‘Hurt our hearts’: Kansas town grieves 4 children killed in Thanksgiving Day wreck
A small town in north-central Kansas is grieving the loss of four children who died Thanksgiving Day when the vehicle they were in overturned and became submerged in a pond.
They were headed with their mother and her boyfriend to a nearby relative’s house when their sport utility vehicle lost control on 30 Road, a gravel route north of U.S. 36 in Republic County.
The SUV rolled upside down. The mother’s boyfriend pulled her out, but they couldn’t get to the children, according to Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Ben Gardner.
Ronald Hyde, 12; Travis Hyde, 9; Aidan Lovelace, 4; and Axton Beck, 9 months; died at the scene.
The deaths shocked people in Scandia, a town of about 400 people near the Nebraska border. Classmates, teachers and neighbors have grieved for days, many of them helping to raise more than $30,000 to help the family.
“It’s extremely difficult,” said Steve Joonas, superintendent of the Pike Valley School District where three of the four children attended class.
One boy was in preschool, another was in third grade and the oldest was in seventh. The heartbreak spread to the nearby town of Courtland, which shares the school district, Joonas said.
“Everyone is totally devastated,” one woman in Scandia said. “There are no words.”
The mother, Jennifer Lovelace, 38, had moved to Scandia with her boyfriend and the children earlier this year, traveling from Tularosa, New Mexico.
On Thanksgiving, Lovelace was behind the wheel on the icy and snowy road when she lost control and the SUV entered the pond about eight miles north of Courtland. She was released from a hospital Tuesday.
“I know she is struggling very, very hard with it,” Lovelace’s step-brother, Casey Salars, told The Associated Press. “But Jennifer has always been a very, very strong person, very loving. She loved her little boys.’‘
Lovelace’s boyfriend, Paul Bannister, also 38, was not seriously injured, according to the highway patrol.
On the first school day after the crash, Pike Valley administrators knew class time would not be devoted to lessons. They gave the children time to grieve, bringing in pastors and counselors.
The week was rough, but the children were doing about as well as one might expect, Joonas said. The teachers who knew the boys were also still struggling.
“It’s going to be a process, a grieving process,” Joonas said. “When you’re as small as we are, you get to know them so well. They are part of your family.”
When Lance Rundus, pastor at the Republic United Methodist Church, heard of the crash, he cried and prayed.
Rundus was told the children were still in the SUV. He hoped there was a way they would survive. Maybe there was an air bubble, he thought.
Then he got the text: “The boys didn’t make it.”
The deaths have taken a tremendous toll on their mother, Rundus said.
“She loved her kids fiercely,” he said. “That was her whole life.”
Rundus said the oldest child, Ronald, was happy to be in Scandia, a safe town where some residents keep their doors unlocked. Ronald could ride his bicycle for miles here. He loved sports, especially soccer, and played football at school.
Ronald and his brother Travis talked about opening a bicycle repair shop that would also sell frogs, Rundus said. The two caught frogs “by the bucket loads.”
Travis would at times put the frogs in his pockets, where his mother would later find them, Rundus said with a laugh.
Rundus recalled asking Travis if he had made friends at school since they moved to town. The boy responded: “They’re all my friends.”
Four-year-old Aidan used a wheelchair. He could not speak or walk, Rundus said. He went by “Moses,” and when his mother posted an online fundraiser for medical expenses, she called him one of the strongest children she knew. She wrote: “Love him I do.”
Axton was one of the happiest babies someone could ask for, Rundus said. A photograph of him posted as part of an online fundraiser showed him wearing white and blue bunny ears.
After the crash, Rundus wondered how God was with them. If the family had veered off the road 50 feet later, he thought, they would have missed the pond. And if it had happened last year, which saw less rain, there wouldn’t have been water in it.
‘Made you sick’
A Facebook fundraiser for funeral expenses, one of several set up for the family, collected $32,000 as of Thursday afternoon.
Jessica Housholder, a personal banker at Astra Bank in Scandia, said a local couple who did not personally know the family set up a fund through the bank for those who don’t use Facebook. About 20 people have donated more than $2,000 to it.
The children would sometimes come to the bank to get popcorn and candy, Housholder said. They were always polite, she said, and anyone who spoke with them heard a lot of, “Yes, ma’am.”
Though some of the town’s residents didn’t know the family, news of the loss “hurt our hearts,” Housholder said.
Community members recalled seeing the boys playing around Scandia, where “happy holidays” signs were hung on street lights and speakers played a Concordia radio station with its oldies music and its talk of a local school’s “student of the month.”
Three women who gathered Thursday morning at a beauty salon on Fourth Street said they would often see the two older boys, who they described as cute and well-mannered, ride their bicycles down the street. They were distressed by news of the crash.
“It made you sick to your stomach,” said one woman, who did not want to be named because she did not personally know the family. “It’s unbelievable.”
Anyone who wants to donate to the family through the bank can do so by sending a check to the Hyde Family Benefit at P.O. Box 200 in Scandia, Kansas, 66966.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 6, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
