[1]Erin L. VanBrocklin doing a “super hero” pose out in the woods in an undated photo.
Updated
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
Erin L. VanBrocklin grew up in Bellingham.
“He’s always worked, he’s always been in the logging industry,” his younger sister said.
He was in his late 20s, or maybe early 30s, when he moved away from his family and down to Centralia to start a new life for himself, she said.
He was locked up for about six years, after he robbed or tried to rob a man in Rochester, until his release two years ago in February, Tori Banek said.
“He had an addiction, but he got cleaned up in prison,” Banek said. “And we learned so much about him in the week before his funeral.”
VanBrocklin, 41, was killed in a logging accident outside Oakville earlier this month. His funeral was held in Chehalis last Saturday.
Banek, a middle school teacher who lives in northeast Oregon, said she came to learn that her brother was very close to the three crew members who tried to save his life.
“These men lived with Erin,” she said. “They called him dad, and Erin called these three men his kids, because Erin mentored them.”
One of them told her they met in prison, when VanBrocklin gave him a cup of coffee – something unexpected from fellow inmates – and told him, that if he wanted to change his life, he would give him a place to live and a job, she said.
“Erin made him want to change, something his parents couldn’t do for him,” Banek said.
Banek so cherishes a text message sent to her by the co-worker nicknamed Spider, that spoke of how inspiring her brother was, that a longtime drug dealer who thought he would return to that life, decided not to.
VanBrocklin was the second in a line of six children, a large family that is so grateful to the logging company owners who were willing to give him a second chance.
His family has now recently gotten to know how loved he was by his crew, his pastor and many others in the Centralia area, his sister said.
“That gave us so much peace,” she said. “Because his life wasn’t always on the straight and narrow.”
VanBrocklin was working with a B and M Logging crew the morning of January 10. He was bucking a log. Others were rigging up a yarder, according to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office
A log that broke loose and rolled down the hill crushed him.
His fellow workers had to cut him out, and they placed him a stretcher and drove six miles to where they met an ambulance. Medics tried to save him but he was pronounced dead.
“Erin’s crew was one of the top crews in the company,” Banek said. “They were all the underdogs, and these three men were with him.”
Another funeral will be held next month in Bellingham, on his birthday which is Feb. 14.
There were seven work-related logging deaths in Washington state last year.
Four of them occurred in Lewis County.
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For background, read “Centralia resident dies in logging accident in Grays Harbor County” from Tuesday January 13, 2015, here [2]