Couple Hope to Channel Pain of Son’s Traffic Death

Laverne and Kenneth Larkin have tried their best to cope: They garden, they clean, they talk to anyone who has the time to listen.

Mostly, though, they cry.

The couple’s 53-year-old son, Michael, was driving to breakfast early Thursday when a gravel truck barreled through a congested intersection, clipping or crushing a dozen vehicles. Six people were injured. Michael Larkin was the only one killed.

A popular optometrist who kept a precise morning ritual, Larkin was on his way to Orange for breakfast, a stop he would make before heading off to his office in Los Alamitos. He was driving west on Nohl Ranch Road when the truck, speeding down the steep grade of Imperial Highway, rammed his Blazer, pushing and dragging it more than 150 feet. He died instantly, police said.

The death of their son has left the Rossmoor couple resolved to do something, yet still feeling defeated and unsure how to accept the randomness of the fact that their son would head for work one morning and cross paths with a runaway truck.

“That’s what makes it so hard,” said Laverne Larkin. “It’s because it didn’t have to happen.”

“You see this on the news. You hear about it every day,” said Kenneth Larkin. “But I never thought it would hit home and shatter our lives.”

The Larkins said they will try to salvage some meaning from the tragedy by fighting to ban commercial trucks in the area of the intersection. Their son lived in the Anaheim Hills neighborhood with his wife, Annie. The parents intend to join a Monday morning rally at Imperial Elementary School, near the accident scene. The rally is being staged by neighbors, teachers and students who hope to persuade officials to either ban trucks or tighten enforcement in the area, with a high school and park also nearby.

Friends and family members remembered the younger Larkin as a man with a gentle and sensitive heart, a busy man, a conservative man. He liked to golf and travel. And he thoroughly enjoyed turning his kitchen into a mess when he made dishes such as lasagna, trying to imitate gourmet spreads he’d see in magazines.

He attended USC and graduated in 1973 from Southern California College of Optometry in Fullerton, then opened a practice.

Noted in his field, he did consulting work and traveled frequently to speaking engagements. Colleagues said he helped develop special lenses to help colorblind patients detect hues.

Friends said Larkin was both competitive and soft-hearted. Sometimes he just sat and played the piano for his wife, whom he met in 1993 and married four years later. He had an upright streak to him as well, friends said. His mother recalled that he once refused to play golf with a friend who he believed had picked up someone’s else ball.

“He’s the most loyal and trustworthy person I know,” she said.

For now, the Larkins said they just try to stay busy.

Laverne Larkin said she prays and she cries. “I just let the tears flow.”

“But nothing helps,” her husband said.

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Services will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Los Altos United Methodist Church in Long Beach. Burial will follow at Forest Lawn in Cypress.