Stranglers – "Straighten Out" (1977)

I’ll tell you things

That’ll make your curls

Straighten out

[NOTE: This post started out as one thing, and ended up as something very different.  

I took a long bike ride on Sunday, and planned to write a post about the history of the rail trail I rode – including photos of flowers, old buildings, and train cars that I took while on the ride.  But I stumbled upon something that took me in a very different direction.  

What this post ultimately ended up becoming is interesting, I think, but also very sad.  So if you’re not in the mood for something like that today, feel free just to skip to the end and listen to today’s featured song.]

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On November 18, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln took a Northern Central Railway train from Baltimore to Hanover Junction, Pennsylvania, where he connected to a Hanover Branch Railroad train that took him and his party to Gettysburg:

Lincoln’s Gettysburg train
at Hanover Junction in 1863

The next day, Lincoln attended the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, and delivered the most famous speech in American history – the 271-word Gettysburg Address. 

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Lincoln passed through Hanover Junction one other time.  On April 21, 1865, a Northern Central Railway train carrying the martyred president’s coffin left Baltimore and passed through Hanover Junction on the way to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

There it was carried by hearse to the State Capitol, where approximately 10,000 mourners filed past the coffin that night.

The next day, the coffin was placed on a train that carried it to Philadelphia.  Lincoln’s train eventually passed through New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago before arriving at Springfield, Illinois on May 3.

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The Northern Central Railway ceased operations in 1972, and the 41-mile stretch of its right-of-way that ran from Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania, eventually became a rail trail.

A replica of a Lincoln-era train
at Hanover Junction

The Pennsylvania portion of that rail trail is officially known as the York County Heritage Rail Trail.  On Mother’s Day, I rode the southern half of that trail from New Freedom – which sits just above the Mason-Dixon Line – to Hanover Junction and back.  

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There are quite a few benches along the rail trail where tired hikers or bikers can stop and rest.  Nearly all those benches have small plaques commemorating a friend or family member who has passed away.

I happened to notice one such plaque that was a little different:

“End of watch” has two meanings when used by law enforcement personnel.  It usually refers to the end of a police officer’s shift, or “watch.”  But it can also refer to the date of the death of an officer who was killed in the line of duty.

Here’s an account of Officer David Tome’s death from a local newspaper:

David Tome died doing what he loved – being a police officer.

Those who knew Tome said he was a dedicated officer with Northern York County Regional Police, a great husband and father of two and an all-around likeable guy. . . .

While re-creating a fatal crash from earlier in the week, Tome was struck and killed Tuesday by a vehicle on Route 15, near Clear Springs Road in Franklin Township.  Tome and two other officers had set up orange warning cones in the middle of the right southbound lane of Route 15 about 9 a.m. when he was struck.

York County Coroner Barry Bloss said Tome's family is struggling to understand the death.

"They are absolutely devastated," he said.

Tome, 31, graduated from Spring Grove Area High School in 1996. His wife of seven years, Dody, was his classmate. The couple has a son and a daughter.

Tome became a police officer after graduating from Harrisburg Area Community College's 83rd Police Academy in 2003. He served as a regional officer for the past five years.

[Police chief Carl] Segatti said Tome was a good officer with a strong work ethic.  He loved and enjoyed his job in the uniformed patrol division, where he specialized as an accident reconstructionist, Segatti said.

Officer David Tome

The two other officers who were there at the time of the crash are doing as well as can be expected, Segatti said.  The police department closed Wednesday to mourn the loss of a fellow officer, he said. . . .

Fellow police officers have taken the death rather hard, a reality check that the job is often dangerous and deadly, several law enforcement representatives said.

"We like to think we are tougher than the average citizen out there," Segatti said. "We are when we have work to do.  But we have the same emotions as everyone.  We just don't have the luxury to show them."

Tome was struck by a 2006 Saturn Vue driven by Joanna Seibert of Dillsburg.  Seibert was shaken up by the crash and taken to Gettysburg Hospital for observation, police said.

Through a family member, Seibert declined to comment Tuesday.

Based on a preliminary investigation, Seibert hit the brakes and tried to stop before hitting Tome.  The impact sent Tome's body over a guardrail and down an embankment, killing him instantly.

An autopsy conducted Tuesday at Lehigh Valley Hospital determined Tome died of multiple blunt force trauma.

