| Sources |
- [S73] Rawlings Funeral Home, Book 2, 9 Sep 1974.
Leonard Huston Reagan obituary
- [S23] Atchley Funeral Home, (http://www.atchleyfuneralhome.com/), 25 Jul 2010.
Bobby Gene Reagan
January 31, 1960 - July 25, 2010
Birthplace: Sevierville, Tennessee
Resided In: Sevierville Tennessee USA
Visitation: July 29, 2010
Service: July 29, 2010
Cemetery: Union Grove Cemetery
Bobby Gene Reagan, age 50 of Cosby, passed away Sunday, July 25, 2010.
He was preceded in death by his parents Leonard and Ralphine Reagan, sister Louise Brown, and brother Houston Reagan.
Survivors include his daughter and son-in-law Leanna and Jeremy Carty; step-daughters Sherry Cantrell, Edna Wilbourn and husband Jimmy; grandchildren Isaiah Carty; step-grandchildren Sarah and Kayla Wilbourn, Russell Mullins; brothers Kenneth, Charles, and Ronnie Reagan; sisters Kate Campbell, Pauline Worley, Mildred Hurst and Lola Maples; and several nieces and nephews.
The family will receive friends 5-7 PM Thursday with a funeral service beginning at 7 PM in the West Chapel of Atchley Funeral Home. A private graveside service will be held in Union Grove Cemetery. Arrangements by Atchley Funeral Home, Sevierville. (www.atchleyfuneralhome.com)
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 23 Jul 2010.
Search continues for Reagan
by DEREK HODGES
Bobby Reagan, 50, a Sevier County landfill worker, has been missing since around 9:15 a.m. Thursday.
PIGEON FORGE — After calling off their search for a man who went missing at the Sevier Solid Waste Compost Plant at 11 p.m. Thursday as night set in, rescue crews were back at work by 6 a.m. Friday, spending the entire day going over the facility with a fine-tooth comb.
Even so, it seems they still don’t have any idea what happened to 50-year-old Bobby Reagan, who disappeared during his shift Friday morning. With no indication Reagan, whose car remained at the plant Friday, left the area and no sign that something else happened to him, searchers were coming up cold in their effort to find him.
“We are still in missing person mode,” Pigeon Forge Fire Department Training Officer Chris Knutsen said early Friday afternoon, denying local media reports that indicated the operation had moved from rescue to recovery. “We’ve searched the area he was last seen here and the areas he was never seen in. We’re doing a very thorough search.”
Reagan worked on what’s called the tipping floor, the part of the plant where garbage trucks dump their cargo, directing a constant stream of traffic through the busy facility. From their the trash is piled up by front loaders for an initial sorting that separates inorganic materials like metal out of the mix. That heavy machinery then pushes the waste into one of four pits that feed what are called digesters, massive cylinders akin to the tubs in a clothes dryer, though on a much-larger scale.
A hydraulic ram pushes the trash into the digesters, where it tumbles with tons of the county’s waste. As it does, it’s broken down by the combined effort of gravity, heat and bacteria, with the end result a compost material that is sold to local farmers and gardeners.
The search effort started on the tipping floor, where workers methodically sifted through the piles of waste. At the same time, other crews patrolled the entire 170-acre landfill behind the plant, looking for any sign of Reagan while a helicopter circled above, doing the same thing.
When those efforts proved fruitless, the search turned to the digesters themselves. Crews apparently opened the tumblers Thursday afternoon, though they could not go in immediately because they had to let the heat — it gets up to 130 degrees inside — and dangerous fumes dissipate. By just after lunch Friday the searchers had checked the areas near the front and back of the digesters to no avail.
A fall into the digesters likely would have been a worst-case scenario for Reagan, who was last seen by coworkers about 9:15 a.m. Thursday. Knutsen said searchers would be trying to find other ways to go through the material, anything to find some sign of Reagan.
“I wish I could tell you, more than anything, that I know where he is, but I don’t,” said an obviously emotional and exhausted Tom Leonard, executive director of Sevier Solid Waste. “We’ve just got a lot to search and this is a difficult prospect.”
Knutsen said they will continue searching throughout the weekend.
The entire plant shut down as soon as workers realized Reagan had left his post and wasn’t in another part of the building taking a break. Adding to the concerns of Reagan’s family, some of whom stationed themselves in a truck parked outside the plant throughout the day waiting for any news, is the fact he apparently had some health issues. Reports indicate he had problems with high blood pressure and his heart, while a staffer at the facility said Reagan complained of a headache when he reported to work early Thursday morning.
