Before he boarded train No. 12, bound for Chicago, 10-year-old Eric Logan Hoffhines implored his mother not to send him alone.
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“It was only his second time on the train by himself. He didn’t want to go alone this morning; he wanted me to go with him,” she remembered later.
But Linda Hoffhines reminded the boy that the visit to his father was only for the day, that she’d see him again the next day.
He relented, donned his backpack, and told his mother goodbye.
“He said, ‘Mom, I love you,’ ” she said. “It was a ritual.”
Monday morning, the everyday rituals of seven such ordinary lives came to a wrenching and bloody end in Gary.
Just after 9:30 a.m., two passing trains-filled with people dozing on their way to work or poring over books-sideswiped each other on an elevated track, ripping open the cars like sardine cans.
The wreck injured 69 people, trapped more than a dozen in mangled wreckage and killed 7 who had expected nothing more unusual from the day than the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
Blanche Angelov, 29, a data processor from Hobart, Ind., had been on her way Monday to her job with the investment firm of Stein Roe and Farnham in downtown Chicago.
As she did every day, she boarded train No. 12 at Ogden Dunes at 9:15 a.m., and settled in for the more than hourlong ride to the city. She’d just recovered from a case of carpal tunnel syndrome and was happy to be back at work, a neighbor said.
“That’s what she always talked about. She always enjoyed (her job) very much,” said Sonia Azpeitia, who has lived for years down the street from the Angelov family.
Angelov lived at home with her Macedonian-born parents and an older sister, Helen, Azpeitia said. They were regulars at St. Clement Macedonian Orthodox Church, good neighbors and very shy people.
“Her parents are very humble people; they’re the nicest people you can ever meet,” said Sandra Angelov, a friend of the family. “I don’t know how they’re going to go through this tragedy.”
Monday night, nearly 20 family members-some of whom speak English with difficulty-crowded into the Angelov home to grieve.
“She usually sits in the back car,” said her brother, George, 24. “I don’t know why she was sitting in the front car this day. I don’t know why the train was late. I don’t know why she was killed. I don’t know why anything like this had to happen.”
“Blanche was always there for everyone else,” said her sister, Helen, 30. “She always wanted to help others and loved children.”
Julia Milenkovich, 71, boarded the No. 12 Monday with her sister, Louise Cihak, headed back home to Berwyn after a weekend trip.
Because of the holiday, she had the day off from her regular job as a crossing guard at St. Leonard’s Catholic School. A gentle woman who loved children and dogs, she had worked there for nearly five years, after her husband had died, a neighbor said.
She had also lost her son a few months ago to cirrhosis of the liver. And her beloved German shepherd had died a few years ago, said Lesley Laurence, the neighbor.
Since then, Milenkovich, who didn’t have a driver’s license and walked or biked everywhere she went, had taken to dropping by Laurence’s house to leave bones for his cocker spaniel and play with it.
“She was a lovely lady,” Laurence said. “She loved to work in her garden all summer long, and she was always very sweet to all the kids and especially dogs.”
Milenkovich had lived for about 20 years in her small brick ranch home at 3006 S. Wesley Ave., he said.
Her sister survived the crash with a cut that required seven stitches.
Glen Harris, on the other hand, was on the No. 7 train from Chicago when the accident occurred. That morning he had gotten off work as the night shift supervisor at the Kmart Discount Store at 6211 N. Lincoln Ave., where since October he had been overseeing the stockers and cleaning crew.
This morning he didn’t go home to sleep, though. He wanted to see his cousin, Sarah Martin, in Michigan City, and by 8:25 a.m. he was at the station, boarding the eastbound train.
Laverne Friday, Martin’s husband, said Harris, 37, enjoyed the serenity of life in Michigan City, compared to his own Uptown apartment at 4640 N. Sheridan Rd., where he had been having marital trouble with his wife.
“He liked the peace and quiet,” Friday said. “He and his cousin were real close and he’d come out whenever he got the chance.”
His relatives heard of the crash Monday morning and thought, “That’s the train he’s supposed to be on.” Later, they heard he had died, leaving three children.
“He was one of the friendliest people you would ever see,” said Dennis Scheppler, assistant manager at the Kmart.
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James Harmon, 61, meanwhile, on Monday was headed home to Michigan City, where he worked as the chief engineer for WEFM radio.
A divorced father of two grown daughters and a grandfather of four, he made weekly trips to visit a girlfriend and other friends in Chicago. Monday morning, he caught the eastbound train in Hegewisch.
His daughter, Lisa Milzarek of Michigan City, knew he was set to return home Monday. She also knew about the crash. But she didn’t know for certain he was on the ill-fated train until authorities asked her to identify his body.
“They told me it was not going to be easy, but I felt that I had to identify him personally,” she said.
She described her father as a terrific grandfather, a radio fanatic since childhood and a man able to do what he always wanted.
“Now I have to go home and tell my 5-year-old,” she said tearfully. She had already notified her mother, from whom her father was divorced.
Steve Deroos, the night disc jockey at WEFM, called Harmon “an outstanding engineer” and “a great person.”
Ruby Sarpong, 55, another fatal victim, was on her way home from her job as an aide at a nursing home in the Chicago area Monday. A resident of Gary, she was probably only minutes from home when she died.
Officials of Kaufman Funeral Home in Gary, which released her name, had no further details about her life or death.
The seventh victim was identified was Carl Douglas Willacker, 50, of New Carlisle, Ind., who was returning to his home on the eastbound train from Chicago. Willacker was the night auditor at the Elm Motel, 18 E. Elm St., according to Robert Byrd, chief of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District police.
Willacker was identified with the assistance of co-workers and relatives from Oklahoma, Byrd said.
The youngest victim, Eric Logan Hoffhines-his family called him Logan since he and his father shared a first name–spent the Sunday before his train ride sledding in the open hills of Lakeside, Mich.
His mother, divorced from his father and remarried, had moved her family to the rustic area from Chicago just a few months ago.
“We moved because we wanted a better environment for him. We wanted to get him away from gangs and drugs,” she said Monday afternoon, in front of the Gary funeral home to which her son’s body was taken.
She described her son, who boarded the train Monday with a cap gun in his backpack and some change for snacks, as “pure positive energy.”