It was a tragic logging-truck crash that robbed her of her best friend and partner of 20 years, but Tokoroa’s Lisa Amundsen escaped the wreckage to find a strength she didn’t know she had.
The terrible accident on State Highway 30 instantly killed her husband Blair, 35, and saw her suffer head and leg injuries – but it left their four-year-old son Romeo miraculously unscathed.
Now, a month after being pulled from the wreckage, mum-of-three Lisa, 35, shares her heartbreak with Woman’s Day as she recovers at their family home in Kinleith.
It was love at first sight when Lisa first met Blair in Whakatane and they moved in together when they were just 16. “He asked me out and, ever since that day, we were stuck like glue,” she tells. “We just clicked. He was really polite – he was a gentleman.”
Dairy farmer Blair told Lisa he loved her every day, but she struggled to open up after her troubled upbringing.
“He taught me how to love someone unconditionally,” she says. “I had issues with marriage, as what I’d seen of it wasn’t good. Every year since we got together, he’d ask me, ‘Will you marry me?’ It was quite annoying!”
But last year – after 19 years and three children together – Lisa began to feel differently. She loved her childhood sweetheart and realised a marriage with him would be different.
One day, while the couple were working on the farm, Blair asked her again and pleaded to know what he would have to do to get a yes. Lisa joked, “Strip off your clothes and run around naked!”
“Then I turned around and just saw a white bottom,” she remembers. “Blair was running around the tanker, shouting, ‘I love you, Lisa! Will you marry me please?’ It was winter and all he had on were gumboots and a safety helmet!” He got down on one knee and, with tears in her eyes, Lisa finally said “yes”.
The pair wed last September at the Tokoroa Courthouse, with just their three children, Hamish, eight, Maanea, six, and Romeo, in attendance. Instead of exchanging rings, they bought each of the kids a pounamu.
Blair (pictured above with Lisa) died when a logging truck collided with his vehicle.
He was ‘home’
Lisa’s husband was a dedicated dad. “Blair has always been a provider,” she says. “Being with him, no matter where, felt like home. He consistently worked hard. He’d get up in the morning and feed the kids, then come home to make tea and give them their baths. He just loved to help.”
Lisa begins to cry as she tells of the July 28 crash that took Blair’s life. “We picked Romeo up from kindergarten early and decided to go to Rotorua while the two older kids were at school. Normally, we’d wait and all go together.”
She is thankful that Blair, for some unknown reason, moved Romeo’s car seat from one side of the vehicle to the other the day of their trip. It saved the wee boy’s life. “Romeo didn’t even have a scratch. If he’d been on the other side, it would have been so bad.”
Lisa recalls seeing the logging truck coming towards them. “The last words Blair said, just softly, were, ‘Oh, no.’ The side of the truck bent like a plastic bag and that’s all I remember.”
A man whose ute was badly damaged by falling logs ran to their aid and pulled Romeo from the wreckage. Lisa was trapped, but he held her hand. She says, “When I woke up, I didn’t feel any pain, but I couldn’t see. I called out and I couldn’t hear Blair breathe. I couldn’t hear anything. Someone said, ‘We’re going to take care of you and your son is alright.’”
In that moment, Lisa knew her husband was dead. “If he was alive, he would have been making sure I was OK. He wouldn’t have left me like that. I felt really alone in that moment.”
Lisa keeps Blair’s ashes by her bedside and wears his ring on a chain around her neck. “He’ll be with me, guiding me,” she smiles. “He can’t do any of the things he used to do, but I can. He still wants his children washed and fed at a certain time and by doing those things, I keep him alive.”
Lisa is grateful for the time she had with Blair but wishes the kids had more time with their dad. “It’s unbearable to watch my children suffer like that,” she says. “He did everything for them as babies, but now they’re bigger, he could take them fishing or have a date with his daughter. He always took the day off for their birthdays.
“Nothing can change Blair being gone. We were supposed to get old together. I miss him so much, it makes me feel sick. But then I think of the kids and I try to stay strong. The uplifting thing about it for me is that it’s given me a strength in myself I didn’t have before.”
Lisa stays strong for her children.