 Officer Tome's fellow officers pay tribute to him 

Based on the location of the injuries, it appears Tome was hit from the back or the side, indicating he either did not see the car coming or saw it at the last second, Bloss said.

By the time Tome heard Seibert skidding on the highway, it was too late to get out of the way, he said.

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Joanna Seibert was convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of Officer Tome.  This account of her November 30, 2011, sentencing is from another local newspaper article:

A Dillsburg woman convicted in a crash that killed a police officer was sentenced today to . . . 1 year minus a day to 5 years minus a day in York County Prison.

The judge rejected a request for house arrest for Seibert, who is pregnant.  She's due to deliver in mid-February, so Kelly ordered her to begin serving on March 14.

Seibert, 40, was convicted Oct. 12 of homicide by vehicle and tampering with evidence in the 2008 accident on Route 15 near Dillsburg in which Northern York County Regional Police Officer David Tome, 31, was hit and killed by Seibert’s SUV.

The sentencing came after two hours of emotional testimony from Tome’’ and Seibert’s families this afternoon.

Jamie Bell, Tome's sister, said there are mementos and monuments to Tome in York County, “but they're all we have. There's no David.”

She said she hadn't heard from Seibert since the crash and didn't care to hear from her today. “I am not going to forgive you,” Bell said. “As far as I'm concerned, you can go to hell.”

Seibert said she thinks about Tome every day and that if it would ease the family's grief she would trade places with him.  “But that cannot happen,” she said.

Tome was starting work on an accident reconstruction on Route 15 south near Clear Spring Road in Franklin Township south of Dillsburg when he was hit and killed on Oct, 21, 2008.  Seibert was speeding and tailgating the vehicle ahead of her and had been using her iPhone and applying makeup.  [NOTE: Seibert maintained she was distracted by something in her eye.]  

Prosecutor Tim Barker has called those three factors, speeding, tailgating and not paying attention, “the trifecta of death.”

In court documents, Seibert said she is pregnant and had asked the court to sentence her to house arrest.  Defense lawyer Ed Spreha said house arrest is appropriate because of a serious medical condition discovered in the fetus.  Spreha said the baby has been diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition that will require Seibert to relocate to the Philadelphia area for monitoring during the rest of her pregnancy. . . .

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You might suspect Seibert and her lawyer of exaggerating the seriousness of her unborn baby’s condition in hopes of persuading the judge not to send her to prison.  But you would be wrong.  

Seibert gave birth to a daughter with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, or CDH – the “potentially life-threatening condition” mentioned in there article above – in February 2012.  

The little girl died six weeks later, on March 15.

Seibert had originally been scheduled to start her prison term on March 14.  But after her baby was born, a judge delayed her reporting date until May 9.

She eventually served ten months in prison. 

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Most of the comments that were posted in response to a newspaper article announcing her early release expressed outrage:

– A wife without a husband, two children without a father for s lifetime, and the person who robbed them of him serves less than a year.  This disgusts me. . . . This punishment in no way fits the crime. 

– This is bullshit!!!!!  This wasn’t even her first offense of reckless driving!!!!!  She should have had to do life in prison . . . . Just sickening.

– This worthless bitch needs to rot in hell.

A few – very few – of the comments were more forgiving:

–It would be interesting to see how all those quick to judge (of course you have never made a mistake, needed a second chance, driven distracted . . . you’re all saints) would feel if the killer was your family member as opposed to the victim.  There are always two perspectives.  You could be changing a radio station tomorrow and hit someone . . . does that mean you deserve to fry, rot in hell, etc.?

– Pray for her, her family and Officer Tome’s family.  If you judge, you will be judged!  We all are guilty of something!  Let ye who have not sinned cast stones!

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I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to post a photo of the rail-trail bench with the plaque commemorating Officer Tone.

But once I started telling the story, I didn’t feel that I could stop in the middle of it.

The deeper I got into it, the worse things got.  Unfortunately, that’s the way life goes sometimes.

There’s really no good way to end this post, is there?

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Today’s featured song was a non-album B-side released by the Stranglers in 1977.  (If a song as good as “Straighten Out” wasn’t good enough to be included on one of the Stranglers’ albums, imagine how good the songs that did make the cut were.)

The Stranglers in 1978

I first heard “Straighten Out” on  Steven Lorber’s legendary “Mystic Eyes” radio show in the summer of 1980.

Click here to listen to “Straighten Out.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: