Crew chief’s widow recalls difficult life Workers endured low pay, long hours

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PRESQUE ISLE – Carlos Izaguirre would have celebrated his 27th birthday next month. Instead his body is being shipped back to his native Honduras for burial.

Izaguirre, from Caridad, Honduras, was one of 14 workers killed Thursday when their van plunged off a one-lane bridge in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway as they traveled to work in the woods cutting brush. He was their foreman.

His funeral will be at 1 p.m. today at the Caribou United Baptist Church at 74 High St.

“We’re not having calling hours because there’s not enough time,” said Sherry Izaguirre, his widow.

That was also the story for Izaguirre, who often spent 12 hours a day working and driving.

His widow said in an interview Tuesday that she had received word from Honduran officials that the bodies of the Honduran workers are to be flown back to their homeland Thursday.

“He told me that if he ever died in the United States, he wanted to go home to Honduras,” she said.

A memorial service for all of the workers who died has been scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at the same church in Caribou.

On Tuesday, Sherry Izaguirre, 27, recalled the man she had known for years, but married just six months ago.

“He was always a busybody,” she said, sitting on a sofa in the living room of their home at Skyway Trailer Park. “He couldn’t sit still and do nothing, even if it was helping me clean the house.”

Carlos H. Izaguirre – his nickname was Carlito – arrived in the United States in 1994 to work. His father had died when Carlos was young and Carlos was working to support his mother, two younger brothers and a sister. He decided to come to the United States when he concluded that he could make more money here.

He never returned home, instead he sought political asylum in the United States because of civil turmoil that was going on in Honduras at the time.

His wife said Izaguirre was working on becoming a U.S. citizen, but planned to return home to Honduras to visit his family as soon as he got permission from Honduran officials to do so.

He was in Maine to thin trees on privately owned forest property.

“I think he liked the work,” she said of her husband. “I don’t think he liked the long hours and crappy pay. He didn’t have much time.” The workers are believed to have been paid $75 per acre or a minimum of $10.49 per hour.

His wife said that after spending as much as 12 hours cutting trees and driving each day, her husband would work additional hours, sometimes until as late as 2 a.m., repairing equipment for the men.

In 1999, he was nearly killed while driving between job sites in Ashland and Sherman, she said. He fell asleep and his car crashed into some trees.

“We thought we lost him then,” she said.

Carlos and Sherry met through mutual friends in Caribou, her hometown.

“He was very handsome, but he was so shy,” she said, a broad smile spreading across her face as she recalled what first attracted her to the young man.

“We just kept running into each other,” she continued. “It just took off from there.”

About three years ago, they started dating.

Carlos proposed to Sherry about a year later while they were sitting in the car in the parking lot at the Aroostook Centre Mall. “I was driving, but I cried so he had to drive,” she recalled.

They were married this past April 5.

“He’s a little cutie, isn’t he?” she said while holding a photo Tuesday that was taken of them when she went to Mississippi last year to visit him while he was there planting trees.

Izaguirre had the picture enlarged and framed as a present for her.

She said Izaguirre worried about some of the new men in his crew. If they couldn’t cut the required one acre of brush a day, they would be sent back home by the company, she said.

On Saturdays, the workers’ day off, he often spent more time taking his men places in his van.

“They were more like family than friends,” Sherry said. “They also looked out for each other.”

A certified nurse’s aide at a Caribou nursing home, Sherry Izaguirre said she would continue to work, but beyond that she didn’t know what she would do. She wondered out loud if she would get a chance to go to Honduras to attend her husband’s funeral there, or even visit his grave.

“I hope I can get down there,” she said. “But I probably won’t.”