Teen-aged girls can be persistent.
Sometimes, fathers can be, too.
Soon, the Mississippi Department of Transportation and the Lowndes County road department will add safety precautions at the railroad crossing on Beersheeba Road in Lowndes County, about a quarter-mile from the home of John and Jane Lumsden.
MDOT will install large, light-reflective signs and remove some trees to improve visibility for motorists approaching the crossing. The county will add rumble strips on the road. Initial steps to have warning lights installed at the crossing are underway.
Those safety measures will close the book on John Lumsden’s long quest to improve safety at the crossing.
A February morning
If this is John Lumsden’s story, it is Laura Lumsden’s story, too, one that dates back almost four decades to the pleasant, sunny, Tuesday morning of Feb. 17, 1976.
Laura Lumsden, a month past her 14th birthday, was on her way to school.
She never arrived.
John Lumsden, 82, sits in the living room of the home where he and Jane, who now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, raised their five children. He tells the story of that fateful day and the on-again, off-again struggle to make the railroad crossing safer that would follow.
“It was always our rule that the children couldn’t sleep over at friend’s houses on school nights,” he begins. “But Laura and her friend kept begging and begging. That Monday night, we gave in and said, ‘OK, just this once.'”
At 7:15 a.m., John, then the owner of Lowndes County Tire Shop, was already at work. Jane, who also worked at the shop, was still at home. Laura and her friend, along with her friend’s 15-year-old brother (the driver) and another teen-aged boy, were driving southbound on New Hope Road when the car collided with a northbound Illinois Central freight train. The car, estimated to have been traveling at 35 mph on impact, smashed into the train, which was already in the crossing. All four teens were injured, Laura the most severely.
A phone call sent John flying to the scene to join his wife, who had arrived moments earlier.
“I got there just in time to get into the ambulance with Laura,” John says. “I don’t know all of her injuries, but the worst injury was the head injury. Her brain was swelling. Whatever else was wrong with her didn’t matter.”
Laura never regained consciousness. She died later that day at Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa.
After 39 years, John can maintain his composure as he tells the story of that awful day. At least, he can up until a point.
“The funeral director…” he said. His voice trails off and his eyes swell with tears. He begins again: “He told me…” and again the words won’t come. He waves his hand. His daughter, DeeDee Andrews, continues the thought.
“The funeral director said it was the biggest funeral he had ever seen,” Andrews says. “Her whole class, 100 kids, were the pall-bearers. When it’s her birthday or the date she died and I post something on Facebook to remember her, so many people comment and say how they remember her and that day and how sad they are about it all these years later.”
Soon after Laura’s death, safety lights were installed at the New Hope Road crossing.
There were no such safety devices on the crossing at Beersheba Road, however, which at that time was a gravel road with little traffic.
A changing landscape
A few years later, things began to change.
The Highway 82 bypass was built and suddenly Beersheba Road became an popular alternate route between New Hope and the bypass. The road was paved, traffic picked up, and John Lumsden, still haunted by the tragedy that claimed the life of his daughter, began to worry.
Statistics show that 50 percent of all railroad collision fatalities occur in rural areas, but only 10 percent of safety devices are located in those areas.
It was only a matter of time, John thought, before that kind of tragedy would happen on Beersheba Road.
On April 7, 1994, that fear was almost realized.
“My husband and I live on Beersheba Road, too,” Andrews said. “That night, we were sitting in the living room, watching TV and we heard this awful noise. My husband jumped up and said, ‘Somebody’s hit a train,’ and he flew out the door.”
He was right.
A young man driving southbound around the steep curve that lies just in front of the crossing plowed into a Kansas City Southern freight train. Fortunately, the driver had managed to slam the car into reverse and pull away before the car was dragged down the tracks, which would have meant almost certain death.
Still, the accident shook Lumsden. He was determined to do something.
“So I started talking to people around the community,” he said. “We finally organized a meeting at the church. About 75 people showed up and the man from the railroad came to hear what we had to say.”
The meeting did not go as expected.
“He just ran over us,” Lumsden recalls. “That railroad man was a big man, about 6-foot-7. He could have thrown me through a window. And he wasn’t having none of it. He was loud, angry. He had one little old lady in tears. He said there wasn’t enough traffic on the road and they weren’t going to do anything. I guess you could say he rail-roaded us.
“That was pretty much the end of that.”
Lumsden said there didn’t seem to be anything else that could be done. But it didn’t prevent him from worrying.
“It was always on my mind,” he said.
A daughter takes command
It was also on the mind of his eldest child, Lisa Holloway, who had often heard her father say how afraid he was of the railroad crossing near his home.
When Holloway, a nurse, retired last year, she began helping her father in his efforts to make the crossing safer.
She began to immerse herself in material gleaned from the Internet and soon became something of a walking encyclopedia on the subject of trains, rail lines and railroad safety. She unearthed railroad records, compiled information on the types of trains and cargo carried along the railroad line that crosses Beersheba Road, noting schedules and speeds.
While she had no data on traffic data on Beersheba Road, she was able to determine that five New Hope school buses used the crossing each school day, along with hundreds of students who used the road as an alternative route to and from the school.
She made careful notes about the physical characteristics of the crossing, noting the limited visibility created by trees near the crossing, the severe curve that led to the track just north of the crossing and, anecdotally, the speed of those who traveled the road.
She found that the U.S. Department of Transportation inventory of the crossing was badly out of date. For example, the official document indicated the road was unpaved even though it had been paved for more than 15 years. The document also stated no school buses used the crossing, another error that she could prove.
Armed with the data, she approached an official of Watco Companies of Kansas, the parent company of Alabama Southern Railroad, which began leasing the railroad line that crosses Beersheba Road from Kansas City Southern in 1995. She then turned her attention to MDOT and the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors.
In April, MDOT engineers agreed to do an assessment of the crossing. On Monday, John, Lisa and DeeDee addressed the county supervisors to share their story. The board voted unanimously to send a letter to MDOT asking for a traffic study and any safety enhancements that could be added right way. The board also instructed county road manager Ronnie Burns to install rumble strips on the road near the crossing.
At last, success
On Thursday, MDOT informed the Lumsdens that there will soon be adding safety equipment at the crossing.
“We’re so grateful,” Holloway says. “The request for a warning light has been initiated, and the prospects look good but the process does takes a while. Our family is very pleased and excited.”
It is especially satisfying for John Lumsden.
“You know, when Laura died, they put up safety devices at the New Hope Road crossing right away,” he says. “For a long time, it seemed like the only way to get that done was for somebody to get killed. It shouldn’t have to come to that.
“It took a long time, almost 40 years, but it looks like now it’s going to happen.”
Persistence has paid off, it appears.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.