I don’t recommend watching this (or clicking on the Wikipedia link) if you have a connection with the 1995 Fox River Grove school bus-train crash unless you are willing to go through a recollection or reignition of your emotional reaction back then.
The video of the almost replication of the Fox River Grove tragedy in Sumter County, Florida, brought back so many sad memories.
The Florida school bus driver was more culpable than the woman in the Fox River Grove crash.
In the case of the Fox River Grove crash, it was more the design of the crossing and its relationship to the Route 14 widening than the bus driver’s actions.
Fox River Grove village officials successfully argued that parking should continue to be allowed in front of the stores across the road from the Chicago and Northwestern railroad tracks,
That resulted in the state road’s being much closer to the tracks than otherwise would have been the case.
I am so thankful that I was not in the Illinois House when that decision was made.
I heard about the results first hand through my bother-in-law Joe Giangrasso, who headed Good Shepherd’s Emergency Room.
He shared that one boy’s head was swollen to twice its normal size.
My wife, who headed the lab, said she spent the day chasing reporters out of the hospital, even finding one hiding in a bathroom.
(For details about the crash, I think it would be hard to beat this Daily Herald article by Chris Fusco and Ray Minor.
I had agreed at the last minute to speak at a Eagle Scout Board of Honor where two of the five or six of they young men who had advanced to that rank had died in the wreck.
I told the Scouts in attendance that they would have to accomplish more in place of the two who were killed in the crash.
I cried on the drive to Crystal Lake restaurant 1776, where my fundraiser was taking place.
After the accident, residents and parents argued for passage of a law to lower the speed limit to 50 miles per hour.
Police Chief Robert Polston was with an Illinois Department of Transportation Signal Engineer, there as a result of complaints about the intersection.
Metra argued that had the speed been at 50 MPH, nothing would have changed.
Only after attending a rally at the Crystal Lake Holiday Inn, did I agree to sponsor the bill.
Somehow I got it out of the House Committee.
House Speaker Lee Daniels allowed me to know what day I could call the bill, which I conveyed to the Fox River Grove officials.
Before the vote, Daniels, whose side job was working in Metra President Jeff Ladd’s law firm, had instructed his floor leaders to lobby against the bill.
State Rep. Art Tenhouse came to my desk to tell me of Daniel’s instructions, but let me know that he was not trying to be persuasive.
As the parents, Village President Bill Yocius, Trustee Mary Murren and others from the village stood in the center balcony of the chambers, I worked the floor.
I remember kneeling between to two women Democrats who were voting “No.”
They gave me Metra’s argument that lowing the speed to 50 MPH on express trains would not have made any difference.
My reply was that the parents needed passage as part of their grieving process.
They changed their votes.
And the bill passed.
At that point momentum was such that my State Senator Dick Klemm had to get it through his chamber.
He added an amendment to make the speed limit reduction temporary, which I little choice but to move for concurrence.
