KathyJo Rushing insists on making me a cup of tea in the kitchen of the Thousand Oaks home she shared with her husband, Chris Rushing.
She says he always made people welcome and wouldn't forgive her if she didn't make me a drink.
"There was not a person that he ever met that didn't love him. He was everybody's friend. He was the number one T6 pilot in the world. That plane was like a part of his arm," she told KCLU in an exclusive interview.
Their home is filled with awards from his wins at the Championship Air Races. But his first place win earlier this month would be his last - as the expertly skilled pilot, who was in the military and flew C-130s in the Woolsey fire, was killed in an accident at the Reno Air Races.
"I was at the races and 30 minutes before he called for me...he usually liked to be alone," she recalled.
"He said, 'Will you just sit with me,' and we sit there just holding hands in silence for 30 minutes. And we're walking down to the flight line and everybody's screaming, 'Get gold, get gold'. And I said, 'Honey, just come back,' and he said, 'Darling, I'll be right back. I'm going to bring you some gold' ".
Those would be the last words he spoke to KathyJo.
"And so I watched the race and he won. And when he crossed the finish line, everybody surrounded me. And then immediately there was silence and I saw a plume of smoke," she said.
She said she didn't see the moment of the collision and recalls the confusion and panic that followed.
"It seemed like eternity. But one of the pilots was there and he had a radio. And he goes, 'It was Chris'."
"It's just been unbearable, unbearable to think he's gone," she said.
It was their second chance at love. And KathyJo says this tragedy is made all the harder to bear because her first husband also died in an accident, while riding a motorcycle, in Nevada.
"I was devastated. It was horrific. And I vowed never to date again," she said.
But she did, after a chance meeting with Chris at a fundraiser in Camarillo.
"We talked for maybe three minutes and I walked away and I left. My girl friend gave him my business card and he called and he kept calling," she remembers.
"We ended up going to dinner. We talked for six hours. We dated for five weeks. And we flew to Tennessee and eloped and got married," she said.
"We've been together 14 months. His race airplane was 14. I only had 14 months with him," she said. "We were crazy and lot of people teased us, that we're like teenagers."
"I never thought I would love again. And he changed my heart. I married him because he made me laugh every day. I lost my laugh. I lost my joy," she said.
Does it give KathyJo any comfort to think he was doing something he loved so much?
"No," she said. "That's what I heard before, you know, 'Oh, at least he died doing what he loved'.
"No, it doesn't give me any comfort."
KathyJo says she's finding support from the community, from family and her church. But having been here before, she says she knows that once the floral tributes have died and the initial shock subsided, the loss and the loneliness are still there to stay.
