4 Were Victims of Car Crash : ‘Ordinary Family’ Will Be Honored With Park

Just before one o’clock, on an overcast Saturday afternoon, Rick Speicher was driving his wife and two young children from their home in San Bernardino to his mother-in-law’s in nearby Redlands.

As Speicher approached a busy intersection, two cars turned left in front of his Buick Skylark, causing him to steer the family car off the road. He lost control, and within moments, the car collided with an oncoming cement truck.

Speicher, 29, his wife, Michele, 28, and their daughter Alysia, 3, were killed instantly. The couple’s 1-year-old son, Jarred, died an hour later.

Today at one o’clock, exactly one year later, more than 100 friends and relatives of the Speicher family are expected to gather at the corner of Arden and Pacific avenues in San Bernardino, near where the Speichers lived and just up the street from Alysia’s preschool.

The group won’t be mourning the loss of their friends. That time, they said, has passed. Instead, they will be celebrating an extraordinary effort they have undertaken to honor what one of them called “just an ordinary, all-American family.”

Dozens of friends have spent nearly a year designing and developing a two-acre memorial park that they will dedicate in the family’s memory. The park, which city officials said would have cost about $200,000 for the city to develop, has been built and paid for entirely by volunteers. It will be San Bernardino’s first memorial park, and friends think that it will be a fitting tribute to Speicher, who worked for a landscape company.

The group collected about $7,000 in cash, and many times that amount in donated materials and labor. Although authorities did not blame the cement truck driver for the tragedy, the truck’s owners, Robertson Ready Mix, donated truck loads of cement for curbs and sidewalks.

Four European white birch trees, clustered near the center of the park to symbolize the young family, were donated by landscape firms in Huntington Beach and Woodland Hills. A San Bernardino landscape architect contributed plans for the project, which normally would cost about $16,000.

“We got everything from little old ladies that sent $5 with a scrawled note, to checks for $500,” said Lisa Keldgord, a family friend who has helped organize the memorial. “They were just super nice people. Even people that did not know them have been calling. In this area especially, it is just such a tragedy to have an entire family killed at once. People have just had a real hard time understanding it.”

Rick and Michele Speicher, high-school sweethearts who met when they worked part time at McDonald’s, enjoyed the outdoors and spent every spare moment with their children, friends said.

Six months before his death, Rick Speicher had become part owner of Michael Cripe Landscaping in San Bernardino, where he worked. His wife worked in the credit department of the Southern California Automobile Club--processing accident claims.

“Rick taught me through his death to spend time with your family,” said Woody Wood, a friend who has spent the last six weeks planting trees, pouring concrete and overseeing other work at the park in preparation for the dedication. “He was a family man, and I respected that. You can work your whole life, but what does it mean if you lose your family?”

Two days after the tragic accident, friends and co-workers gathered at Michael Cripe Landscaping. That day, the group decided that they would build a park for the Speichers, something that would emphasize both the outdoors and the importance of family.

“You feel so helpless at a time like that,” Keldgord said. “The park seemed like the natural thing to do. They were a real family oriented bunch that were always doing things outside. It really hit us that it could have happened to any of us.”

Annie Ramos, director of the city’s parks department, found the group a piece of city-owned property near San Gorgonio High School that the city bought in the 1970s to develop as a park. With little or no money available for new parks, city officials welcomed a volunteer effort to develop the site. City officials said the group’s ties to the landscape industry convinced them that it could be done.

“They are a young, dynamic group of people, and everything just fit together,” City Councilman Jack Strickler said.

The new park has run into opposition from some parents with children at the high school. School district spokesman Al Bruton said the parents are concerned that the park will become a hangout for students, but assurances from city officials that police will regularly patrol the area have largely allayed those fears, he said.

At the ceremony today, classmates from Alysia’s preschool will release pink and purple balloons--Alysia’s favorite colors. The group will gather around the four birch trees, sing songs and eat cookies baked by Michele Speicher’s co-workers at the auto club. When it is all over, they hope to leave satisfied that they have created a lasting and fitting testimony to their ordinary, but very special, friends.

“They were not sad people, so we will try to make this a positive thing,” said Loretta Darling, Michele Speicher’s mother, barely able to speak without crying. “If this says one thing, it says stop and look at your own life. See what is important. Stop and smell the roses. You never really know.”