ELDENA – It was a family breakfast filled with warmth and affection 50 years ago that still brings Joyce Bothe comfort today.

“We always had breakfast as a family, and what a wonderful morning we had that day before going to school,” the 85-year-old Amboy native said. “For that I am grateful; I think it was God’s plan.”

It was on that Sept. 20, 1966, morning her 13-year-old son William, fondly known as “Bill,” went to Eldena School and never came home.

It was that day the school’s eighth-grade class of boys fell from seven to two.

“I was told I should hurry back to the school,” Bothe said. “It was very shocking for the whole town; it was very saddening.”

Bill and four of his classmates accompanied school custodian Everett Mullens to chain a road grader to the back of his Ranchero pickup truck and escort the machine to the other side of the railroad tracks across from the school.

The truck was stopped on the tracks in the path of an oncoming Illinois Central freight train, and its six passengers died in the collision.

In the truck were Mullens, 73, of Eldena; along with Bill Bothe, 13, Reid Miller, 12, Robert Michael Enlow, 14, all of Amboy; James Shoemaker, 12, of Eldena; and Martin A. Cruse, 14, of Dixon.

Reid’s brother, Rory Miller, was 8 at the time and just as school was letting out, he and the students were shuffled back into the building while the school bus driver went to his parents’ farm about 5 miles from town.

“It was the first time I saw my dad cry,” Miller said. “With something like this, you don’t comprehend it until you have your own kids, until you can see the hurt that it would have.”

The Millers found solace in a journal entry Reid had written 6 months before the accident.

“He had made an entry that he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior, and it was a great comfort to my parents,” Rory said.

Though a half-century has passed and their footsteps in the community have long faded, Miller said the boys are not forgotten; they are preserved and shared through memories.

“Reid was very intelligent, and Mom always said she named him right,” he said. “He was always reading books.”

Bill was an “A” student and a 4-H Club member who enjoyed showing his calf at the fair.

“He was a very nice boy,” Bothe said. “He looked forward to playing football one day.”

Bill’s brother, Joe Bothe, who lives in DeKalb and was 7 at the time of the crash, said Bill would have likely stayed in the area to carry on the family farm.

“There are times when I think about what Bill would be doing right now. I think I was fortunate that I was younger and couldn’t fully grasp it; it’s hard to imagine it’s been 50 years.”