Louisiana and Mississippi medical personnel unload passengers following a crash involving a tractor-trailer and a bus carrying members of First Baptist Church of Eldorado, Texas, on I-20 near Tallulah Monday. Eight people died.(Melanue Duncan Thortis The Vicksburg Post)

[10/14/03]Any community would be proud to have as citizens those who died and those who were hurt when their bus wrecked Monday near Tallulah, members of their Texas town said.

“They’re just the salt of the earth the kind of people any community would love to have. They’re just solid folks,” said John Nikolauk, mayor of Eldorado, the West Texas town where the group had organized what was to be a 16-day fall sightseeing tour.

“This has taken out eight of our citizens who are wonderful people,” said David Doran, sheriff of Schleicher County. Eldorado is the county seat. “These are the pillars of our community.

“We’re a small community, so this is a major incident for us,” Doran said. Eldorado has about 3,000 residents. “We’re all friends.”

Nikolauk said he had spoken with several members of the group just before they left Sunday for the trip.

“I told them, Take it real slow and easy and enjoy the trip,'” he said. “And that was the last time I talked to them.”

A retired 30-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force who served in Vietnam and is originally from Connecticut, Nikolauk said that based on what he’s seen, Eldorado is a town with uncommon character.

“I haven’t seen one like this,” he said of the town. “It’ll be tough (to overcome the loss), but that’s just the way we are.”

Jessica Lozano, an 18-year-old employee of Amigo’s Dream, a restaurant and gift shop in Eldorado, said uncertainty spread throughout the town Monday as residents were unsure if their friends and family members were injured or had died in the crash.

“There is a lot of heartache here today,” she said this morning.

The local school board canceled its meeting Monday night, as family members of the bus occupants waited for news or drove to the area of the crash.

“They don’t have any information; they’re just trying to get there to be with them,” Doran said of some of the victims’ family members.

Five who died were Eldoradans. Three others were from Water Valley, Texas, a town about a tenth the size of Eldorado, about 60 miles away.

“They’re mostly elderly, but they’ve been active elderly,” Eldorado Nikolauk said.

The group of 15 was about 660 miles from home. It left Sunday after morning church services, bound for the Amish country of Pennsylvania on a trip of about two weeks, First Baptist Pastor Andy Anderson said. They spent Sunday night in a hotel in Shreveport and were planning to do the same Monday in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Anderson said.

The trip was one of about two a year the group, known as Senior Ambassadors, takes, Anderson said. “Usually a long trip and sometimes a shorter one. It was pretty much an annual thing. They would go somewhere that would take a couple of weeks.”

Previous trips had taken members of the group to the Grand Canyon, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and Branson, Mo., Nikolauk said. They had also traveled to London and Ireland, Anderson added.

Eldorado, on a west Texas plateau where U.S. highways 190 and 277 intersect, is the county’s only town. On a rail line between San Angelo and Sonora from 1930 until 1976, it became the region’s principal wool-processing center, and its population peaked in the mid-1960s at 2,790.

Founded in 1901, First Baptist now has a membership of about 350, making it among the larger of the approximately 13 churches in Eldorado, said Randy Mankin, editor of The Eldorado Success, the town’s newspaper.