NJ Worker Fatalities Remembered at Turnpike Memorial Service

It's been five years, one funeral, and several memorial ceremonies at the NJ Turnpike Authority for Gina Dudek from when she was transformed overnight from a loving wife and mother into a widow quietly grieving for her dead husband.

This year, though, it was different. Not just that it was the fifth anniversary since Dirk Dudek, a Turnpike maintenance worker, was on a routine call, sitting in his parked work vehicle on the shoulder of the roadway when the driver of a tractor trailer struck Dudek's truck from behind and changed the family's lives forever.

For Gina Dudek, it was the knowledge at the Worker Memorial Day ceremony, held at the Turnpike Authority's executive headquarters in Woodbridge, that the man who had been convicted in the death of her husband was now free.

"My husband was robbed of all of this," Mrs. Dudek said, dabbing her eyes as she spoke of her daughter, Brittany, now a young woman, to the group gathered to memorialize the public and private employees who had been killed on the job.

In February, 2006, Steven Harlee was the driver of the tractor trailer who crashed into Dudek's parked truck on a southern stretch of the Turnpike near Bellmawr in Camden County. He was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to five years in prison, but released last September.

Harlee had been using cocaine and was impaired at the time of the crash, Mrs. Dudek said.

"He took my husband's life," she said, wearing her husband's bright orange safety vest, his photo ID dangling from her neck. "Dirk was my childhood sweetheart."

Gina Dudek's story was one of the more horrific tales at the memorial ceremony, but the reality that the deaths of all 33 workers who died last year in the course of their jobs were all tragic came through time and again.

"Everyone who puts in a day's work should have the expectation that they will return home," said NJ Commissioner of Labor Harold J. Wirths, who read a proclamation from Gov. Chris Christie to commemorate the memorial service. 

"Even one loss is one too many," Wirths said.

Rosemary plants were given out to be grown in remembrance and a wreath was symbolically laid in the memory of those who had died.

Everyone had a tale to tell, including Joseph Schwed, chairman of the NJ State Industrial Safety Committee, which co-sponsored the memorial.

Schwed also serves as site safety inspector for the World Trade Center that is rising up again in New York.

"We remember those who didn't make it home," he said. "It's hurtful."

Gina Dudek decided to do more than just remember her beloved husband. She was so outraged that her husband's killer received a meager sentence and was released early from prison that she sought legislative help to increase penalties on vehicular homicide.

The bill - designated A-3117, but nicknamed Dirk's Law - would make death by auto in circumstances such as what happened to Dirk Dudek a first-degree felony. It is currently stuck in committee, but Gina Dudek is hopeful it will become law in New Jersey.

"This bill will help to make sure that anyone who commits this kind of a crime is kept behind bars longer," she said.