Lacey Family Reeling From Loss Of Husband And Father To Drunk Driver

“This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the
letting go—” -Emily Dickinson

by Patricia A. Miller

Kenneth Moeller was a man of deep faith. He believed that everything happens for a reason.

He always carried a small metal cross with him in one of his pockets. He called it his “protector.”

But on Nov. 10, he didn’t have it with him. It fell out on the laundry floor when Debbie -- his wife of 38 years -- was doing laundry.

Moeller, who worked for a painting company in Waretown, was on his way home in the early evening darkness that Nov. 10. He took a NJ Transit bus to and from work, so his wife could have the car during the daytime.

The couple was frugal. Daughter Melissa Gregg estimated it cost her father about $5 a week to commute. To save money, his name was kept off the car insurance policy.

“It was one dollar for a bus ride,” Melissa said. “It was a short trip from Waretown to Lanoka Harbor.”

He walked up Route 9 North, to his usual bus stop. But the bus was running late and Moeller wanted to get home. So he decided to head up to the next bus stop.

He texted Debbie at 6:45 p.m. to let her know the bus was late, but that he’d be home soon.

She texted him back, but got no answer. A few minutes later, Melissa, who was driving on Route 9, heard the wail of a MONOC ambulance.

“I said, ‘thoughts and prayers to that family,’ “ she recalled. “I didn’t know it was my family.”

The family had previously planned to meet up at Melissa’s home that evening. Her mother was there, along with her sisters Debbie and Jennifer and Melissa’s husband and three children.

Debbie’s cell phone rang.

“She saw my Dad’s picture come up,” Melissa recalled.

Shocking news

But it wasn’t her father. And her mother began to cry as she listened to the voice at the other end of the phone.

It was a police detective who had pulled Moeller’s phone out of his pocket. He told Debbie that her husband had been injured in an accident.

“She couldn’t even speak,” Melissa said of her mother.

The terrified family made what seemed like “the longest ride” to Jersey Shore University Hospital in Neptune. The MONOC helicopter had not arrived when they got there.

“They didn’t think he would make it to Jersey Shore,” Melissa said. “They had to stop and work on him a few times.”

Melissa soon learned just how bad things were when she checked the Ocean County Police, Fire & EMS Facebook page. That’s when she learned that her father had been hit hard by a drunk driver. The impact left him half in, half out of the driver’s windshield.

The driver kept going with Ken Moeller in his windshield for another one and a half miles, until police were able to corner him, Waretown police have said.

Horrific injuries

When Moeller arrived at Jersey Shore, the slender man’s body was swollen to three times its size from trauma. He was taken into surgery, where his left leg was amputated.

“They let us have a minute with him in the hallway,” she said. “He didn’t speak. He was unresponsive. There wasn’t a cut on his face. But every bone in his body was broken.”

Ken Moeller was put on life support. The next seven days were a blur of successive medical crises. His organs began to fail.

And through it all, his family talked to him. They told him how much they loved him. They touched him.

“My sister apologized to him for every stupid teenage thing we had ever done,” she said. We just let him know we were there.”

Ken Moeller -- husband of Debbie, father of Melissa, Heather and Jennifer, brother of Carol Durkin and Daniel Moeller, grandfather to Joseph, Taylor and Michael -- died seven days after the accident.

Trying to go on

It’s Christmas now. Ken Moeller loved Christmas. The live tree in Melissa’s house is decorated to the hilt. Somewhere upstairs Christmas carols are playing.

But the family is reeling. They are going through the motions for the children.

“He would want them to have the best Christmas they could have,” she said. “He was such a good person. He lived for the little moments in life. He just wanted his family happy.”

Melissa’s little girl is getting grief counseling. Her grandfather was her buddy.

“She was Pop-Pop’s best friend,” she said. “They would build things. He taught her how to use tools. They would do yard work together. We can’t help her. We can’t help ourselves.”

Melissa’s mother is now facing the loss of her home and having to enter the job market after being a stay-at-home Mom for many years. The $5,000 raised through the Gofundme page Melissa created to pay for immediate bills is nearly gone.

Melissa is hoping to continue the Gofundme page, to help her mother’s transition and help pay for her sisters’ college tuition.

She has no words for Marcos A. Ortega, the man who drove drunk, struck her father and drove with him in the windshield for a mile and a half.

“I don’t think about that person,” she said. “I can’t bring myself to give him a thought.”

Ortega was charged with driving while intoxicated, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident with a fatality after Ken Moeller died. He is lodged in the Ocean County Jail in lieu of $250,000 cash bail, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.

Melissa cannot fathom why so many people continue to drink and drive. She hopes that what happened to her father may make some think twice before they put the key in the ignition.

“I don’t understand why people continue to still do it,” she said. “This person didn’t only take my Dad’s life. He loved it and didn’t want to leave. My mother has lost her friend of 40 years.”

Shortly after her father’s death, Melissa’s 5-year-old autistic son came to her, she recalled.

“He doesn’t understand at all,” she said.

But maybe he does.

“I know Pop-Pop’s an angel,” the little boy told his mother. “He told me. I don’t understand what that means.”