Ceremony honors van crash victims Family, friends gather at bridge 1 year later

ALLAGASH WILDERNESS WATERWAY – Two-year-old Bailee Mallett was full of life Friday, playing around the John’s Bridge where her father died along with 13 other foreign workers a year ago to the day.

The toddler squealed as she broke free from her mother’s grasp and ran toward the wooden planks that span the bridge between Churchill and Eagle lakes.

She took her shoes off, as toddlers like to do, and got her pink-painted toenails dirty on the dusty road that leads to the bridge.

And when she saw a picture of her father, Juan Turcios-Matamoros, among the mementos set up on folding tables on the bridge, Bailee exclaimed, “That’s my daddy, Juan!”

Bailee was one of 61 children left behind when the 14 men died around 8 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2002.

Turcios-Matamoros was driving the men to work when the van came around a corner and started across the John’s Bridge with the passenger wheels riding up on the short railing rather than the travel lane.

Before he could correct the steering, the van flipped over the side of the bridge and onto its roof in 15 feet of water. Only one man escaped death that day. A Maine State Police report said the van was traveling at an “imprudent speed.”

The men, from Honduras and Guatemala, were foreign workers employed by an Idaho contractor to thin trees on private timberlands in Maine’s woods.

“She’s so much like her father,” said Bailee’s mother, Lisa Mallett, as she tried to hold her exuberant toddler. “He acted the same way.” Turcios-Matamoros fathered the child with Mallett while he was working out of the Caribou area. He also left behind a wife and three children in Honduras.

Years from now, Bailee won’t remember her father or that he was the driver of the van that day, Lisa Mallett said. But she will be reminded that she kissed flowers and threw them off the bridge to remember her dad and that, at times, she chewed on the frame of a picture of him holding her when she was only 1.

“She will know everything I can possibly tell her,” said Lisa, wiping tears from her eyes as her toddler walked beside her. “I’m blessed to have her.”

About a dozen other family members and friends of the men who died gathered on the banks of the waterway Friday. All were wearing T-shirts that read “In Loving Memory Of” and carried the names of the victims.

Tears flowed as they stood by the placid waterway. Those in attendance spent a couple of hours staring at the beautiful surroundings, which they said gave them peace after a year of excruciating grief.

The scheduled 2 p.m. memorial service began about 45 minutes late, only when the mourners were ready to proceed.

“We sincerely believe that you found the gateway to heaven in the forest of Maine,” said Greg Reed, a forestry worker advocate who conducted the service on the waterway’s banks.

The Rev. Mike Hinken of Holy Rosary Catholic Church blessed the waterway by saying, “I think God hurts when we hurt.”

“We pray that all future travelers will be protected,” Hinken added.

After the service, Sherry Izaguirre, whose husband, Carlito, died in the accident, and her friends put 15 lighted candles in holders on a wreath, one for each of the men who were in the van.

Then Izaguirre, her twin sister Sandy Belmain, and Reed placed the wreath on the water and watched it drift away from the bridge. A loon floated nearby then dunked its head in the water. “Amazing Grace” resounded from a CD player.

Reed said now is the time for mourners to quit blaming others, including the forestry industry, for their perceived roles in the accident.

The men were under pressure to get to their job site to make up for lost thinning time the day before the accident because of bad weather, the survivor said at a press conference on Sept. 13, 2002.

“What I do ask is that we put aside the unpeacefulness that rests in our hearts so these men can rest in peace,” Reed said.

Listening to Reed was Bill Brown, a unit manager for Seven Islands Land Co. of Bangor, which manages the property the men were hired to thin.

“We all felt real badly about what happened,” said Brown, who mentioned he was attending the service “out of respect for the victims.”

Sept. 12, 2002, he said, “was a terrible day.”