Family remembers struck pedestrian

BANGOR – The small tan pocketbook of Lena A. Gray, and its contents, characterized her personality – clean, tidy and proper.

Members of her family sat on the porch of her brother’s home in Bangor on Thursday evening, tenderly looking through the objects Gray carried with her every day.

Inside they found a neatly folded map of the BAT bus route, one tube of lipstick, a comb, a list of the foods she was allergic to – including apples, lettuce and most berries – and a grocery list noting breath mints, plastic wrap and other household items she bought the day she died.

“She was so neat, organized and old-fashioned,” said Linda Pollard, Gray’s niece. “She was very matronly and would only wear skirts. When I did her hair she’d bring her own shampoo to my shop and wanted it done very plain, straight, parted down the middle and curled up just a little bit at the bottom.”

Gray, 80, was struck Wednesday afternoon by a Maine Potato Growers Energy Services tractor-trailer truck hauling fuel as she walked across State Street near its intersection with Broadway.

Gray’s family said she periodically rode the BAT bus to the Hannaford store on Broadway to do her shopping.

Moments before she was struck, Joe Dawson, a witness to the accident, had offered to carry Gray’s shopping bags, but she had politely declined.

“Her turning down an offer for him to carry her groceries doesn’t surprise me at all,” Pollard said. “She was very independent and loved to walk. Everyone would see her out walking.”

Gray’s brother, Fernald Gray, 78, said he remembers his sister as a “mama’s girl,” who always cared for her family.

Gray was born in Sedgwick and moved to Bangor as a child. She lived with her mother and cleaned the Bangor House and private homes for most of her life. In the past five years, she had moved into the Nason Park Manor independent living facility, which was built on the site where her family once had a home.

Her home was just down the street from where she was struck. Neighbors remember seeing her walking to and from the bus stop at least twice a week, running errands and getting fresh air.

Gray never married or had children. She kept her family very close and had been a fixture at her brother’s hospital bedside for three years recently as he struggled with a heart condition.

“She never missed a day,” her brother said tearfully, remembering the steadfast devotion of his sister. “If Lena [his wife’s name is also Lena] couldn’t pick her up, she’d take the bus right to the hospital.”

Lena M. Gray, Fernald’s wife, keeps with her the fond memories of when the two women ate at the Coach House Restaurant in Brewer, after trips to the hospital. She also noted that every Wednesday night during the spring and summer the three would go to Nicky’s Cruisin Diner to eat and look at the old cars.

In the past few years, the brother and sister had spent uncountable hours together, rekindling their relationship and catching up on the time they had spent apart during their young adult lives.

“When I heard the name at the accident, I knew it wasn’t Lena, my wife, and the only other person by that name I knew was my Lena, my sister,” Fernald Gray said, sobbing, rubbing his chest as he recalled the first moments after he heard of his sister’s death.

“I kept thinking, it can’t be her, it can’t be her.”

Despite the tragedy of her death, Gray’s family said if she knew the spectacle her death had caused she would have worried about everyone else, wanting to make sure they were all right.

“She would say, ‘Oh dear, I didn’t mean to do this to everybody.’ She was always looking out for everybody else,” Lena M. Gray fondly said of her sister-in-law.

In Gray’s home, her family found only one picture propped up in her bedroom, a photo taken of her great-niece Ashley Pollard, who will graduate soon from Bangor High School.

“She [Gray] was a very caring woman and was always more concerned about other people’s feelings than herself,” Ashley Pollard, 17, fondly said of her great-aunt.