NewsNation

Family friend remembers couple killed in Montana train derailment

(NewsNation Now) — A Georgia couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary was among those killed when an Amtrak train derailed on Sept. 26.

Officials identified 74-year-old Donald Varnadoe and his 72-year-old wife Marjorie as two of the three people who died in the crash.


Active in the community and in church, Don had been planning the cross-country trip for a long time and called it their “forever trip,” family friend Robert Kozlowski said. “It really was their forever trip.”

“The only comfort that we have even talked about is that it was their anniversary,” Kozlowski said of the real estate broker and his wife, a retired school teacher. “They got to spend it together.”

“The community is in shock right now,” Kozlowski said. “They can’t believe that in a train of 160 people or so that their two friends were the ones killed.”

No funeral arrangements have been made for the Varnadoes. A GoFundMe has been established for the third victim, Zack Schneider.

Five people injured in the derailment still remain hospitalized in Montana.