The situation had folks like Ann Keasler, another Sevier Solid Waste employee, worried and hoping for divine intervention.
“All we can do now is pray,” Keasler said Friday. “I just keep getting asked, ‘Do you know anything yet?’ It’s tough to not know.”
Keasler said Reagan was always very polite to her, working hard not to foul up the floor of the scalehouse Keasler sometimes worked in after she mopped.
“He’d come and he got so he wouldn’t track stuff in, he’d just stand at the door and ask for a cup of coffee, so I’d make it for him,” Keasler said. “He was really nice. He really liked working here and he always wanted to please Tom.”
dhodges@themountainpress.com
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 25 Jul 2010.
Body recovered at compost plant; officials won’t confirm it is man missing on job since Thursday
Bobby Reagan
By BOB MAYES
PIGEON FORGE — A body was found in a digester area at the Sevier Solid Waste Compost Plant on Sunday afternoon, but authorities were not ready to confirm it was the man who disappeared while working in the area Thursday morning.
Pigeon Forge Fire Chief Tony Watson said the body was discovered by rescue workers at about 12:15 p.m. and was extricated at about 5:25. The body was to be transported to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, where an autopsy was to be performed this morning. Pigeon Forge Police Chief Jack Baldwin said dental records would be used to make a positive identification on the body.
Bobby Reagan, 50, a lifelong resident of Sevier County, had been on the job for several hours when he disappeared about 9:15 a.m. Thursday. Officials said at the time his car was still parked at the facility. The search for Reagan continued, without success.
After searching for Reagan from Thursday morning until late Saturday night, the search resumed at about 6 a.m. Sunday. The temperatures in the area in which the search was being conducted was between 130-150 degrees, Watson said, and rescuers could only work for about 10 minutes at a time.
“Going into those digesters was very labor intensive,” Watson said. “It was very hot in a confined space. We want to thank all of the agencies who worked with us. It was definitely a team effort and we appreciate all of their help. ...
“The community really helped us out. We had some restaurants that helped out with food and we had a lot of churches that were praying for us.”
Watson said technical support was given by a confined-space team from the Knox County Rescue Unit.
Chris Knutsen, training officer for the Pigeon Forge Fire Department, said Saturday that more than 1.5 million tons of trash had been moved in searching for Reagan, and additional equipment and manpower had been brought in. He said the search had also included the use of dogs and helicopters had been used in the search.
“Hopefully, this will bring some closure for a family,” Watson said.
Editor Stan Voit contributed to this report.
n bmayes@themountainpress
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 26 Jul 2010.
OSHA begins probe of death; medical examiner yet to confirm ID of body found Sunday
By JEFF FARRELL
PIGEON FORGE — The medical examiner has not yet verified the identity of remains found in a digester Sunday at the county’s compost plant, but the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation into the incident.
Bobby Reagan, 50, disappeared shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday while working as a tipping floor truck spotter at the facility. His disappearance led to a massive search at the facility and other property owned by Sevier Solid Waste, totaling about 200 acres.
That ended Sunday when searchers found a body inside one of the digesters at the composting plant. The remains were taken Monday for an autopsy and identification, but Monday evening Pigeon Forge Police Chief Jack Baldwin said he hadn’t received confirmation of the identity.
TOSHA officials in Nashville, however, confirmed they were looking into the incident; it is standard procedure for the agency to investigate a fatality at any work place.
“TOSHA is investigating ... and as typical for an investigation like this we don’t’issue details until the investigation is complete,” TOSHA spokesman Jeff Hentschel said.
It could be four to six weeks before TOSHA releases the results, he said.
Sevier Solid Waste Director Tom Leonard said the landfill was open Monday, but counselors were on hand for employees who wanted to talk to them.
“We’ve been open the whole time, (but) all the garbage is going to the landfill,” he explained. They were not using the digesters in the area where Reagan was working during the search, he said.
Reagan worked for the landfill for 10 years, and had received safety training, Leonard said.
It’s too early at this point to determine if the incident will lead to any new safety measures. “Since we don’t’ know what happened, I don’t know what to say,” Leonard said.
In the meantime, he issued a statement on behalf of Sevier Solid Waste that acknowledges the likelihood that the remains belong to Reagan.
