Zinter brothers seek closure for their father in Havre

Two brothers, on a mission for closure, came to Havre this week to see Great Northern Railway Steam Engine 2584, a sister engine to the one their father died on back in 1945 in a crash.

Brothers Gary and Ervin Zinter, who arrived this week in Havre by train from St. Paul, Minnesota, lost their father, also named Ervin Zinter, to a train crash with Engine 2581 in 1947 when the former was only 5 years old and the latter was only 5 days old, and they view this trip, in part, as a quest for closure.

"I felt like it was something I needed to do," said Gary Zinter "... I was kind of on a mission."

The engine is displayed outside the BNSF Railway offices on Main Street.

Engine 2581 carried three men that day in 1945; an engineer, a fireman and a supervising roadmaster, all of whom perished after the engine's boiler exploded and the train derailed near Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Gary Zinter had taken trips revolving around the memory of his father before, but he and his brother Ervin were recently sent a YouTube video detailing the history of the crash and it mentioned that a sister engine of the 2581 was in Havre.

"We had to come out here and take a look at it," Ervin Zinter said.

Gary Zinter said he was so young when his father died that he has little memory of him, but ones that do remain seem to revolve around the railroad with his brother Albert, who died 10 years ago from Parkinson's Disease.

"Dad would bring us down to the depot and we'd jump on things and have adventures as little kids," he said.

He said their father, who became a roadmaster at only 33 years old, would drive them across the rails on railroad speeders before taking them back, and they always wondered what their lives would have been like had he lived.

Ervin Zinter said his name was originally going to be something else, but after his father's death the family found that his birth certificate had never been signed, and they took the opportunity to name him after his father.

Gary Zinter said they would sometimes ask their mother, Dorothy, what their father was like, but his death was so traumatic that mentioning him would cause her incredible anguish, so they stopped asking after a while.

"She would just say 'He was a good man,' and start to cry," Zinter said. "We didn't want to make our mother cry."

Before their father's death, he said, he'd bought three separate life insurance policies and that, combined with what the railroad had given them, was enough to allow their mother to stay at home with them all the way through school before they went off to college, and all four of the siblings, including their sister, Janice, went on to have successful careers despite the loss so early in their family's life.

"We were very blessed," Zinter said.

Ervin Zinter said the older siblings were incredibly supportive during those days and helped make everything in the household work.

In addition to his name, Zinter also received his father's almost-100 year old pocket watch, one of the few things of his to survive the accident, and it still tells perfect time as long as it's kept wound.

"I still use it all the time," he said.

This isn't the first trip Gary Zinter had taken for the sake of connecting with his father.

The subject had sat in the back of the brothers' heads for a long time but they didn't want to trouble their mother so Gary Zinter asked for help from their father's five surviving sisters, asking them what he was like.

He also took a trip to a rail depot in North Dakota where he had a chance encounter with an old railroad worker.

"I asked him, 'Are you a railroad man?' He said, 'I'm retired, but yes.' I asked him, 'Were you working in 1945?' He looked at me and said 'Yes.' I asked him if he knew Ervin Zinter. He had a blank stare on his face as I told him Ervin was my father. And he said, 'He hired me, and he was the best pit boss I ever worked for.' 'Now just a minute,' I said, 'I'm going to go get my video camera and we're going to start over again.'"

Gary Zinter also took a trip and found the site of the explosion, using old clippings from the local newspaper to find the landmarks and information from a local farmer, who described the chaos of the night of the crash.

When he went to the local depot he was told about another man, now retired, who was working the railroad back in those days, told him the same thing the other man had.

His father was not supposed to be on that train, he was filling in for someone else.

Zinter said if they stumble across any more information the two might do another trip, but for now, this seems like it will be the last trip they take in pursuit of their father's memory.

Ervin Zinter said their trip out to Havre had been a memorable one, and it was fitting that they take a train into a town in a county named after James J. Hill to finish out this experience.

"We're a railroad family," Zinter said.

He said they could have flown in, but they wanted this to be an experience and the trip has been a good one, with some distant relatives greeting them at the Havre station with a colorful sign welcoming them to town.

He said they enjoyed eating in the dining car and watching the scenery of the country go past in the window as they traveled.

He said they were amazed by the amount of traffic still on the rails all these years later, with more than 30 trains going by them, some with 200 cars, a far cry from the typical 50 to 70 they saw in their younger days.

Gary Zinter said they were hoping to climb on the engine when they got to Havre, but there were some liability issues so they had to settle for looking at it, which was the only letdown of the trip.

He said he was at the Frank DeRosa Railroad Museum and he was told they were hoping to repaint the engine and he's considering making a large donation to make that happen, which they hopes could be done in his lifetime.

The brothers have since left Havre, returning to their homes, hopefully with the closure they sought.