It was a short, casual, coast-to-coast hello, a mother's greeting zipping through cyberspace from California to Florida.

Diane Lange McBurney just wanted to tell her son that she and her longtime partner were driving to Santa Ynez for a Thanksgiving Day buffet at the Chumash Casino.

About an hour after sending the e-mail, McBurney, 69, and Susan Gosling, 54, left their home on North Third Street in Lompoc and headed east on Highway 246 in their Ford Escape SUV.

They crossed the bridge, and passed River Park and the walnut grove at the Art Hibbits Ranch. As they neared Mission Gate Road, a car speeding toward them careened off the highway and into a field to the left in front of them.

Then it veered back onto the pavement and crossed into their lane.

Denise McBurney of Canonsburg, Pa., near Pittsburgh, called her brother, Dale, at his home in Pompano Beach, Fla., at 1:30 the next morning.

The Canonsburg police had been to her house with tragic news. Their mother and her partner of nearly 30 years had been killed in a car accident east of Lompoc.

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“We are still in shock. It was a senseless accident. Nobody wants to see that,” said Denise, who arrived in Lompoc the day after the Thanksgiving crash. “I hate to see anybody to have to go through this, and I wouldn't wish it on anybody.”

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The California Highway Patrol said this week that charges are pending against Angelica Arias, 21, of Lompoc, who was driving the Nissan that went out of control and caused the accident.

Arias was westbound toward Lompoc about 1:25 p.m. after having attended an event at a nearby golf course, said CHP Officer John Allen. Witnesses told authorities she was speeding, following too closely and driving erratically.

Allen, of the CHP's Buellton office, said he is investigating the possibility that alcohol was a contributing factor in the accident.

Gosling, who was driving the Ford SUV, died at the scene, and McBurney died later that day, according to the CHP.

Arias was taken to Lompoc Hospital, then transferred to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, where she had emergency surgery after suffering internal injuries and a closed head injury, said Allen. She was moved out of the intensive-care unit on Saturday, and was listed in good condition Tuesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

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Diane Lange McBurney, a native of Pittsburgh, Pa., was performing a magic act when a television producer from Evening Magazine came to do a story about her.

Something clicked between the two women, who shared an interest in the arts and in animals. In 1987, when Susan Gosling landed a job producing PM Magazine - the national version of the local-market Evening Magazine - she and McBurney, a graphic artist and registered nurse in addition to being a professional magician, moved to San Francisco.

After about a year, they moved to Santa Barbara to be closer to McBurney's grandfather, Edmund Lange, who had worked on refrigeration systems for rockets launched at Vandenberg Air Force Base. His wife, Blanche - McBurney's grandmother - had died. The couple had lived in town for about 40 years; they were buried in Lompoc Evergreen Cemetery.

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When Dale McBurney visited a Lompoc insurance office this week to talk about the accident, a worker there knew his mother, and told him a story that captured her pointed personality, and her intelligent, undeniable sense of humor.

“I loved your mother, but when I first met her, she walked into my office and looked at me and said, ‘Oh, are YOU the only one here?'''

Over time, Diane Lange McBurney grew to appreciate the insurance worker.

One day, McBurney said to her, “‘I like you. You know what you're doing. You know how to do your job,'” the worker recalled.

“But why didn't you like me at first?” she asked.

“Because you're blonde,” McBurney replied.

Dale McBurney, reached by telephone as he traveled the California coast, laughed at the story.

“My mother was a very cantankerous old woman,” said Dale, vice president of Maximus Air, an aircraft management company in Boca Raton, Fla. “She was a tough old bird, but she was also very loving and wanted to make sure she could do everything for everybody.”

After she suffered a stroke about four years ago, McBurney lost the use of her right hand, and could no longer write, draw or paint. But she continued to help Gosling with events at UCSB, where Gosling was an undergraduate student advisor in the English Department, Dale said.

“Everybody that we've talked to has basically said they had a love for each other; they never spent any time apart, they went everywhere with each other,” he said. “They just loved each other dearly. They were soul mates.”

In life and in death, Denise said.

“The two of them were inseparable. Even their neighbors knew that,” she said. “They said they don't know what one would have done without the other. I said it's kind of heaven's way of keeping them together.”

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Susan Gosling was an only child, born to John and Margaret Gosling in Bethesda Maryland, while her father was a Marine band leader. A graduate of the Juilliard School in New York City, John Gosling conducted a Marine band that often performed at the White House.

She grew up around music and was very close to her father, who took her to his rehearsals, said her mother, Margaret Gosling, of Savannah, Ga.

“She studied violin; she was very talented but she didn't stick with it,” her mother said. “She was so good in the arts, writing. She had an excellent ear for music; she loved all the instruments.”

The family followed John Gosling's musical career to Monterey, where he conducted the county symphony for nearly a decade, while Susan attended the private Santa Catalina School.

One Christmas in California, Susan was given a dog that quickly became a beloved member of the family.

“For Christmas she got a little poodle; it was black but turned silver,” Margaret Gosling said. “That dog was really human. We had that dog for 17 years. He moved with us, traveled with us. Susan couldn't stand to part with that dog. His name was Maestro.”

Susan Gosling and McBurney were fond of showing their miniature poodles in American Kennel Club shows. They had three of them - Murphy, Bailey and Boom.

After California, the Gosling family moved to Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C., where he conducted the state symphony for nearly 10 years.

Susan Gosling attended Stephens College, a private women's school in Columbia, Mo., where she majored in the arts and studied film and production.

After college, she went to work for the broadcasting division of Westinghouse Electric Co. in Pittsburgh, where she produced Evening Magazine and won two Peabody awards for her work - one for a story on actor Jimmy Stewart and another for a story on Acapulco cliff divers, Margaret Gosling said.

“She was bubbly and she loved people, and working with people,” Gosling said.

Dale McBurney agreed.

“Awesome. She was awesome. Just a happy, loving type of person,” he said, recalling her love for pop music. “She was a pop diva. She was a closet pop junkie.”

“Everybody knew Susan. Everybody loved Susan because she was a caring, loving person who would give you the last dollar in her wallet even if she didn't have anything,” he said.

Margaret Gosling said she last talked to her daughter about a month ago.

It was one of those casual, long-distance conversations with a loved one.

“She was telling me about all the dogs; we were chuckling about that,” she said.

“She talked about work. She liked the people she worked with. She said how good they were to her.”

There is a silent moment on the telephone, while a mother catches her breath.

“That was just tragic,” she said. “Unbelievable.”

Funeral arrangements were pending Tuesday.

December 3, 2008