[AGDLynn]

A caring city comforts a father

By CRAIG SCHNEIDER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


W.A. Bridges Jr. / AJC
Cards and flowers cover Brad Cunard's dining room table. "I went from feeling like the most alone person on the face of the earth to feeling like I have a large extended family."

He was the father. He was the husband. He was the driver.

So he blames himself.

"I have to," said Brad Cunard, a week after his wife and two boys were killed when a tree fell on their SUV on an Atlanta street.

"It was my responsibility as the father to protect my family," he said, "and I failed miserably that day."

He knows the tragedy was random, that the storm could have toppled the huge, 100-year-old oak onto any passing car. But that doesn't seem to ease the guilt he feels.

Right now, he said, what keeps him going is the overwhelming support he has received from people. Cards and flowers fill his living room.

"I just want to say thank you," Brad Cunard said from his Ponce de Leon Place home. "I went from feeling like the most alone person on the face of the earth to feeling like I have a large extended family."

He rattles off the thank yous: to the woman he didn't know who sat with him in the rain. To the police officer who, little by little, moved him away from the wreck. To the 30 neighbors who keep bringing him meals.

"I have fallen in love with Atlanta in a way I had never before," said Cunard.

He has not returned to the printing business he ran with his wife, Lisa. He did visit the site of the accident to place flowers by the sidewalk memorial that has arisen under a street sign bent by the fallen oak. After his wife and children were killed, all Brad Cunard wanted was to come home to his house, about a mile from where the tree fell at North Highland and Los Angeles avenues. He smiles at the way Lisa had lined up fancy cups and saucers on a shelf. His eyes linger on a photo of Max, his 3-year-old, with Santa.

He stays clear of the boys' room. Many of the toys they had scattered around the house have been picked up and moved to the room, out of their father's sight.

But he opens the door to the corner room and shows a visitor the white crib for Owen, his 5-month-old, topped with its mobile of stuffed animals. He looks around at Max's train set on the floor, his "Cat in the Hat" books and his last drawings from preschool, including one of a pail of blueberries. On the nightstand is a little book titled "Do You Know How Much I Love You?"

"We read every night before he went to bed," said Cunard, who sleeps with Max's baby blanket.

His demeanor changes in this room. It's as though the longer he stays here, the harder it is to breathe.

He remembers his family's last words as they rode down North Highland Avenue, a storm approaching.

"Where is the storm?" asked Max as the wind and rain picked up. Rain blew in billows off the rooftops of the shops and cafes of Virginia-Highland.

"Oh, this is very scary," said Lisa, who was sitting in the back seat with the boys.

Cunard never saw the tree tilt or fall. He just felt the Toyota Land Cruiser's roof caving in, and started screaming.

The driver's side door was jammed, so he pushed open the sun roof and climbed out. He grabbed his cellphone to call 911, but couldn't make it work.

As the storm soaked him, he dove back inside the SUV to get to his family, but he couldn't reach them. He called his wife's name but there was no answer. He could barely see her under the wreckage.

He remembers firefighters rushing over with chain saws to attack the tree. And he remembers a police officer's words of comfort as she slowly moved him away from the crushed vehicle to the fire station across the street.

In the station Cunard's eyes fell on an array of toy fire trucks and he found himself thinking: Max loved fire trucks.

Again and again, Cunard goes over every moment of that day, how he might have done something differently, something that could have sped his family safely through the intersection ahead of that falling tree.

"My entire day was so changed by small events," he recalled. "Lisa wanted to leave early at 3:30, but we kept getting caught at work. We had to call a client before we left."

But repeatedly asking why "serves no purpose," he said. "There is no reason."

Right now, he is not thinking about the future, about going back to work or revising the plans for the rest of his life.

He is a private person, and he doesn't feel comfortable with the attention, all the people around.

Yet he realizes they have become his saving grace.

"I remember when Lisa lost both her mom and dad, she let people in like no one I had seen before," he said. So as people touched by his story reach out to him, he is looking back to his wife for help.

"I'm taking her lead."