The two Metro workers killed early Tuesday morning by maintenance equipment were long-time veterans of the transit agency.
Sung Oh, 68, started with Metro in 1998, and Jeff Garrard, 49, was months away from his 20th anniversary with the company.
“He loved the job security,” Grace Garrard said of her husband. “He loved having a job where he could move around, it wasn’t a desk job. But the security was everything for him.”
While Garrard said her husband enjoyed his work and the accompanying stability, she said he took issue with some of the ways Metro officials handled job safety.
“He felt that there were some practical safety issues that could be resolved if management had listened to the people in the trenches,” she said. “He just wanted more communication between the decision makers and the people that were actually doing the work.”
Despite those concerns, she said her husband felt safe on the job.
“I think he really felt confident in his own abilities,” she said. “He trusted himself.”
The couple met in the late 1980s in San Diego, where Jeff Garrard worked as a sonar technician for the U.S. Navy.
Born in Long Island, N.Y., and raised in Madisonville, Ky., Garrard earned his bachelor’s degree in technical instruction while enlisted.
“He was very detail-oriented,” Grace Garrard said. “He worked really hard. If he wasn’t working at Metro, on his regular shift or overtime, he was here at home working on our house.”
The father of 16-year-old Emma, Garrard recently remodeled a bathroom and installed a basement flood trench in the Clarksburg home the couple purchased 11 years ago.
Friends and family of Oh, who lived in Montgomery Village, could not be reached for comment.
