50 years ago, horrific collision killed 9 - cows fell all around

In the hours just before dawn, Sunday, Dec. 20, 1959, a Greyhound bus and a cattle truck collided on the old Benson Highway, close to where Interstate 10 and Wilmot Road intersect today.

Everyone on the bus - none from Tucson - was either killed or injured. Also killed were the bus driver and the two men in the cab of the cattle truck.

About 45 cattle were also killed - some of them flung into the double-decker bus, which, reported the Star, was a "Christmas-rush 'extra' bound for New Orleans from Los Angeles."

The accident occurred about 4:15 a.m., just 15 minutes after the bus had changed drivers and departed from Tucson.

Eight Arizona Highway Patrol cars, nine sheriff's cars, nine ambulances, three firetrucks and several wreckers raced to the scene. Many of the wailing ambulances made more than one trip.

Most of the 67 head of cattle in the truck were 400-pound calves on their way to a cattle staging area near Phoenix, reported the Star.

Officers had to shoot some of the badly injured cattle. Still other cattle were running around the countryside, the Star reported.

Two priests administered last rites to the dying, and officers took fingerprints of the victims for identification.

By the time former Arizona Daily Star reporter Don Carson got to the scene that morning, the dead and injured had all been removed. "There were dead cattle on the road. I do remember that," says Carson.

While Star reporter Jerry Smothers wrote the main story that day, Carson headed to Tucson hospitals to talk to some of the survivors.

"It was the noisiest bus trip I'd ever taken," Martha O'Guynn, 27, of Berkeley, Calif., told Carson. "It was really a jolly crew. Everyone was heading for special Christmas celebrations."

The cattle truck hurtling west toward Tucson was in the wrong lane at the time of the impact with the eastbound bus, Arizona Highway Patrol officer B.D. Velasco told the Star.

A day later, Velasco, who was a district commander for Tucson, attributed the crash to driver fatigue on the part of the cattle truck driver. "Our investigation shows the driver was driving practically nonstop from Jackson, Miss.," Velasco told reporters.

Tests of the driver's blood indicated he had taken Benzedrine tablets. Several tablets also were found in the demolished truck cab. Tests on the dead bus driver proved negative.

The accident occurred near where Interstate 10 was being constructed, and only one lane each way on the Benson Highway was open to traffic. Investigators estimated the speed of each vehicle on impact at 50 mph.

Velasco, who spent 27 years with what is now the Department of Public Safety, died last July. But his wife, Alejandra Velasco, still remembers the accident - and how it affected her husband.

"He did talk about it at the time," says Velasco. "He always referred to it as the worst accident he'd ever investigated."

Many of the passengers' bodies were badly mutilated, including that of a baby.

Coming just before Christmas, the accident was especially poignant, particularly after one of the injured was identified as a 2-year-old boy whose mother had died holding him in her arms.

In critical but improving condition at Tucson Medical Center, little Carroll Smillie was soon inundated with well-wishers who jammed his room in the pediatrics ward with Christmas presents.

His only words, repeated over and over, were, "cow-cow," reported the Star. Cows from the cattle truck were apparently thrown near him inside the bus.

The boy's grandmother in San Francisco was planning to visit him and take custody, and sympathetic Tucsonans started up a fund to finance her trip.

Within a month, personal injury suits asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars were being filed in Pima County Superior Court. Initial defendants named were the Greyhound Bus Co.; Frank McGraw and his wife, of Texas, who were the owners of the cattle truck; and M.M. Sundt Construction Co.,

The plaintiffs alleged that the bus driver was negligent in the operation of his vehicle, and that Sundt had failed to properly light and post warning signs at the construction site.

By May of 1960, 16 of the suits had been consolidated, seeking a total of nearly $3 million in damages.

That figure rapidly dwindled by January of 1961, when 23 lawsuits - almost all that had been filed - were settled out of court for a total of $190,000.

Today, travelers routinely zip by the creosote flats, gas stations and motels along I-10 near the Wilmot Road exit - totally unaware of the carnage created there 50 years ago this month.

Bonnie Henry's column appears Sundays and Mondays. Reach her at 573-4179 or at bhenry@azstarnet.com or write to P.O. Box 26807, Tucson, AZ. 85726.