormous speed, it shook the ground beneath me. The deafening sound of the whistles pierced my ears -- I froze, like a deer caught in the headlights of an unexpected, oncoming car.

This was only a small glimpse of what Eamonn, Tony, and many others faced minutes prior to their deaths. Remember please, for us-- the parents and families of these young victims whose entire lives have been cut short, when you hear NJ Transit blow its train whistle louder and longer, there has been a fatality, an accident – please remember the victims of these tragedies. It is not enough for NJ Transit to “blow their horns louder”-- every time you hear the whistle, it is time to act -- investigations should be independent, the company should not be allowed to take over the accident scene, and threaten and intimidate witnesses. The Montclair Town Council needs to put railroad safety at the top of its agenda for the coming meeting, and our new superintendent, Ms. MacCormack can be of great assistance by circulating a petition demanding greater safety for our school children from NJ Transit trains.