Bereaved lawyer talks of crash tragedy

Half a world away from home, Peter Dengate Thrush answered his cellphone to hear the news.

Peter, a Wellington barrister who was in Morocco for a work conference, would never see his wife, his father or his brother alive again.

Liz Dengate Thrush, her father-in-law Ron Thrush, her brother-in-law Gavin Thrush and close family friend Heather Taylor were killed just before midnight last Friday in the worst motor accident in the capital in two years.

As the funerals began last week, Peter - a well-known lawyer and former chairman of InternetNZ - put his personal pain and the impact on his family off limits to the public gaze. But he told the Herald on Sunday: "It's a national tragedy, the tremendous loss of talent to New Zealand from the four of them."

The abruptness of the accident shows how quickly exultation can turn to lament.

The foursome had just emerged from a successful business meeting on the western Hutt hills into the steady rain of a sullen winter night. Crossing State Highway 2 at the intersection of Wairere Rd - a notorious blackspot that has troubled residents for years - to turn south back into Wellington, they were hit by a 31-year-old man driving his Subaru Impreza northward to Upper Hutt.

He was seriously injured, but survived. For the Thrush carload, the smash was fatal.

Morocco is 12 hours behind New Zealand, so word didn't reach Peter until late Friday night, just after he arrived in Marrakech for a meeting of ICANN, the internet's governing body. He rushed home, accompanied on most of the 26 hours of flight time by InternetNZ executive director Keith Davidson, who met him at London's Heathrow.

"For Peter, this is the mind-numbing part: to lose your only brother, your only father and your only wife in a single accident is just beyond comprehension," Davidson said. "To lose any one of those would be appalling, but it's just indescribable."

Hundreds gathered to remember Ron, Gavin and Heather at funerals in Wellington over the past three days.

Liz's life will be commemorated tomorrow. An IT entrepreneur whose new business was the reason for the meeting that fatal Friday, Elizabeth Lorraine Dengate Thrush was astalwart of the Kiwi computing scene.

By all accounts, she was widely-known and loved in internet circles, among the judiciary and at the esteemed Wellington Club, where she was a long-serving member.

At the start of the 1980s she joined a computing company, beginning what would become a 26-year career in IT that included jobs at Telecom, TelstraClear, the Ministry of Economic Development, and on the council of InternetNZ.

Liz and Peter met at university.

A month from now they would have celebrated the 30-year anniversary of their engagement.

Keith Davidson said that a moving tribute from Liz at her husband's 50th birthday this year had been a public demonstration of the couple's close bond. "She was hugely in love with Peter and a dedicated mother."

In the aftermath of the accident, InternetNZ announced the formation of the Liz Dengate Thrush Internet Entrepreneurship Foundation, established on behalf of Peter.

Endowed with $20,000, the foundation has already attracted a further $9500 in donations, including US$5000 from Vint Cerf, the American known as the father of the internet.

Liz had recently set up a business called Brain Fuel, which offered a package that allowed a number NZQA-accredited certificates to be completed online.

"They were signing up students, and things seemed to be going very well," said Peter.

That Friday night, around a dozen people met to discuss marketing Brain Fuel through Omegatrend, the international direct marketing/loyalty programme company where Liz's brother-in-law Gavin worked.

When the crash claimed his life, Gavin Ronald Louis Thrush was about a month away from his 47th birthday.

As he found success with Omegatrend, Gavin had involved many other Thrush family members in the company. Gavin and his wife Linda met and married in Melbourne but were both keen Kiwis and always intended to return home, Peter said.

They had recently been appointed to lead Omegatrend's Los Angeles operations.

At his funeral on Friday, Gavin was remembered as a charismatic ideas man; a motorcycling enthusiast who needed three cups of his beloved tea to start the day; a rule-breaker always handy with a funny statistic and to some in his family, a "demi-god".

A slideshow of photos accompanied by his favourite song, Elton John's Tiny Dancer, showed scenes from his adventurous, globe-trotting life and brought tears and laughter from those assembled.

"Those closest to him will never recover, in a sense, because you can never replace him," said Jan Bourne, a friend and colleague from Omegatrend in Melbourne. "But on a broader sense there are so many people who will be shocked and upset and very sorry, because of the contribution he made to their lives."

As if taking two members of the Thrush family's middle generation wasn't enough, the accident also claimed its patriarch.

Although he was only a couple of months away from his 80th birthday, Ronald Frank Albert Thrush was hale, hearty and still working fulltime, said Peter, one of the opera buff's five children with wife Cynthia.

Born in Australia, Ron came to New Zealand at 11, going through high school on a singing scholarship. Music, specifically opera, was to become a life-long passion.

After university in Auckland, he took a commission in the NZ Air Force and, as if foreshadowing what would become a family passion, was involved in the early development of computing with the Defence Force in the 1960s. Bruce Greenfield, the NBR New Zealand Opera's head of music, said Ron loved Gilbert and Sullivan. He had selflessly given years of his life to the genre, as had Heather Margaret Taylor, the only person killed in the crash who was not a member of the Thrush family.

The 69-year-old and her husband David were close friends of the Thrush family, and she was also involved with Omegatrend.

A talented soprano and singing teacher, Heather was a source of boundless encouragement for others, said Greenfield.

As the weight of the catastrophe sank in last week, Peter said the support flowing in to the family had been tremendous.

"There's been a huge outpouring. We've been inundated with messages from all over the world," he said.

Meanwhile, residents living near the deadly intersection signed a petition to demand urgent action from Transit. It reads as a plea: "How many more people will die or be seriously injured before definitive action is taken?"