Getting back to business after a tragic February day

Buddy Stuart on Wednesday outside his woodworking store in downtown Milton. (Harrison Thorp photo). Below, firefighter debrief soon after the fatal accident last February.

MILTON - Richard “Buddy” Stuart remembers the horror of Feb. 27 all too vividly.

He’s reminded of it every day when he drives along White Mountain Highway and sees the roadside shrine for Monique Smith, who died when the two collided on that fateful afternoon.

Stuart was driving his pickup truck back to his woodworking shop in Milton after taking measurements at Eastern Boat for teak cabinets he was going to build for the Milton boatmaker.

Smith, 76, was driving home to Union where she lived. 

She never made it.

A light, freezing rain had just changed to a wet snow shortly before Stuart rounded a curve heading back to Milton just north of the Farm Museum and saw Smith’s Ford Taurus coming at him sideways.

There was little Stuart could do on the snow-slickened roadway. His truck plowed head-on into the Ford’s passenger side.

The next thing he remembers is the firefighters and paramedics fussing over him and trying to get him quickly into an ambulance for transport to Frisbie Memorial Hospital, and looking up and seeing no one attending to anyone in the Taurus.

“I was concerned when all the firefighters and EMTs were paying attention to me, and I could see nothing going on in the other car,” Stuart said on Wednesday outside his shop. “I couldn’t see in the car, and I wanted to know how they were.

"I remember them loading me into the ambulance. I asked a firefighter what happened to other people. She answered, ‘You have to worry about yourself, they didn’t make it.’”

Stuart, who is also from Union, said it was a miracle he survived. He said he wasn’t wearing his seat belt and his airbag didn’t deploy.

“After the crash, I looked down and there was the engine right beside me,” he said. 

Stuart suffered a concussion, a broken nose, several ribs that were dislodged from his spine and a broken right wrist in two places, plus lacerations and badly banged-up legs. He also suffered nerve damage from the wrist injury that is affecting his right shoulder.

He says he was truly blessed to not have been killed and thinks he survived for a reason: to continue caring for his 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, who has Down’s syndrome; and a younger son, Colby.

Even though he was seriously injured, Stuart was out of the hospital the day after the accident, but he didn’t end his physical therapy until just last week. He said he still has trouble with his wrist and shoulder.

He estimates the injuries set him back in his business four months, but that things are picking up now and he’s back in the swing.

“It put me behind, not only the injuries but the trauma of having a person pass away,” he said quietly.

Stuart, who turns 51 this Saturday, said he was saddened to hear Smith had died in the crash, but he thinks about her every day.

“From everything I’ve heard about her, she was a nice lady who had a wonderful family,” he said. “They put up a memorial for her where it happened. I drive by that memorial every day. When I do I always look out to see that it’s there.”