“All of the staff at Sevier Solid Waste are deeply saddened by the loss of Bobby Reagan,” he said. “He was a loyal employee, a friend and a part of the Sevier Solid Waste family. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family during their time of need.
“I would like to thank all of the rescue workers who aided in the search and specifically thank the Pigeon Forge Fire Department, who directed the effort.”
jfarrell@themountainpress.com
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 26 Jul 2010.
Searchers vowed to stay until they found Reagan
Personnel entering the digesters of the composting plant during the search for Bobby Reagan had to wear protective suits that offered little ventilation while they worked in temperatures that exceeded 100 degrees. Pictured from left, Pigeon Forge firefighters Kevin Nunn, Wesley Huskey and Marty Messick suit up to go inside.
By JEFF FARRELL
PIGEON FORGE — Searchers worked through 100 degree temperatures inside and out, but they weren’t going to leave the Sevier County landfill until they located Bobby Reagan.
The remains they found in a digester Sunday after three days of searching have not been officially identified, but the search has been called off and Sevier Solid Waste Director Tom Leonard issued a statement saying the staff is “saddened by the loss of Bobby Reagan.”
Pigeon Forge Training Officer Chris Knutsen oversaw the search, which involved personnel from a multitude of agencies.
“We weren’t going to leave that facility until we searched every possible place we could search, including those digester tubes,” Knutsen said. “If he was still there we were going to find him before we left, which meant we were going to look in every place we could.”
That required a lot of manpower, he said, because there were about 180 acres of property to search at the landfill in addition to the closed in spaces of the digesters.
While there was speculation from the start that Reagan had fallen into a digester, they planned their search as though he could be anywhere on the grounds. He disappeared while working on the tipping floor Thursday, and his car remained at the landfill. Family members said they hadn’t heard from him, and both they and his coworkers said it would have been out of character for him to randomly leave the job he’d held for more than 10 years.
So during the entire search, personnel were combing over the landfill property as well as the interior of the digesters in the composting facility.
“We didn’t have any clues if he was hurt, if he was there, if he did just get up and leave, so we worked in the area where he was last seen and we worked the whole facility,” Knutsen said.
They called in tracking dogs and cadaver dogs the first day and during subsequent searches, he said, and they used helicopters with infrared equipment to scan the area as well.
Knutsen also had personnel on the ground performing a grid search in which they would go over the ground while staying in a row looking for Reagan.
It was hard work during days where the heat index was well over 100 degrees for much of the time and there was little shade and no shelter. They were going over waste or working through overgrown brush for much of that time as well, he said.
Conditions were no better for personnel working inside, especially those who went inside the digesters. There’s no heating or shredding equipment inside the tubes, he explained, but temperatures reach 150 degrees during the process just as part of the chemical reactions that break down the waste.
Temperatures stayed over 100 degrees even after they opened the tubes and emptied much of the waste before working their way through the tubes. The process leaves the tubes filled with a lot of carbon dioxide and little oxygen, meaning personnel had to use oxygen tanks or tubes connected to tanks while working in the digesters. They also had to wear protective suits that made it even hotter.
“The personal protection they were offers no ventilation,” he said. In those conditions, he said, teams could only work for a few minutes at a time before they had to come back out.
After all those efforts, they found a body in the digester Sunday. While the remains are believed to be Reagan, they were sent to a medical examiner for official identification and for an autopsy and the results were not available Monday.
In the meantime, Knutsen praised the efforts of all the personnel who took part in the search. Counseling was being offered Monday for the searchers as well as for employees at the landfill.
“Words could not describe how hard those emergency service personnel worked those last four days,” he said. “They went above and beyond any expectation.”
jfarrell@themountainpress.com
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 27 Jul 2010.
Remains confirmed as those of Reagan
Bobby Reagan
By JEFF FARRELL
PIGEON FORGE — A medical examiner has confirmed the remains found Sunday in the composting plant of Sevier Solid Waste belong to Bobby Reagan, the employee who went missing from the plant Thursday. His cause of death has not been determined.
Reagan, a tipping floor truck spotter, would guide garbage trucks entering the facility to the area where they would release their cargo. He vanished shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday, and law enforcement and emergency personnel searched for him until Sunday afternoon when they found remains inside one of the digesters used to break down waste at the plant.
While they concluded the search after finding the remains, officials could not confirm the body’s identity until they compared the remains with dental records. Pigeon Forge Police Chief Jack Baldwin announced the confirmation Tuesday.
