Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 16, 1993 TAG: 9306160071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
The family died Sunday when their car was struck by a tractor-trailer in West Virginia.
Losing all three was a tragedy, friends said.
"We just sit and work and cry," Kathy Bowers, whose husband is co-owner of Bowers Mechanical Corp. in Pulaski where Joseph Hamill worked, said Tuesday afternoon. "All his fellow employees are sadly hurt. We're just having a hard time facing it. . . . He was a good worker, dedicated to this place, very dedicated."
The Hamills and their 4-year-old son were returning from Pittsburgh, towing a boat trailer Joseph Hamill's father had given them, when they were killed.
Vickie Hamill's mother, Nellie Donley, said Tuesday that her daughter was a good driver and that perhaps the extra load of the trailer caused the accident.
"Vickie was not a reckless driver," Nellie Donley said. "I feel like maybe the trailer pushed on the car" as she slowed for other traffic.
"It's like the trooper told us, it's just something I'll never know."
Vickie Hamill, 37, was driving south on U.S. 19 near Summersville, W.Va., following traffic on the two-lane road, when she pulled into the opposite lane and into the path of a tractor-trailer driven by a South Carolina man.
Vickie Hamill worked at Pulaski Community Hospital.
Joseph Hamill, 34, was a volunteer with the Dublin Fire Department. His wife belonged to the Ladies' Auxiliary.
They met in the 1970s when she was visiting a brother in Norfolk, Donley said. Joseph Hamill was in the Navy. They were married in 1978, lived in Oklahoma for eight years and moved to Dublin in 1989.
Nathan, their only child, was adopted at birth after the couple had been married for 10 years. "She wanted a baby so bad," Donley said. "He was one special little boy."
Vickie Hamill also did a lot of work for her church, Gethsemane Baptist in Radford, where the funeral will be held Thursday at 11 a.m.
The family will receive friends today from 7 until 9 p.m. at Bower Funeral Chapel in Pulaski.
Dublin firefighters have been asked to serve as pallbearers, Fire Chief Robbie Cecil said.
Daryl Anderson, one of two paid firefighters, said Joseph Hamill had been a volunteer for about three years.
"He was a real active member. He took a real good interest in it. He was a real good firefighter," Anderson said.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB