Nathan and Amanda Barger

The last thing Nathan and Amanda Barger wanted to do when they rolled into Clarksville, Arkansas, was make a pitstop, but the other option—running out of gas—was even worse. So they pulled into the Love’s truck stop, and Nathan quickly pumped a few gallons of fuel into the tank, then rushed into the store, tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter, and sped back out the door.

“I’m sorry,” he yelled to the clerk. “We’ve got an emergency.”

Moments earlier, Nathan and his wife had gotten a call no parents ever want to get.

“Dad, we were in a wreck,” their oldest daughter Traci had said a few minutes earlier when she reached Nathan on his cellphone. “A big truck turned over on us.”

The Bargers’ big plans for the weekend changed in an instant when an 18-wheeler lost control while rounding a curve on the morning of Friday, January 13, 2023.

Nathan and Amanda had spent the previous night alone in a remote mountain cabin 25 crooked miles north of Clarksville. It was a belated anniversary getaway, but their children were going to spend the rest of the weekend with them. Traci, who had just turned 21, and her boyfriend, Cameron McKittrick, were driving up with Traci’s brother, Trenton, while the Bargers’ other two daughters, Lauren (19) and Terra (18), were coming separately. 

Trenton, less than a month from celebrating his 16^th birthday, was particularly excited about seeing the cabin in the Ozark Mountain community of Salus near the Devil’s Know Lookout Tower. In fact, he had tried to get his dad to make a Facetime call the night before so he could see the cabin and the views. Nathan wanted to build the anticipation, so he told Trenton he’d have to wait until he got there the next day. 

Cameron, Traci, and Trenton left the Barger’s family home in Scranton, just south of Clarksville, around 10 a.m. for the day-long journey. First stop: A friend’s house to pick up a dog kennel that they were going to drop off at Traci’s home in Clarksville. Then they planned to go to Little Rock to see Traci and Trenton’s grandfather, who was in the intensive care unit of the hospital. After that, they would drive back up Interstate 40 to Clarksville and then north to the cabin. 

They never made it to the cabin. 

The trailer of the truck crushed the Chevy Blazer, trapping Cameron and Traci in the front seats and killing Trenton as he sat in the back.

The driver of the truck, Keith Gaynor, was working for Marten Transport and was making his regular run from the Walmart distribution center in Clarksville to a store in Mena, Arkansas. It was just before 11:30 a.m., and it was later determined that Gaynor already had a blood alcohol level of .06. The legal limit for a CDL driver is .04. He initially claimed he lost control while swerving to miss an animal and later said he couldn’t see well and was reaching for the glasses he wasn’t wearing. This as he sped into the curve on Highway 109 at 65 miles an hour, 30 mph over the posted speed limit.

Cameron, meanwhile, was driving the Blazer north on Highway 109 with Traci next to him and Trenton making phone calls and sending text messages in the back. Trenton called his father at 10:54, again asking if they could Facetime so he could see the cabin. Instead, they talked for about 15 minutes. At 11:26 a.m., just after hanging up with his dad, Trenton sent a text to his friend whose family had given them the dog kennel. It was the last message he would send. Four minutes later, Traci called her father to tell him they were trapped in the Blazer beneath the trailer of a truck.

Amanda stayed on the phone with Traci as she and her husband raced toward the scene of the accident. She could hear Cameron in the background but was concerned because she could not hear her son.

“How’s Bubba?” Amanda said frantically. “I don’t hear Bubba.”

“I think he’s just knocked out,” Traci told her mother, but that wasn’t the case.  Trenton had passed.

When Nathan and Amanda reached the scene, they parked on the shoulder of the road, where they found Lauren and Terra waiting for them. Nathan made his way toward the accident, stopping about six feet away to identify himself to a state trooper.

“Come with me,” the trooper told him. “Your daughter and her boyfriend are talking and coherent.”

“What about my boy?” said Nathan.

“I hate to tell you, but we lost him,” said the trooper. “He’s gone.”

The minutes and hours following that devasting blow are in some respects a blur to Nathan, but some details he remembers as if they’d just happened.

He remembers the pain that came when he called his father to break the news. Nathan and his father both were truck drivers, and Trenton loved big rigs.

He remembers the EMT telling him that the driver of the truck had approached while they were working to free Traci and Cameron from the vehicle. Gaynor was smoking a cigarette, the EMT told them, and wanted to know when he would get checked out because his elbow was hurting. 

“We told him to go back to his truck,” Nathan recalls the EMT saying, “because we were trying to help the two kids who were trapped under his trailer.”

And he remembers how the EMT helped calm Amanda when he told her that he, too, had lost a teenage son in an automobile accident. 

Traci and Cameron were airlifted to a hospital in Little Rock. Among other injuries, Traci’s neck was broken in three spots and Cameron had fractures in his back. Nathan, meanwhile, drove Amanda to the hospital in Clarksville. She was having panic attacks and stopped breathing several times before they got to the ER, where she was sedated and slept for several hours. 

By then, Nathan’s dad had arrived from Pine Bluff and the two men went to the cabin to get a change of clothes for Amanda, who had left in such a hurry that she was still wearing the shorts and T-shirt she’d put on that morning. 

On the way back to the hospital, Nathan pulled over and took a photo of the setting sun. Trenton loved orange sunsets, and one of his favorite songs was “Something In The Orange” by country artist Zach Brown. For weeks, however, they had seen nothing but what Nathan described as “cotton candy colored” sunsets. On this night, just hours after Trenton lost his life, Nathan and his father saw “the most beautiful orange sunset you’ve ever seen,” Nathan said. “It was Trenton’s way of saying, ‘I’m OK, Mom. I’m Ok, Dad.’”

Later, when Amanda was awake, she opened her Facebook page and, with tears in her eyes, looked at the post she had written before the accident about how much she loved her family and how she couldn’t imagine life without them. There was a new comment on the post, one that was sent before the accident but that didn’t show up in her feed until afterward.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” the comment said. “I’ll always be right here.”

It was from Trenton.

——————-

Two days after the accident, Nathan and Amanda drove to Little Rock to pick up their oldest daughter. Traci would need multiple surgeries to repair her neck, but the doctors had released her to go home. 

Their first stop was to see Amanda’s dad who was in the critical care unit and on kidney dialysis, and the news only made his condition worse. Nathan told him he needed to get better so he could come to Trenton’s memorial service, and the next morning his condition made a drastic improvement. But later that week, the day before Trenton’s service, Amanda’s father fell and was unresponsive. Two weeks after Trenton’s death, his grandfather died in the hospital.

Trenton’s service was held on January 28, 2023, at the gym at Scranton High School. Traci, wearing a neck brace while she awaited her first surgery, sang “Jealous of the Angels.” And more than 250 friends and family mourned and celebrated the teenager’s life.

They remembered his upbeat attitude and caring personality, and how he, unlike so many teens of his generation, was hardworking and always respectful of his parents.

They remembered how much he loved baseball – how he could play any position on the field, that he already could throw a “slurve” when he pitched, and how he hit two grand slams he it in one tournament. 

And they remembered his favorite expression, the one he always used when his mother reminded him to “act right and don’t do anything stupid” just because others were doing it. 

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he’d say with a broad smile as he bounced out the door. “It’ll buff.” 

Jimmy Streett, an attorney in Russellville hired by the family shortly after the accident, told Nathan and Amanda he’d never been to a more powerful memorial service. And it was Streett who suggested that the family contact the Oliver Law Firm for additional firepower in their quest for justice. Sach Oliver and his team specialize in these types of cases, Streett told them, and they could work it out so the lawyer fees would be the same. The Bargers agreed and now say it’s the best decision they could have made.

The Oliver Law Firm, along with Streett, filed a wrongful death lawsuit on August 4, 2023, on behalf of Cameron McKittrick, Traci Barger, and Amanda Barger, who represented Trenton’s estate. The defendants included Gaynor and Marten Transport. The case was heading for a jury trial in July 2024, but the defendants agreed to a settlement.

“We were ready,” Nathan said. “We’d been ready from Day 1. It was never about the money. It was about telling Trenton’s story.”

The Oliver Law Firm became part of that story, Nathan and Amanda said, because they became like family members, not just leading up to the settlement but in the days and months since.

“They called and checked on us almost every day,” Nathan said. “Not two days went by when we hadn’t heard from them. They are all very caring. They treat you like family. They don’t wait for you to call them. They thoroughly explain what was going on and each next step. And if we didn’t understand, they’d talk us through it.”

As much as anything, Nathan and Amanda said they felt respected and honored by the personal touches that let them know the team at Oliver cared about them as people, not just as a case on their docket. For instance, they gifted the family a windchime with a special tone created just for Trenton. And they made a large, framed collage that included photos of Trenton and a poem Amanda had written about her son. The Bargers have it on their wall, but another copy hangs on the wall at the Oliver Law Firm.

One day a few weeks after the settlement, Nathan got a call from Rod Easley, the chief operating officer at Oliver Law Firm. He and Rod had grown close while working on the case, and Rod said that he and Geoff Hanby, one of the firm’s attorneys, would be passing through on their way home from Little Rock and wanted to see them.

When they met later that day at a truck stop along Interstate 40, Geoff and Rod had another special gift for the family – a custom-made belt buckle. Sach had gotten three of them made, one for himself, one to display at the firm, and one for the Bargers. The front was engraved with Trenton’s name, the dates of his birth and death, and a saying from one of Amanda’s poems. And on the back were these words: “It’ll buff.”

Life can be hard, harder than you think you can handle at times. And it certainly will leave you dented and bruised. Take lots of pictures, Amanda said, and while some things can never be made right again, remember Trenton’s words: It’ll buff.