In 26 years of foster caring, she and husband Rob Lehmann welcomed more than 300 children into their home.

Together they raised six of their biological children and took three of their foster children into permanent care.

But tragically the 58-year-old Warrnambool woman’s life was cut short when she died after a horrific crash in August.

Mrs Lehmann has been described as an incredible woman who provided love and a safe place for children who had been forgotten by the world.

With a quiet dignity, Mr Lehmann told The Standard how on the night of the accident their son Bo, who lived on Rooneys Road, rang and asked for a ride into work.

Mrs Lehmann and her son Joel drove the less than five-minute trip to Bo’s house and headed to the Rooneys Road and Raglan Parade intersection.

“Fortunately Bo and Joel were on the passenger side of the car - Bo was in the middle seat and Joel in the front seat,” Mr Lehmann said.

“She stopped at the lights, she looked up the road to see it was all clear. There were no traffic lights there.

“She looked up and must have thought it was clear. She went across the intersection and the next thing Bo must have turned around and he said ‘truck’ and with that … bang.

“The truck pushed the car and hit her driver’s side. Bo tried to grab the hand brake to stop it from moving or spinning.”

Mr Lehmann said 14-year-old Joel bravely ran back to Bo’s house to call for help while Bo, 24, stayed by his mum’s side.

“I got to the intersection and I just saw all the ambulances,” he said.

“They’d gotten her out of the car. I just couldn’t believe it. The car was in a U shape.

“She had severe head injuries and we went to emergency in Warrnambool.

“When I finally saw her, she was in a bad way.”

Mrs Lehmann was later airlifted to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a critical condition.

Mr Lehmann said early CT scans didn’t reveal the extent of her injuries because of swelling.

“She also had fractured ribs, a fractured jaw, a fractured elbow – all things that could get better,” he said.

“The main thing was the trauma to her head. It was just a harrowing week. We were in there talking to her, telling her, ‘wake up, Mum’.”

Mr Lehmann was on his way home to Warrnambool to check on his family when he got a call to return to the hospital because the MRI results were back and they weren’t good.

“My heart just dropped,” he said.

“All the thinking there might have been some glimmer of hope.

“We had the big family meeting and they said her whole brain was severely damaged beyond repair and she’d never wake up.

“We all sat down and had to make a big decision.

“She always said to me, ‘if I end up like that, I don’t want to live like that’ - and I’m the same. I don’t want to live relying on a ventilator to keep me alive, but it was a pretty hard decision to make.

“With the vibration she was hit, the whole brain shook and damaged everything in the brain, which she wouldn't wake up from. It’s really hard.”

Mrs Lehmann died two days before the couple’s 40th wedding anniversary.

Mr and Mrs Lehmann met at a fellowship function and their relationship soon blossomed.

In the early days of their marriage, Mr Lehmann worked full-time and Mrs Lehmann did family day care. It was from that work Mrs Lehmann saw there were children in need of a loving and secure home.

“She turned around to me one day and said, ‘How about we do foster care?’,” Mr Lehmann said.

“We only had a young family then and the kids were more or less brought up with foster care, but we did talk to them about it. It just snowballed and we’ve been doing it ever since.

“We were a good team and we just felt sorry to see the plight of these kids. More than anything you could just see the way they came to her.

“We just wanted to give them that care that they didn’t have.”

Mr Lehmann said although foster care work was challenging, the rewards always outweighed any difficult experiences.

“We’ve had our hard cases - the real demanding cases and some we couldn’t handle,” he said.

“We did everything we possibly we could.

“We’ve had some that left us that have gone on the downward spiral. We’ve had phone calls from some who have gone on to be doctors and just blossomed with their careers and lives. That just made us absolutely happy.”

Mrs Lehmann was recognised as carer of the year in the statewide Robert Clark Memorial awards in 2012.

Foster care team leader Marion Noye, from Brophy Family and Youth Services, said Mrs Lehmann had the ability to accept and love all the children who came into her care.

She said those incredible skills had been passed on by Mr and Mrs Lehmann to their other children.

“You always knew that when you placed a child in the Lehmann house they were going to be safe and happy,” she said.

Brophy chief executive Francis Broekman said Mrs Lehmann was an extraordinary woman who opened her house to children who had often been forgotten and were unable to live at home.

“She offered them love and unconditional support,” he said.

“She and Rob offered their home to children and were able to repair trauma in them.

“They showed them there were people in the world who loved them for who they were.”

More than 500 people attended Mrs Lehmann’s funeral on September 11 and she was celebrated and remembered as a kind and caring woman who was always doing things for other people.

“It was heartwarming that she was loved by so many but very sad that someone was taken who was so special to me and everybody else,” Mr Lehmann said.

Mrs Lehmann also volunteered as a football trainer at Merrivale, Old Collegians and later at Koroit.

“She loved doing that. It was just her break to get away from the family,” Mr Lehmann said.

“She was a wonderful, caring person and she just thought of everybody she was involved with.”

Mr Lehmann said he planned to continue the foster care work and he was grateful for the support from family, friends and the community.

“I just want to move on doing exactly what she would like me to do,” he said.

“It’d be nothing to come home at night and see two new faces as I walked in the door and I’d say, ‘Oh Cindy who are these?’ and she’d say, ‘These are so and so. We’ve only got them for a week’.

“Then that week would turn into weeks and months. We’d bring them into our family and bring them up the same way we brought up our kids.

“She was just a natural mother around the home. She was a wonderful mum.”

Story courtesy of The Standard