A Truck Left the Road: The Death of Terry Calderwood

Terry Calderwood drove north on Lancaster. It was June and the road was dry. The air was warm. The light was good. He was alone in the truck.

He passed Glenwood. He did not reach Home Depot. Somewhere in between, the truck left the road and went into a culvert. No one knows why. That is what the police said. They did not say more.

Terry was 55. He taught welding part-time at Chemeketa. A good trade. A man teaches what he knows. He worked with fire and metal. He gave it to others. That is a kind of life.

After the truck hit the culvert, it kept moving. There was a fence. The truck stopped there. His phone called for help. It knew something was wrong. The firefighters came. They tried. They brought him to Salem Hospital. He died there.

It was not the only death on that road. Jesse Wadley, a man on a motorcycle, died the day before. Just down the way. Two deaths on Lancaster in two days. Six deaths in Salem already this year. That is what the paper said.

The police are looking into it. They have a team for that. They measure the angles and the skid marks. They write the report. It won’t change the truth.

A man got in his truck on Friday and he did not come home. That is the thing that happened.