Deadly crash shakes Roy family

ROY — The orange paint traces the SUV's path along the street.

The paint lines show the sport-utility vehicle was going north in a southbound lane before veering into the correct lane. From there, it would have only taken one or two seconds for Richard Bash to cross back into the wrong lane, up onto the curb and across the grass at a brick home on 3100 West in Roy.

Shortly before that, Wendy Kerbs had just asked her husband, Marlin Kerbs, to get a hose. The two of them had been working side-by-side Wednesday night planting flowers in the front yard. Gardening was one of Wendy Kerbs' loves.

Marlin Kerbs left his wife working by the blue spruce tree. When he was out of sight, he heard the SUV. And it probably seemed like an eternity as he saw the SUV on his lawn, right where he had been, where his wife had been. The tree was knocked over, its roots exposed. The planter blocks were torn apart.

And when he went to her, he probably knew there wasn't much hope.

He's shaken up over it. "His wife just died in his arms. What can you expect?" said Ashley Kerbs, Marlin and Wendy Kerbs' daughter-in-law.

She spoke Thursday outside of the home where Wendy Kerbs lived and died. A few yards away from where Wendy Kerbs was struck by the wayward SUV, Ashley Kerbs talked about her wonderful mother-in-law.

"We will miss her so much," she said. "She loved her family and friends."

Wendy Kerbs, who had suffered from multiple sclerosis, had been planning to retire from Hill Air Force Base soon.

Last summer, the Kerbs family had taken a cruise along the Alaskan coast, and the pictures taken there can help keep Wendy Kerbs' memory alive.

But those are just pictures. Wendy Kerbs had a way of bouncing when she laughed, something Ashley Kerbs said she used to make fun of. But now there's only love for that quirk.

"She loved to sew," Ashley Kerbs said. "She was the most unselfish person you'd ever meet."

Maybe things happen for a reason. Maybe it was Wendy Kerbs' time.