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.
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]
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