Surviving friends and relatives often make keepsake rubbings at the IAM Workers’ Memorial. Local 2914 members, from left, Richie Hinton, Carol Kromkowski and Teneka Skinner make an impression of the brick bearing the name of fellow IAM member Denise “Dennie” Bogucki, who was killed in a workplace accident.

The death of a co-worker is as wrenching as the sudden death of a family member. When the cause is a preventable accident, the emotions run from anger and outrage to a fierce determination to punish the guilty and protect others from ever suffering such a fate.

The recent Workers’ Memorial Day service at the William W. Winpsinger Center showed how deeply IAM members feel the loss of their brothers and sisters.

Friends and family of Local 2914 member Denise “Dennie” Bogucki, 43, gathered at the foot of the Lighthouse Monument to remember the mother of two.

Bogucki perished after being crushed between a pushback tractor and a Northwest Airlines aircraft. “It’s a tragedy for something like this to happen to a person who loved life as much as she did,” said husband and co-worker Richard Bogucki.

Also memorialized at this year’s service were five IAM members from Local 2386 who died last July when a gunman opened fire at a Lockheed Martin facility in Meridian, MS.

“It was the last place I would have thought anything like that would happen,” said Charles Harrington, District 73 Business Representative, who remembered the victims as the closest of friends who worked side by side for years.

The death of Local 1379 member Timothy Blow at Kennedy Valve in Elmira, New York, highlights the need for vigilance. A new employee working alone, Tim Blow, 46, died when he fell into the steel blades of an unguarded gravel separator. In 1995, another worker at the plant was killed when a furnace exploded.

Investigations are ongoing in each of these cases, now part of a grim list that includes more than 65,000 U.S. and Canadian workers who died last year from job- related injuries and illnesses.

“It is up to us, the survivors, to make our workplaces safer through education, legislation and our collective bargaining contracts,” said Mike Flynn, Director of the IAM’s Safety and Health Department.