BROCKTON - Lisa J. Herlihy was a strong, stubborn woman, her friends said. Parkinson's disease and severe osteoperosis meant that the 46-year-old had to rely on a walker. But that didn't keep her from walking.
Two, sometimes three times a day, her friends said yesterday, Herlihy would leave her Belmont Street home and slowly walk to a Dunkin' Donuts down the road for her favorite ice coffee.
On Friday afternoon at 3:45, Herlihy was making one of her coffee runs when a schoolbus rounded the corner of her street and struck her just a short distance from her home. She died at Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center later in the afternoon.
Yesterday, Brockton police would not comment on the accident or any surrounding circumstances. A quarter-mile stretch of Belmont Street, which was still icy and slick after the recent wet, cold weather, was closed for several hours while investigators from the State Police accident reconstruction team worked at the scene.
The identity of the bus driver was not released. Brockton public school spokeswoman Jocelyn Meek said the bus was taking students home from the Keith School, and had three preschoolers and a bus monitor onboard. The Keith School will provide counseling for the students and bus monitor, she said.
"We consider this a horrible tragedy," Meek said, "and our hearts go out to the family."
She said the school system uses buses from a contractor, Cincinnati-based First Student, to transport children to and from school. This accident was the first involving the contractor, she said.
On Belmont Street yesterday, Herlihy's caregiver, Sandra Pierce, 49, who lived in the same multifamily building as Herlihy, said her neighbor had refused to let her sickness or osteoperosis get in the way of an active, autonomous lifestyle.
"She took it all with a grain of salt, and she dealt with it well," she said. "Most people would cower away with this illness; she didn't."
In addition to her daily walks, Herlihy maintained a colorful flower garden in the summer, tending to the plants herself. She helped with work around the building, a green, multifamily woodframe. And when she went out for ice coffee, she would offer to get something for Pierce as well.
"That's the kind of woman she was," said Pierce, 49.
For Pierce, this simple gesture came to symbolize Herlihy's strength, and the relationship the women had forged in the last two years. While Pierce was paid to look after Herlihy, both women took care of each other.
Herlihy's death also left those who poured her daily cups of coffee feeling as if they had lost a family member.
"I'm in shock," said Ryan Reed, 18, a clerk at the Dunkin' Donuts shop. "I heard what happened and told my dad. . . . I couldn't believe it."
Reed recalled a friendly, cheerful woman rarely seen without her Red Sox cap.
"She would come in two to three times a day," he said. "She would strike up a five-minute-long conversation with us every time, usually about sports, always the Red Sox. She loved the Sox and Pats."
After the accident, firefighters from the nearby headquarters arrived quickly and administered CPR to Herlihy, who had gone into cardiac arrest, said Deputy Fire Chief Timothy Murphy.
