Widow searches for spouse's last moments

By Mira Oberman
Seattle Times staff reporter

It was more than she had expected. But it was less than she had hoped for.

Five people responded to the handwritten signs Susan McAlister taped to the Bellevue bus shelter where her husband died of heart failure.

"PLEASE," it read. "If you were with Ron McAlister on 7/14 at this Park and Ride when he died and you can give me any information about what happened, will you please contact me at smcalister1@msn.com. Thank you on behalf of me and my family."

A man came to the funeral who used to ride the bus with her husband every day. He spoke with Ron McAlister's brother and sister at the service, and then he went home.

"I'm hoping that somehow I can connect with him to see if he sensed there was anything wrong," she said. "I hope he didn't suffer."

The last time she saw her husband was at 6:20 a.m. that Monday, July 14, when his alarm went off. He probably skipped breakfast, as he often did, she said, and went straight to the South Bellevue Park & Ride on Bellevue Way Southeast near Interstate 90. As a shift supervisor for King County's Information-Technology department, he would take the bus to work whenever he worked the day shift.

But it wasn't until the e-mails arrived that she learned how he spent his last moments; how he slumped over shortly before 7 a.m., leaning toward the woman sitting next to him at the bus stop.

How he whispered that he was having trouble breathing. How two women helped lower him onto the bench while a third called 911.

Paramedics worked on him for 20 minutes but were unable to revive him. The medical investigator told Susan there was nothing that could have helped her husband. Some plaque in an artery came loose and blocked the flow of blood to his heart. He was 64.

"It was a big shock," she said. "We knew he had high blood pressure, but there was no indication. ... "

Susan Trubner met Ron McAlister in Seattle in 1980. She was a single mom taking her son to day care, and McAlister charmed her with his smile. They were married in 1982 and had a daughter shortly after. But they got married for the wrong reasons, she said. They would fight about silly things. They didn't try hard enough. They divorced two months shy of their fifth anniversary.

She married again a few years later, but her friendship with McAlister grew as they raised their children together. Eventually, her second marriage ended, and McAlister began to court her again.

"It was fun. We'd go on little road trips together," she said. "The part I enjoyed was going by to see his family again it was like I'd never left."

They remarried on Valentine's Day in 1999. And this time they were ready for each other. They bought a house in Bellevue, and he threw himself into fixing it up. They kept going on little road trips and he kept bringing her roses and jewelry.

There were things to look forward to, she said. Their daughter's wedding in October. A belated honeymoon to celebrate that fifth anniversary they never had the first time.

Her heart still skips a beat when she turns the corner and sees his car in the driveway. For a split second, she thinks to herself, "Ron's home." And then she remembers.

Susan McAlister posted the signs at the park-and-ride lot two weeks after the funeral. But she can't get that stranger at the funeral out of her mind the man who told her brother-in-law that he talked to her husband on the bus every day. She wonders what more he might be able to tell her about the man she fell in love with twice.

Though she hasn't heard from the stranger, Susan McAlister took the last sign down on Wednesday. She wanted to make sure it didn't get lost.

She placed it in the scrapbook she's made, along with the e-mails, the cards and a picture of her husband at the top of Mount St. Helens with the words he said written on top: "Thank God for all this awesome beauty." 

(This article was printed in the Seattle Times about 2 weeks after Ron's death.)