"He didn't want to be late or get lost on Monday," recalls Martin, who went along for the test run.
Martin, a veterinarian's assistant, met Green when he was working at a feed store in Lancaster. Born and raised in the small town, Green had worked for his dad in construction, and when that business slowed, he took a job at the feed store. Martin had stopped there several times without noticing the tall, stocky Green. But he'd noticed her.
When the feed store threw a customer appreciation party and Martin attended, Green got up the nerve to talk to her. "I always pass you on my way to work, and you never wave," Martin recalls him saying. With the ice finally broken, the two grew friendly. It wasn't until three years later--two months before Green's death--that the couple married. Their wedding was held at Lancaster's old train depot. The couple wore ranch clothes and snapped their photos with horses in the background.
In Lancaster, Green was well known and liked. After his death, the local paper ran a front-page story titled: "Community Mourns Death of 'Sweetest Person' You'd Ever Meet."
His wife remembers him that way too. When his father needed money for his business, Green personally went into debt to help him out.
Shortly after he died, Martin drove the used truck he'd bought back to the dealership. Since she could no longer depend on Green's paycheck, she couldn't afford the car payments. She figured the dealers wouldn't exactly receive the truck with open arms, but she was wrong. She says they'd grown so fond of Green during the usual haggling about the car's price that they starting crying when they found out about his death. They immediately took the car back.
Green had few concerns about his safety at the Texas Instruments site, his widow recalls. As an apprentice, he assumed his superiors knew what they were doing. She doesn't remember him ever worrying about possible gas leaks.
Ironically, he did worry about his wife's exposure to gases used in animal anesthesia--especially with operations on small birds. "You can't help but breathe in some of that gas," Martin recalls telling her husband.
Shortly before his death, Green told his wife that he planned to rig up some equipment so she could protect herself in those situations.
He didn't live long enough to do it--perhaps because Texas Instruments and Process Piping failed to make sure that Green and Gleason, his potential rescuer, possessed the safety equipment required by federal law.
And while Process Piping representatives attended her husband's funeral, Martin has told her lawyers that no one from Texas Instruments even bothered to send a condolence card acknowledging his death.
