Crash binds church and family in grief
Tragic accident sees death of Kitchener woman, loss of church
ROSEVILLE — Pastor Randy Magnus never met Marie Savaria but he will preside over her memorial.
Savaria did not attend his Roseville United Brethren Church. She died there, after losing control of her Nissan Rogue and crashing so hard into the historic church that it can’t be repaired.
The country church had just been renovated. All that was left to do was to mount the cross above fresh paint and new wainscotting. Instead, the church will now be demolished after 136 years.
But that’s not what this story is about. It’s about how a stunned congregation and a grieving family have chosen to support each other in a terrible time, to help move past a trauma that binds them.
“I’m so numb and in so much pain, nothing can help me,” said Kelly Henderson, Savaria’s grieving daughter. “But if it had to happen anywhere, I guess I feel blessed that it happened at a church with people who are so loving
and supportive.”
Savaria, of Kitchener, drove frequently past the Roseville church on Fischer-Hallman Road.
At 62, the former nurse and Grand River Hospital manager was two years into her retirement. She travelled to Italy last spring, to the Mediterranean this fall and was planning a trip to France.
She played cards with friends. She visited her daughter and grandchildren in B.C. and planned to visit them again this Christmas.
“She was always busy, never home,” said Henderson, 37.
“She had a huge social life. She loved living and travelling and drinking wine and being with friends and being with family and just enjoying life.”
Savaria raised her daughter as a single mother, shifting from nursing into management to secure a more stable schedule.
“I just remember my Mom working very hard,” Henderson said.
“She always made me feel like we had everything in the world.”
On Dec. 8 Savaria was driving to Brantford to visit her elderly mother at a nursing home there.
A month earlier Savaria had blacked out at home, falling and dislocating her shoulder. Doctors couldn’t tell her why she lost consciousness.
She scheduled a medical scan Dec. 12 to shed light on what happened. But in the meantime she felt fine.
Police and a coroner have investigated the crash. It seems that just after 1:30 p.m. Savaria blacked out again. Her foot pressed on the accelerator as she slumped, unconscious.
The SUV veered into a ditch, flew into the air, and crashed past a culvert before smashing into the church at more than 100 km/h.
“I thought it was a bomb. It was such a loud explosion,” church janitor Chris McElroy said. He was standing on the church stage when the SUV hit the wall just metres away.
The impact shifted the heavy stage which in turn hammered the opposite wall like a battering ram. Both walls shifted, dooming the church.
Stunned, McElroy ran outside where he helped pull Savaria from the smoking wreckage. Rescuers worried it might burn. Her wrecked Nissan fell onto his car parked beside the church, damaging it but not severely.
Savaria was declared dead at the scene. McElroy saw no sign that she suffered. Hours later he drove home in a rented car, trembling as the trauma hit him, struggling with sights and sounds he’s still replaying.
The news reached Henderson in B.C. where she lives. She flew to Ontario to meet with Waterloo Regional Police. Last Sunday an officer drove her to the church. She needed to see where her mother took her last breath.
She wondered if the congregation would be angry. She knows her mother would have felt awful about the damage done to their church.
But what the congregation offered was support and prayer.
Some cried with her. Pastor Magnus led a circle in prayer. A man explained that he helped pull her mother from the car, to put her on a blanket on the ground. Henderson weeps, recalling their conversation.
“I just thanked him for being there with her so that she wasn’t alone when she died.”
The church has moved its services into the basement of an adjoining church building that’s undamaged. “Our church is more than a building,” a sign says. “It’s the wonderful people who worship here.”
The one-in-a-million tragedy has shocked the congregation. The country church dates to 1881. It was built by Lutherans, sold to Methodists and then to the United Brethren, who bricked over the wood frame in 1919. Descendants of its builders still live in the area. It will be missed.
“There’s grief over the loss of the building, of course there is,” said Gerry Drews, who chairs the church board. But the building is insured. There’s money to rebuild, possibly elsewhere on the church property, not so close to the busy road.
Mostly there’s an understanding that life is sacred and someone is suffering more.
Touched by the warm embrace, Henderson asked that donations in her mother’s memory be made to the church she never attended. Then she thought: would Pastor Magnus be open to presiding over her mother’s memorial? He did not hesitate. And so Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Dunsdon Legion in Brantford, he’ll preside over a celebration of life for a stranger, a non-practising Catholic whose tragic death robbed his church of its historic home.
“It’s almost like God put us together so we could be there to help each other,” he said.
“For a life to be lost is way bigger than bricks and mortar.”
What matters most is always the right thing to do.