Tuesday, March 16, 1999
Fatal accident follows funeral talk
Wife had related wishes day before
BY SHEILA McLAUGHLIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
TURTLECREEK TOWNSHIP — Without explanation Sunday, Deanna Rickard pulled out her cemetery plot plan, a burial certificate and a gospel tape.
The 50-year-old grandmother told her husband, Michael, where to find the papers when she died. She also asked him to play the hymn, “Beulah Land,” at her funeral.
Her actions puzzled relatives Sunday. But one day later, Mrs. Rickard's family was making those arrangements after a collision on Ohio 741 left Mrs. Rickard and a co-worker, Agnes Mosley, 65, dead.
The Franklin Township friends were on their way to work at Warren County Community Services in Lebanon, where both handled heat and weather-proofing programs for the poor and elderly.
“I guess she just sensed something in her spirit. She knew — but she didn't know,” Kevin Rickard, 24, said Monday of his mother's actions.
The driver of the second car, Coy L. Barrett, 46, of Miamisburg, apparently was on his way home from working the third shift at Lucas Sumitomo in Lebanon when the crash occurred at 7:54 a.m., state troopers said. Mr. Barrett was in intensive care at Middletown Regional Hospital.
Troopers said Mr. Barrett's 1995 Dodge Neon crossed the center line and hit Mrs. Rickard's 1997 Geo Prism head on. It happened just minutes after Mrs. Rickard picked up Mrs. Mosley at her home on Ohio 122.
The women lived near each other and had carpooled to work the past two months, relatives said.
The accident remains under investigation.
Monday's crash brought Warren County's 1999 death toll involving crashes to five. Thirteen people died in 12 crashes in 1998.
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