Mother searches for who placed cross at the site of her daughter’s fatal crash - Kinston Free Press

Gale Taylor had never seen a cross on the side of the road.

She never had to place a roadside memorial in her front yard even after her 5-year-old daughter, Penny Jo, was struck by a vehicle on Memorial Day in 1979.

“I can see her right now with those long, skinny legs running up the driveway and across the road,” Taylor said. “I saw the car coming and I knew it was going to happen. When the car hit her, she went up in the air a good 20 feet, and she looked like a rag doll. I thought she was dead.

“I never thought about a cross then because I had never seen one on a road, but I thank God every day that she was alive.”

Penny Jo Noble Strain, 45, died at 10:02 a.m. Wednesday, March 4, of this year after she crossed the centerline on Cunningham Road, hitting an ABF Freight System Inc. tractor trailer head on, according to the accident report. A white cross mysteriously appeared a few days later in the curve where Penny died, and her mother searches for the person who placed it there.

“That cross means something to me,” Taylor said. “It represents my child’s life and death.”

Penny was born on July 28, 1974, on a Sunday morning as Taylor felt a little guilty she wasn’t in church but was excited to see her firstborn.

The young mother and her husband, Larry Noble, tried to have a baby for almost a year and Larry had already picked out the name “Penny” and Taylor added “Jo.”

“She was my first child. I came home, jumping up and down. I was 21 and I was so thrilled,” Taylor said. “I remember the first time I felt her flutter in my tummy and I laid down on the floor so I could feel it better so I could get all the little flutter feeling that I could because I was so excited.”

Taylor eventually gave birth to two more daughters, Amber and Julie.

She held her baby Julie while nearly 3-year-old Amber played in her room as Taylor called 911 on Memorial Day 41 years ago.

Penny was searching for a ball that had rolled across Neuse Road in a curve when she was struck by the vehicle.

“I was playing with my Little People house and I knew something had happened,” Amber Hoyt said. “I got about halfway in the driveway when my mom told me to go back into the house.”

The rotary phone cord stretched until it lost its spiral as Taylor spoke to the 911 operator outside her house and watched her daughter lying in the middle of Neuse Road. After speaking to the operator, Taylor ran to the road to see her daughter.

Taylor watched her daughter’s legs swell, causing her shorts to tighten. Penny broke her pelvis, suffered a concussion, and had internal bleeding.

“It seemed like it took forever for the ambulance to get there though. I thought she was going to die before the ambulance ever got there,” Taylor said. “But when they got there and loaded her up, they didn’t turn the siren on. I was in the ambulance with her and I was like, ‘Why don’t we have the siren on? My child is dying.’ I really thought that they knew she was going to die and didn’t bother to turn the siren on.

“She didn’t die.”

Penny stayed in the hospital for one month.

“I still have flashbacks,” Taylor said. “It took a long time to recover from that.”

Penny graduated from South Lenoir High School in 1992 and took general business classes at Lenoir Community College. Afraid of immunization shots, Penny avoided four-year colleges and chose to take night classes at North Carolina Wesleyan College. She received her master’s degree in business at East Carolina University.

She worked at Moen and MasterBrand Cabinets as either a supervisor or a materials manager and went on to become a self-employed interior designer before her death.

“She was great with interior design,” Taylor said. “She could make something out of nothing.”

Taylor retired from education after teaching at Kinston High School and Woodington Middle School. She moved to Raleigh seven years ago with her husband, Keith Taylor, to be near her two granddaughters.

She received the call of her daughter’s death around 11:30 a.m. on March 4.

“Her dad called me that morning, and he hasn’t called me in 25 years,” Taylor said. “I knew something terrible was wrong because I don’t ever remember him calling me.”

Amber was working in Raleigh when her father called her. Amber walked to her office and began crying.

“I fell apart,” Amber said. “I asked him if he had called my mom and Julie. He had, so I went to see my mom.”

“It’s hard to believe that somebody you love and that was inside of you is dead. And I’m never going to see her again on this earth,” Taylor said. “That part is hard because anything can remind you of her.”

Penny was buried in a plot beside her great grandmother at the Deep Run Original Free Will Baptist Church.

Taylor contacted Rice Monuments, Inc. in Kinston for a headstone and spoke with sales manager Lisa Casteen, who worked with Penny at MasterBrand.

“I didn’t know her but I remembered working with Penny at MasterBrand,” Casteen said. “I told her I go by the cross every day on my way to work.”

Taylor asked her family if they had placed the cross on Cunningham Road but no one had. She then joined the Word of Mouth Kinston Facebook group on May 15 and asked if anyone knew who put the cross there. No one knew.

“I got emotional because that’s where my baby died and someone cares,” Taylor said. “I texted Penny’s dad and asked my daughters and no one put the cross there. I then joined that group thinking someone on there might know but no one said anything.

“Lisa said it could have been the truck driver.”

ABF sent a white orchid to Taylor after her daughter’s death, but she still wonders if the truck driver placed the cross on the side of the road.

The Free Press was unable to reach the truck driver, 50-year-old Mark Shane Donathan, for comments.

Whoever placed the cross, Taylor is thankful for them.

“I want to say thank you for acknowledging the death of my daughter and showing that her life meant something by putting a memorial on the side of the road for people to see where her life was gone,” Taylor said. “I’m not mad at God. I’m not mad at anybody. I’m not mad at the truck driver. There’s no need to be mad. I’m sad and I feel like the truck driver is sad. I’m not angry, and I haven’t been angry at all.”

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