Two buses rolled up to the blackened, twisted wreckage of the train Wednesday, headlamps shining as in any funeral procession.
Dozens of people, family of those presumed dead, filed out, some with mouths open, others with hands held to their faces.
One mourner placed flowers on a fence near the tracks. A man in an overcoat carried a single rose toward the bent and torn metal of the wrecked train.
About a dozen people huddled together and bowed their heads in prayer.
As the difficult job of identifying the bodies began Wednesday, only some of these people had been informed officially that their loved ones had died in Monday night’s Amtrak wreck. Late Wednesday, officials still had not made public a list of the 11 people killed.
But families already had started to grieve for those who found themselves in the sleeper car of the City of New Orleans as it headed toward Kankakee on Monday night.
June Bonnin was in the sleeper as a chaperon for a group of girls who had just completed a whirlwind, spring-break tour of Chicago. As the train rumbled south, Bonnin’s granddaughter, Jessica Tickle Whitaker, 12, and Jessica’s friends Rainey Lipscomb, 10, and Lacey Lipscomb, 8, all were in the sleeper for a slumber party.
Sheena Dowe, who had been in the dining car with her son and a friend, stepped into the sleeper just to use the bathroom. Raised on the South Side, she was traveling back to college in Mississippi on Monday night, just months shy of graduation.
Also in the sleeper was a group of four from Washington state, rolling to New Orleans to celebrate a wedding anniversary, their co-workers and friends said.
These people and at least two others all were believed to have been in the sleeper, which was sliced open and set afire by the crash. None of the more than 200 people riding in other cars was killed.
Wednesday became a day for memorials.
A service was held at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., where Dowe was majoring in political science–although she dreamed of becoming a doctor.
“A brain surgeon,” said her grandmother, Bessie Mae Dowe, 73.
Dowe, a 22-year-old single mom, was traveling with her son, Amause, who will be 2 in May. She also was traveling with a friend and the friend’s child.
“She loved that baby. He loved his mommy,” the grandmother said. “He’s going to call and look for her a lot of times, and she’s not going to be there.”
Motherhood had only strengthened Dowe’s resolve to complete college, said school chaplain Larry Johnson.
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“She was desiring a better future for herself and for her son,” Johnson said.
Also in the sleeper Monday night were members of the Bonnin and Lipscomb families, best of friends from the rolling hills of northern Mississippi, just outside the Memphis city limits.
The families were in a Bible study group together and often took their children on family outings. June Bonnin and Cindy Lipscomb planned the trip to Chicago for the girls in the families, and highlights were a stop at the American Girl doll store downtown and a visit to the Sears Tower.
On the way home, the older girls asked whether they could have a slumber party in the same Amtrak sleeping car, so the group of three women and five girls split up.
June Bonnin agreed to chaperon her daughter, Ashley, 8, and the other girls in the sleeper.
Of the five who returned to the sleeper, only Ashley survived, though she was seriously injured when her leg was caught in a door. Her leg was amputated below the knee Monday night.
“She appears to be doing better than we are,” her father, Max Bonnin, said at a news conference at Riverside Hospital in Kankakee.
Bonnin, 44, said that his daughter still did not know the fate of the others.
“I wanted to wait until after she could physically handle the details of who died,” he said. “I told Ashley that we are going to go and find out God’s plan. I may come back with good news or I may come back with bad.”
Bonnin said he could tell that Ashley wanted to learn details of what happened. She talked about where she and her mother were in the car before the accident and recalled in vivid detail how her foot became ensnared in one of the train’s automatic doors.
Her mother, June Bonnin, had learned just weeks ago that she was beating cancer. Her blood work had come back showing no more signs of lymphoma.
“My wife was winning the battle,” Bonnin said. “She told me and all of our family to walk in faith. She turned her lymphoma into an inspiration for all of us.”
The Bonnin family was well-known in the Memphis area for a bed-and-breakfast they opened a few years ago in nearby Nesbit, Miss. Their Bonne Terre Country Inn & Cafe was featured in the September issue of Southern Living. A reviewer called it “a place to go and stay and savor.”
The 100-acre restaurant and inn is set among rolling hills, pecan groves and lakes. It is decorated with fine art and French and English antiques.
“They were living their dream,” said Barbara Farmer, who is a member of the Memphis Restaurant Association along with the Bonnins. “They always wanted to open a business.”
The Bonnins befriended the Lipscombs, who own an insurance company in Memphis, when they stopped at Bonne Terre a few years ago.
Rainey and Lacey Lipscomb attended Southern Baptist Educational Center in Southhaven, Miss. Rainey was in the 5th grade and Lacey was in the 2nd grade.
“They were wonderful young girls. They just had a great spirit,” said the school administrator, David Manley.
Max Bonnin said he was frustrated by the lack of information the families were getting Wednesday. But he thanked federal officials, individuals and hospital staffers for their help.
“I can’t tell you enough about the random acts of kindness, the grace and caring from everyone in this community,” Bonnin said.
Also in the sleeper Monday night was an elderly couple headed to New Orleans to celebrate an anniversary with their daughter and a family friend, their friends and family said. They asked that the names of the four people who are presumed dead not be published because some family members had not been notified.
But co-workers of the family friend, in her 40s, said she was a dedicated worker and a valuable resource at the Human Resources Service Center Northwest, a company that handles personnel matters for civilian employees of the U.S. Navy from San Francisco to Alaska.
The woman was a personnel specialist who had worked for the company since it opened two years ago, said service center Deputy Director Diane Moseley.
Moseley said the elderly couple’s daughter, also missing in the wreck, had worked at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in nearby Keyport, Wash.
“The hardest part is everyone not knowing and having to wait,” Moseley said quietly.
The group had booked berths in the sleeper car to ease the journey for the elderly Kitsap County, Wash., couple, said a family friend.
On Wednesday, two days after the crash, that double-decker sleeper car was a burned-out shell, the second floor collapsed on the first.
An orange curtain was blowing out of one of the windows at the rear of the sleeper car.
Family members created a memorial nearby, laying potted plants, roses and daisies.
Skip Batchelor, a general manager of disaster services for the American Red Cross, was working to help the families get through their anguish. Mental health professionals were trying to contact each people who suffered a loss.
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At least 100 people attended a Wednesday morning meeting for family members of those presumed dead. Batchelor described them as “relatively calm and quiet. They’re going through the shock.”
Twice a day, representatives from the Kankakee County coroner’s office give relatives updates at their hotel.
Sometimes they have no information to give, but they go anyway.
“We have nine families that are waiting,” said Kankakee County Deputy Coroner Patricia Boie.