Atlanta 4-H club invites youth from town to join

The members of the Atlanta Town and Country 4-H club invite eligible youth from town to join. Jeff Jones, the club reporter, says, "4-H isn’t just for people who live in the country. There are lots of things for a guy or a girl from town to do." Activities include cooking, growing flowers, woodworking, small engines, arts, crafts and herb gardening. For more information, people can call 217-648-2973.

Red Cross offers CPR and first aid classes

A Community First Aid and Safety Class will be offered at the Logan County Red Cross office on April 17 and 18. Hours for the class are 6 to 10 p.m. the first evening and 5 to 10 p.m. the second evening. This class covers adult CPR, infant and child CPR, and first aid. Both evenings are required for certification.

A Challenge class for Community CPR and First Aid will be offered on Saturday, April 22, from 9 a.m. to noon. On the same day, there will be a Challenge class for CPR for the Professional Rescuer, but the hours will be 8 a.m. to noon.

For further information, call 732-2134 between 12 and 4 p.m. any weekday

Panel tells impact of drunk driving

    “Drunk driving is not an accident.  It is 100 percent avoidable.  My daughter was killed by a drunk driver,” George Murphy of Jacksonville told a group of about 40 Tuesday night at a Victim Impact Panel at the Lincoln Recreation Center.

    The panel of four, all members of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), told their stories, three from the point of view of victims and one from the other side of the issue, the experience of a young man convicted of drunk driving.

They also told those present, especially the dozen young people, not to drink and drive, and urged them to let their state and local representatives know how they feel about drunk drivers being allowed on the road.  The panel was sponsored by the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Task Force of the Healthy Communities Partnership of Logan County in recognition of Alcohol Awareness Month and Victims Rights Week, April 9 through 15.

 “Don’t think it can’t happen to you,” Murphy told the audience.  His daughter, Kellie, died on July 4, 1984, after being struck by a drunk driver.

Kellie and her husband and 14-month-old son had gone out for a bicycle ride.  The young mother had gotten off her bicycle to attend to her son when the “town drunk” came around a corner and ran over her as she was standing by the side of the road.  The driver didn’t stop.

“He didn’t know he had hit a human being,” Murphy said.

In the emergency room, Murphy was thinking of the time 12 years ago when his daughter had ridden her bicycle into a car and sustained a broken leg.  He was expecting to hear the same kind of news.  When the family priest walked in, he learned that his daughter was dead.

He spoke of his frustration trying to sue the tavern that sold the driver liquor when he was already drunk.  An appellate court ruled that his daughter’s life was of no monetary value under the dram shop law because she was not a wage earner.  Thirteen years later, he said, a bill named for his daughter, the Kellie Wheatley Bill, changed the law so that even if the deceased person did not earn a paycheck, the family could sue for damages.

Murphy, the only paid staff member of MADD on the panel, whose job is to help victims through the criminal justice system, told the audience that drunk drivers kill 44 persons per day.

“When I see a drunk driver, I dial 911.  I want you to do the same.  I want you to take the keys away from your friends if they have been drinking and want to drive.  We are not opposed to those of you who are of age consuming alcohol, we just don’t want you to do it and drive.”

“I will never have grandchildren,” Cheryl Beard of Rochester told the group.  On March 7, 1990, she and her husband had breakfast with their 17-year-old son Jeff, their only child.  That evening they were called to a Springfield hospital emergency room because they were told their son had “totaled” his car.

A chaplain was waiting for them at the hospital, and they learned that their son had serious injuries.  He died before they could see him.  Only the next day, when she read the newspaper, did Beard learn that another car had been involved.

“The driver ran a stop sign and hit Jeff.  Because he was drunk, his reaction time was slower.  He said he never saw the stop sign or Jeff’s car.  If his reaction time had been faster by even one second, he might not have killed my son.”

She remembers what she thought when she and her husband went to the funeral home to pick out their son’s coffin.  “You think of all the things you buy for your children.  Now the only thing left to buy him was a coffin.”

Jim Jones of Middletown, a convicted drunk driver, told the group he started drinking when he was 14 years old and thought it was “real cool.  Nothing bad ever happened.”

When he was 17 he was picked up for having beer in his car and lost his license for 30 days.  “It should have been longer,” he said.

When he was 21 he thought, “It’s okay to stop at a bar and have some drinks, because nothing bad happens.”  Then he woke up three days later in a Springfield hospital.  The doctors told him he was lucky to be alive.

He is now 28 and has not driven since that time.  “I’m glad I was taken off the road.  I very easily could have killed somebody.  When you’re drinking, you don’t think at all.”

Because he can’t drive, he said, he has a “low-paying job,” but he does not feel he is ready yet to reapply for a driver’s license.

Steve Zimmerman of Mason City was hit by a drunken driver and lived to tell about it, but he has lost his trucking business, suffered a great deal of pain, still walks with a cane and faces at least another three surgeries.

“On May 29 last year we came to Lincoln High School for my niece’s graduation.  On the way home a driver came around a curve in the road at 85 or 90 miles an hour and hit our van.  It took two or three hours to get me out.”

He said it was the fourth time the driver who hit him had been arrested for drunk driving.  “I thought, ‘What is this guy doing on the road?  Why isn’t he in jail?’”

He said he believed the police, the state’s attorney of Logan County and the judge who gave the man the maximum sentence did a good job, but he pointed out that the 12-year sentence would probably be reduced to six, or possibly less.

“If a man gets six years, every day he serves of good time he gets a day off.  That’s the way it works in Illinois.  Then, because the Safe Neighborhoods act was recently overturned in that rigmarole about gun control, this guy can appeal the sentence and may serve only three years.  I’m real aggravated at everybody.”

Still, he says, he can forgive the driver who hit him.

The driver wrote him a letter of apology, which Zimmerman read to the audience.  “I’m writing to tell you I’m really sorry.  I’ve been wanting to do this ever since the day of the wreck.  I know that saying I’m sorry won’t take away the pain and suffering.  I’m sorry you and your family had to pay for my mistake.”

“At first, I thought this guy was looking for some kind of reprieve,” Zimmerman said, “but right now if I could walk up to the man I would probably forgive him.

“This is a two-sided tragedy,” he added.  “Nobody wins.  The driver, even if he walks away, still has to live with it.”

In closing, Zimmerman told the audience that every year 1,600,000 people are arrested for drunk driving.  “How many are on the road that are not arrested?  If you’re not scared when you get on the road of meeting a drunk driver, you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Kristi Simpson, chairperson of the education subcommittee of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Task Force, said that some of the young people who attended the meeting were students at Lincoln Junior High School earning extra credit for writing a paper about the experience.  At least one other person attended because of a court order.  Lincoln Police Chief Rich Ludolph and two officers also attended, “to hear the panel and support the program,” Chief Ludolph said.

                                                             [Joan Crabb]