| For five years, Dean Lafoy Brower had taken a Metrolink train each day to and from his job at a wastewater treatment plant in Burbank.
In 2005, the Ventura man got off one stop before his train crashed into an SUV parked on the tracks in Glendale, killing 11 people and injuring dozens more. The close call never stopped him from riding, his wife, Kim Brower, said Sunday, but after that day, he always rode in the third passenger car.
“I don’t know why he didn’t on Friday,” she said. “Maybe it was filled.”
It was noon Saturday — more than 19 hours after a Metrolink train collided with a freight train in Chatsworth — when Brower learned that her 51-year-old husband’s body had been pulled out of the first passenger car.
Dean Brower wasn’t even supposed to be on the train that day, his wife said. “He had been sick ... and he was going to call in.”
Before he left at 4:30 a.m. Friday, she asked him if he was sure he wanted to go to work. He replied he didn’t think that it would be fair to leave his co-workers one man down.
It was the last time the couple spoke.
“It doesn’t seem real,” she said Sunday. “I’m hanging in there ... but it has its moments.”
Dean and Kim Brower, married for 23 years, have three grown children, all with special needs. They co-own a multicultural arts and percussion center in Ventura, a family business that grew out of a love of percussion instruments and efforts to help special-needs children through music. |
