On the evening of September 6th, he dressed for a night out with some old buddies. Then he borrowed his dad’s pickup truck, which was used for the family dry cleaning business, and headed out from their home in Mayfair to meet his friends in Frankford.

His trip was cut short when he became stuck in a huge traffic jam. He didn’t know what had happened, so he asked a police officer what was going on. He was told of the train wreck, and instructed to take his truck as close as possible to the crash area.

When he got there, rescue workers immediately began loading injured people into the bed of the pickup. As soon as the truck was full he started out for nearby Frankford Hospital. At the hospital he helped unload the injured.

Bob returned to the crash area, parked his truck and this time made his way up to see the wreck itself. He saw the railroad car (car seven) that had been split open by the signal tower upright. He saw that many of the bodies were still in the wreck.

In what was probably the most tragic part of the whole evening, Bob helped lift a woman out of his truck who had lost both of her legs in the wreck. As he carried her, she kept screaming “MY BABY, MY BABY!” over and over. Bob would spend his life wondering if this woman ever recovered from her injuries, and if she was reunited with her child.

He made a couple more trips to the hospital that night, then headed for home. It was late, so he parked the truck in the garage, stripped out of his blood stained clothes in the laundry room and climbed into bed exhausted.

The next morning he was awakened by the sound of his father yelling “BOBBY, WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY TRUCK LAST NIGHT!!!”. There was a terrible mess in the bed of the truck, and he didn’t think to clean it out before putting the truck away for the night. His parents did not yet know about the rescue effort their son was involved in the night before.

Once they heard his story, all was forgiven.