60-year-old killed crossing street

Man says he lost light of his life in fatality blocks from his home.

By LEANORA MINAI

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 11, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Two blocks from Jacqueline Gericke's house, music and laughter spilled from a gallery show of works by an artist staging a comeback after a near fatal car accident.

Gericke was curious about the celebration. She slipped by her husband in the living room and walked up the street.

When he heard sirens, he grew worried. He walked outside, toward the flashing lights. In the street, a sheet covered a small body. He asked if it was a man or woman. He described an opal ring his wife wore.

It was Jacquie, his wife of 26 years, the woman he met in church and toured the United States with in an silver Airstream trailer.

"You just realize there's nothing you can do or say that's going to change it," Bill Gericke, 65, said between sobs Friday. "You just realize the light of your life has just been extinguished."

Mrs. Gericke died instantly at 8:25 p.m. Thursday when a car driven by a priest struck her as she tried to cross Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) Street N. She was 60.

No charges are expected. The accident leaves her friends, husband, 83-year-old mother and three children struggling with profound loss, wishing they could bring her back.

"I'm so sad," said a friend, Janet Geraghty, 66. "She was a fun person, just a real fun person. She couldn't sit still for five minutes. She just bubbled."

Mrs. Gericke made a living as a research librarian. But she was a feminist, vegetarian, aluminum can collector, bird counter and watcher and reader of Anne Sexton. She cut her brown hair and sent her locks away for sick children's wigs. She took in people down on their luck.

She graduated from St. Petersburg High School, moved away, met her husband in Fort Walton Beach and moved back. They bought her dream house, the one she passed every day on her way to school -- the Spanish-style house at 1420 Dr. M.L. King St. N. She adored Gericke, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who drives a big Chevy Suburban.

"It's a huge truck, and she would be sitting right next to him," said neighbor Kim Calvert, 38. "It was so cute."

Mrs. Gericke talked politics, politics, politics.

As the presidential election loomed, she was known to chant, "Ralph! Ralph!" (as in Ralph Nader) in grocery stores. Her husband voted for George W. Bush. But they were a perfect balance, both working the polls at the Police Athletic League on 16th Street N.

"If you got one of us, you got both of us," Gericke said.

On Thursday night, they were apart, though. Gericke thought his wife was going to check on the loud music from their front patio. But she walked down the street to Ambiance Galleries, 1535 Dr. M.L. King St. N.

A white tent stood in the gallery's front yard. People mingled on the porch and inside, bidding on paintings, drawings and collages by artist Allison Massari. Massari had known tragedy. She was seriously burned when her Jeep Cherokee exploded in flames after another car hit it in 1998.

Mrs. Gericke stayed a few minutes, chatting with gallery guests. The opening was an art benefit to help severely burned children.

"We are all devastated," said Mona Pain, gallery co-owner. "It was a very difficult ending to the evening, and this was supposed to be joyous, uplifting."

The silent auction never happened. A block from her house, Mrs. Gericke stepped off the east curb and started across Dr. M.L. King St. N.

From the north came the Buick, driven by the Rev. Miloje Raicevic, 66, the priest at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg. He had finished choir practice and was on his way home.

Officer Mike Jockers, who investigated the accident, said witnesses shouted to Mrs. Gericke to look out for the car. But for some reason, she started to run. She ran into the path of the Buick, which was going about 35 mph.

"The witnesses said there was no mistaking which way the car was coming from, and it was the only car on the road at the time," Jockers said.

Just before Christmas last year, the same priest counseled a Serbian man whose wife and infant daughter were killed in a car crash.

"Now he has been involved in a crash, which, unfortunately, has taken someone's life," Jockers said.

But the Gericke family does not blame the priest.

"He's in our prayers," said her son, Tim Austin, 38.

Little things, like his mother's needlepoint cushion of Noah's Ark, brought Austin to tears Friday. He sobbed into a handkerchief, wondering aloud whether he could have been around more. Time is scarce though, he said. He is a husband, weekend graduate student and father of two boys.

"You take it for granted that they're just right down the street," said Austin, a Seminole resident.

Before his mother's body was carried away Thursday night, Austin knelt beside her and prayed with Gericke, who has been his stepfather for 26 years.

"Then there was this rain that kept getting stronger and stronger," Austin said. "It was like heaven was crying."

-- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.

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