September 15, 1958: The Newark Bay Rail Disaster

September 15, 1958, 50 years ago: A commuter train derails off a bridge, and plunges into Newark Bay, killing 48 people, and injuring 48 more. Among the dead was a former Yankee star.

George Henry Stirnweiss was born on October 26, 1918 in Manhattan, and grew up in The Bronx. He remains the closest thing to a Yankee Legend who grew up in the Bronx Bombers' home Borough. Lou Gehrig grew up in Manhattan; Willie Keeler, Waite Hoyt and Willie Randolph in Brooklyn; and Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford in Queens. (Andrew Velazquez might be one, but that remains to be seen.)

His father had been a respected taxi driver, but got caught up in criminal activity, disgracing the family while George was a baseball, football and basketball star at Fordham Preparatory School. This may have been why, when he received scholarship offers, he didn't stay in The Bronx and go to Fordham University, but went south, to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

At Chapel Hill, he won the school's highest athletic honor, the Patterson Medal, which is awarded based on "athletic ability, sportsmanship, morale, leadership and general conduct." In 1940, the NFL's Chicago Cardinals drafted him. But, as with later University of Mississippi quarterback Jake Gibbs, the Yankees made him an offer, and he abandoned football for baseball.

It's not clear when, or why, George Stirnweiss first got the nickname "Snuffy." Maybe, playing in the South, either at UNC or for the Norfolk Tars, a Yankee farm team, he picked up the habit of chewing tobacco or using its nasal cousin, snuff. He certainly didn't resemble the rural comic strip character Snuffy Smith.

In 1943, defending American League Most Valuable Player Joe Gordon was called up into World War II. Snuffy was not. That led the Yankees to bring him to the major league roster as the starting 2nd baseman, giving him uniform Number 1. The Yankees won the World Series, although Snuffy was not a major contributor that season. But in 1944, he batted .319 and fielded brilliantly, finishing 4th in the MVP voting. In 1945, he batted .309, and that was enough to win the batting title and finish 3rd in the MVP voting.

With The War ending, there was a question of whether Snuffy had bulked up his stats on weakened pitching. Gordon returned as the starting 2nd baseman in 1946, and it looked like Snuffy's day in the Sun was over. But after that season, the Yankees traded Gordon to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Allie Reynolds. This was a brilliant trade for both teams: Gordon helped the Indians win the World Series in 1948, while the Yankees essentially got 2 players: Reynolds, their pitching ace through 1954, and the "return" of Stirnweiss.

He helped the Yankees win the World Series again in 1947, getting 7 hits and drawing 8 walks in the 7 games. But by the time of their 1949 title, he had been replaced as starting 2nd baseman by Jerry Coleman. He was traded to the St. Louis Browns in 1950 and the Indians in 1951, and retired after the 1952 season.

Snuffy managed in the minor leagues, with the Philadelphia Phillies' Class AA team, the Schenectady Blue Jays; then for the Yankees' team in the same league, the Binghamton Triplets. But he didn't like managing, and it didn't pay well, and he had a wife and 6 children to support. He worked for a bank, but had a heart attack in 1957, and never returned to work for them.

Instead, he went to work for Caldwell & Company, a manufacturer of light fixtures, in Manhattan. Every morning, he would go to the Central Railroad of New Jersey station near his home in Red Bank, Monmouth County, and take the train up the Raritan Bayshore, past Newark Airport, and over Newark Bay, to the Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City, where he would take a ferry across the Hudson River into The City.

On September 15, 1958, he got on CRRNJ train #3314 in Red Bank, but the train never made it to Communipaw. The Newark Bay lift bridge was left open, and at 10:01 AM, the train went straight through signals, and 2 of the cars fell into the Bay. George H. "Snuffy" Stirnweiss was 1 of 48 people killed. He was just short of turning 40.

The locomotive crew were among those killed, so there was no one to interview about the cause of the crash. The investigation turned up nothing. No one was charged.

Increased car sales, the building of the New Jersey Turnpike (particularly the Newark Bay Extension in 1956) and the Garden State Parkway, and a 2nd and 3rd tube for the Lincoln Tunnel meant that the Jersey Central had already begun to decline, and it pretty much abandoned the bridge by 1967. Conrail took over the railroad's operations in 1976, stopped passenger service in 1978, and demolished the bridge in 1980.

The spot where Snuffy Stirnweiss and the others fell to their deaths is a few feet from the Jersey Gardens Mall in Elizabeth, Union County. He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, across the Navesink River from Red Bank, in Middletown. Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi is also buried there, because Red Bank was his wife Marie's hometown.