The medical examiner has not announced the cause of death, Baldwin said. His department is awaiting that announcement before deciding if the case needs to be investigated further. There’s been no reason to suspect foul play, but there were apparently no witnesses to Reagan’s death.
“Anytime you have an unattended death, you look at it with some speculation,” he said. “You don’t want foul play to be involved in a death and you didn’t look at it, so we will follow up if we deem that there’s (a reason),” he said.
The Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation into the incident, but that is standard procedure for any fatality at a work place. Officials there said it could take several weeks before their work is completed.
Reagan was 50 years old and had worked at the landfill for more than 10 years. He was a lifelong resident of Sevier County.
jfarrell@themountainpress.com
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 18 Aug 2010.
Probe continues into death of sanitation worker
By DEREK HODGES
PIGEON FORGE — The investigation into last month’s death of a worker at the Sevier County Solid Waste Compost Plant continues, with an investigator from the Tennessee Division of Occupational Safety and Health working on a probe into the incident.
Sevier Solid Waste (SSW) Director Tom Leonard thinks it may yet be weeks or even months before the state official concludes his study into Bobby Reagan’s death at the plant.
“He was at the plant yesterday looking around where the accident happened and interviewing everyone who was in the area,” Leonard said following Wednesday’s meeting of the SSW Board of Directors. “He told me his next step is going to be talking to the detectives with the Pigeon Forge Police Department, but I don’t think he has been able to get in touch with them yet.”
It seems likely the autopsy report, which could still be a few weeks off, will also be part of the investigation, Leonard said. In particular, there is considerable interest in determining whether Reagan — who apparently had some health problems — died before or after falling into one of the compost plant’s digesters.
Leonard said he and his staff are as interested as anyone to hear the results of the probe. With guidelines intended to keep workers safe already in place before Reagan’s death, officials with SSW are waiting for the information from the Occupational Safety folks to determine what more can or should be done.
“Right now we’ve kind of just got to wait and see what we can do,” Leonard said. “We’re discussing things to see if there is anything we can do to improve safety at the plant. That’s a discussion we have each day.”
For the time-being, no one is filling the position Reagan held. He disappeared while on the job July 22. After several days of searching, emergency responders found Reagan’s body inside the digester, a machine that tumbles the county’s waste until it is broken down to usable compost.
The plant remained closed until just a week ago Wednesday, with the big bay doors down for weeks and trash-hauling trucks diverted to dump their loads into the landfill. Since the facility reopened, the driver of a loader that pushes the refuse into the digesters has been directing traffic into the facility and doing his best to fill in on Reagan’s other tasks.
Among those, and the only reason Reagan would have been anywhere near an area where his body could end up in the digester, is checking the waste stream for prohibited materials. Workers on what’s called the tipping floor, the area where the trucks tip their loads out, do a visual check of the piles of trash to ensure those items don’t end up in the digesters.
That’s because things like tires, hoses, wires, bungee cords, carpet and other construction waste can cause the digesters to malfunction or even be damaged if they end up inside. Workers have to pull the materials out and pile them up to be taken to another area that can handle them.
“It’s just stuff that does not belong in a garbage can or in the digesters,” Leonard said. “This is the biggest problem — these things that come in that aren’t supposed to be there.”
The easiest solution to the danger of having workers on the tipping floor would be to be able to eliminate those problematic items from the waste stream. Unfortunately, people continue to dump the wrong things into local receptacles, despite numerous attempts by SSW to educate local residents about what should and should not be put into the trash.
One possible way to eliminate the need for a staff member patrolling the tipping floor Leonard is considering is installing cameras that can watch what is being dumped in the building, allowing a remote inspector to stop problem materials from getting in the digesters. However, it’s not yet clear if that type of system is feasible or if it would even allow enough visual access to prevent the prohibited items from moving through the system.
“We don’t know if it would work, but it’s worth a shot,” Leonard said.
SSW has also received inquiries from companies that investigate accidents at green technology centers, which the compost plant’s recycling 70 to 80 percent of the county’s waste qualifies it as, and recommend safety improvements that could prevent future problems.
As for the staff at the plant, Leonard said some of them have really struggled with the loss, though he believes they’ve been helped a great deal by counselors the Pigeon Forge Fire Department brought in immediately after the accident.
“I think everybody is holding up pretty well,” he said.
dhodges@themountainpress.com
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 8 Feb 2011.
