Workers’ Memorial Day event held in Cheyenne

Officials honor lost lives, strive to make Wyoming a safer place to work

By Mark Horan

A ceremony to commemorate Wyoming workers who were injured or killed in the workplace was held at the Capitol rotunda on April 28, which is nationally recognized as Workers’ Memorial Day.

The event included speeches from the Wyoming State AFLCIO and the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association, the organizations which sponsored the ceremony. Several other community leaders provided remarks, including Wyoming Department of Transportation Interim Director Darin Westby.

A letter from Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon was read at the beginning of the ceremony.

“On this Workers’ Memorial Day remembrance, let us honor the fallen and continue to advocate for justice, awareness and compassion for all workers,” Gordon wrote.

Westby then took the podium for some brief remarks focusing on work zone safety, noting that it’s critical to ensure our work environments are safe for not just our employees but everyone in those work zones.

“Safety is everybody’s business, because we all share in the same roads,” Westby said. “So let’s work together to make sure that all travelers in Wyoming, whether crew members, patrol, commercial vehicles, residents or tourists all can reach their destination safely.”

Westby noted that in the last 100 years, there have been 38 state employees who have died while building, maintaining and protecting Wyoming’s transportation system. The most recent employee fatality was Shirley Samuelson, a highway maintenance technician from Teton County who lost her life in 2020.

According to a report from the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, the state had 27 occupational fatalities in 2021 – two and a half times the national average. That number is down from 35 fatalities in 2020.

“Certainly this is a trend in the right direction,” said DWS Occupational Safety and Health Administration Program Manager

WYDOT Interim Director Darin Westby speaking at a Workers’ Memorial Day event held on April 28 at the Cheyenne Capitol rotunda. Individuals next to him include representatives from the Wyoming Governor’s Office, Trial Lawyers Association, AFL-CIO and Department of Workforce Services.

Karen Bebensee, “but there’s more work to be done by all of us to help workers safely return home every night.”

Tammy Johnson, executive director of Wyoming AFL-CIO echoed Bebensee’s comments.

“Every worker deserves to come home at the end of the day in their own vehicles, not in a hearse or an ambulance,” she said.

At the memorial gathering, personal stories were shared about two individuals: Mark Alan Cummings, a construction worker in Laramie who died in 2016, and Tyeler Harris, an EMT from Saratoga who was killed when a semitrailer struck his ambulance while responding to a crash on Interstate 80 last December.

Marsha Shanor, executive director for the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association told attendees that her organization and Wyoming AFL-CIO are sponsoring a scholarship through Kids’ Chance of Wyoming in an effort to support the families and friends of Wyomingites who have been killed or injured on the job. Scholarship information can be found under the public resources section of their website: wytla.org.