Thursday, Aug. 1, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.
When Lori Fuller answered the phone at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, a police officer asked her to go to her front door, where other officers were waiting.
"I thought, 'Somebody stole my damn car,' " Fuller said, standing in the living room of her Henderson home trying to hold back tears.
Instead, the police told her that her husband, Bryan, 41, and her two daughters, Abbigail, 5, and Allison, 4, were among the five who died in a 2-car crash in California on U.S. 95. The three were traveling to visit Bryan's brother, Alan, in Yuma, Ariz.
"Lori lost her entire family in a matter of seconds," Bryan Fuller's sister, Colleen Harris, said.
For Lori Fuller, 33, a charge nurse at St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson, family members arriving by the hour from 19 states are her only comfort.
Fuller was working when Alan tried to call her at home about 10:30 p.m. Friday, after Bryan and the girls failed to arrive.
"This has been really rough to the point I have run out of tears," she said as co-workers from the hospital knocked on the door.
A funeral is scheduled for noon Friday at Christ the Servant Lutheran Church, followed by burial at Palm Memorial Park in Henderson. A memorial service has been set for Sunday in Portland, Ore., where Bryan was born.
About 15 family members on Wednesday visited the U.S. 95 crash site, a blind curve marked by a double yellow line. At 5 p.m. Friday a car tried passing a truck and plowed into Bryan's southbound Mercury. The driver of that car, Sandra Bartman, 43, Bryan, Abbigail, and a family friend, Christopher Houston, died at the scene.
Allison, according to the California Highway Patrol report, was flown to University Medical Center where she died shortly after arriving.
Sandra Bartman's husband and 12-year-old son survived the crash.
The Fullers' coffee table is piled with photographs, memories of lives full of motorcycles, Barbie dolls and costume parties. Bryan was teaching Abbigail how to ride a small motorcycle, dressed in helmet, gloves and biker outfit.
Lori and Bryan met at Fort Lewis, Wash., at a friend's house in 1988 when they were in the Army. "It was love at first sight," Lori said.
A Justice of the Peace married the couple on Feb. 17, 1989, in Washington, but Lori's mother, who eloped, insisted on a formal wedding on Aug. 12, 1989, in Wisconsin. "We loved each other so much we got married twice," Lori said, showing two marriage certificates from two states.
As soon as they married, Bryan gave up his racing days.
"He traded his race car for a boat, because he thought it was more of a family activity," Lori says. But he kept dirt bikes, motor bikes, classic cars -- a '56 Ford and a '69 Camaro.
Bryan Fuller's mother, Rosalie Hyland, said her son's ability to tear out a car engine and replace evolved over time.
"At 7, he couldn't put my brand new dryer together after taking it apart, and we never let him forget it," Hyland of Portland, Ore. said.
Bryan Fuller was presented the "Leading Role" award this year by the City of Henderson's Parks Department, a golden trophy that stands on a living room bookshelf. He had been promoted to park coordinator for the city.
Tracy Novak, park superintendent in Henderson, said he considered the loss of Bryan and Houston -- also a parks employee -- a tragedy.
"I would consider both of them as key employees," he said. "Bryan was always right in the middle of things. He took the tough challenges for eight years."
Bryan Fuller and Houston were good friends, Novak said.
Lori Fuller walked into the girls' room where three black cats peer out the window, waiting for the girls to return. Whiskers, a male cat, allowed the girls to strap him into a doll's stroller and whisk him around the house, not even budging when they ran into walls.
Two yellow dresses, just like the one Belle wore in "Beauty & the Beast," are side by side on a bed. The girls had dressed up for a princess party this spring and Lori had to work. Before the party, Bryan brought Abbigail and Allison to the hospital, "where they walked like Miss America," visiting patients, Lori, and Bryan's daughter, Stephanie Dean, 20, from a previous marriage.
Unable to bear the thought of burying her daughters in used dresses, Lori went to the Disney Store and bought them brand new Cinderella dresses, pale blue with silver rhinestones, glass slippers, stockings that glitter and feather boas that sparkle in the sun.
Their pink caskets will flank Bryan's cremated remains.
"They're going to go to heaven as Cinderella," Lori said, her tears returning.
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