Autopsy points to heart failure in death at plant; Bobby Reagan had been missing at landfill site
Bobby Reagan
By DEREK HODGES
PIGEON FORGE — State medical examiners have ruled that Bobby Reagan, the man who went missing at the county landfill in late July and was later found in some machinery there, died of natural causes before falling into that equipment.
Doctors with University Pathologists in Knoxville found Reagan suffered from several health conditions that likely contributed to his death, including cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis and pulmonary emphysema. In the end, it was heart failure that killed him, according to the report.
“It appears that the decedent succumbed to heart disease, falling into a waste processing unit in the plant,” the document reads. The injuries to his body occurred after he died, the report says,
That means they found injuries on Reagan inflicted by the machinery that had not bruised in the way they would have if he had been alive when it occurred. That would indicate he was dead before he fell into the equipment, Pigeon Forge Police Chief Jack Baldwin said.
The report also explains some of the other facts that helped the examiners reach their conclusion.
“There is a history of elevated cholesterol and hypertension,” it says of Reagan’s health at the time. “Approximately a week prior to his death, (he) complained of chest pain and discomfort. Valvular heart disease and hypertensive cardiovascular disease are considered to be significant conditions contributing to his death.”
Back in July, Reagan’s family and friends indicated he had been complaining of feeling ill in the days leading up to his disappearance.
Reagan worked for Sevier Solid Waste in the Compost Plant, directing trucks coming into the center to dump their loads and overseeing operations to push that material into the digesters, where it’s broken down. His coworkers remembered him being on the job early on July 22, but realized partway through the day they hadn’t seen him in a while.
The plant was shut down immediately, and rescue crews spent almost four days going over the entire 170-acre landfill complex, looking for any sign as to what happened to Reagan. His body was eventually found in one of the digesters.
Those machines use heat and tumbling action to break down the refuse, eventually bringing it to a standard where it can be sold as compost. Though the machines were stopped as soon as the staff realized Reagan was missing, the autopsy report indicates his body was traumatized.
Reagan’s death weighed heavily on workers at Sevier Solid Waste, who wondered if there was some way they could have prevented it. Both the heavy equipment operator who works in the area where Reagan was last seen and Sevier Solid Waste Director Tom Leonard were said to have been greatly troubled by the incident.
Leonard had not heard the results of the autopsy that show neither the plant nor the staff claimed Reagan’s life until informed of them by The Mountain Press Monday. While he said he continues to mourn the loss, he welcomed the news that Reagan’s death was from natural causes.
“Certainly we’re all still sad to have lost our friend and our co-worker, but it is a relief to know there’s nothing we could have done to prevent this,” Leonard said.
The Police Department has concluded there is no need for further investigation of the matter, Baldwin said. Likewise, the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration has closed the case, Leonard said.
“We did work with them and they made some recommendations, but they said they found nothing to suggest that we were operating improperly,” he explained.
The agency’s representatives did suggest that the pits leading into the digesters be covered and, while that can’t be accomplished when trash is being loaded into them, workers do now pile trash in those areas when they’re not in use to ensure no one could fall in. Further, Reagan’s job has been eliminated, with cameras now used to remotely observe the areas he had to focus on, Leonard said.
dhodges@themountainpress.com
- [S58] Marriage Certificate.
Groom's Name Bride's First Name Bride's Maiden Name County Date of Marriage File #
REAGAN BOBBY G MARY W NOT GIVEN SEVIER 11-06-1981 52801
- [S58] Marriage Certificate.
56022 BOBBY GENE REAGAN MARY LOUISE WINDHAM
- [S131] Divorce Record.
Husband's Name Wife's First Name Wife's Maiden Name County Court Date of Divorce File #
REAGAN BOBBY MARY W NOT GIVEN SEVIER NOT GIVEN 11-03-1982 29025
- [S58] Marriage Certificate.
Groom's Name Bride's First Name Bride's Maiden Name County Date of Marriage File #
REAGAN BOBBY G SHARON S NOT GIVEN SEVIER 03-10-1986 09784
- [S58] Marriage Certificate.
65308 BOBBY GENE REAGAN SHARON DEANN CANTRELL
- [S131] Divorce Record.
Husband's Name Wife's First Name Wife's Maiden Name County Court Date of Divorce File #
REAGAN BOBBY G SHARON D SUTTON SEVIER CIRCUIT 01-29-2007 00618
|
Search | Advanced Search
1960 - 2010 (50 years)
: Address
: Location
: City/Town
: County/Shire
: State/Province
: Country
: Not Set
= Link to Google Maps